In 1957 S&W personnel found a small stash of prewar I-frame parts that had never been made up as firearms. Matching them with pieces of more modern design (thumb releases and knobless ejector rods, for example), they were able to make up a total of 196 .32 caliber revolvers with four-inch barrels and adjustable sights. These were marketed as Regulation Police Target revolvers, which was a bit of a misnomer (or at least a redefinition) because the prewar RP target revolvers all had six-inch barrels. (I acknowledge that special order prewar guns with shorter barrels may exist, but I don't know about them.) Serial numbers all lie in the bottom half of the 657xxx range. Roy Jinks says that four inch barrels were used because the supply of six-inch barrels had been exhausted. Roy also reports that the serial number range for these guns is 657174 to 657369. Known ship dates range from 1957 to late 1959.

With the assistance of our Dear Leader Handejector, who has been known to sell a gun from time to time when he is not managing this forum so the rest of us can brag about the guns we have bought from each other, I now own one of these uncommon revolvers.

This is 657356. It shipped in April, 1959.






These guns have flat mainsprings rather than the postwar coil springs, so they are definitely design throwbacks. They have RP stocks that match a rebated frame, though the checking is in the coarser postwar style, and the checked field has round corners.




These guns employed the old style small rear adjustable sight.




This gun and at least a couple of others that I know about came in the uncommon "Sun Ray" box.



There are at least a couple of varieties of this box. This one obviously has a solid thick border with ornamental corners. Another variety has dark diamonds within the silver band.


The box was numbered in the familiar way in grease marker.




I would call this one about 98%, but you have to look past the dust motes to see that in these photos. The ejector rod is a little worn, and there is a light turn ring. I suppose the gun was fired some, but not a lot.

Most of the specimens of this model that I have heard about seem to be in pretty good shape. I haven't heard of or seen a single one that is worn enough to have been a working gun. I think they may have been purchased mostly as collectible "retro" revolvers, though collectors would not have used that term half a century ago. This design was definitely out of step with what the company was turning out in its improved I-frames and J-frames at the time.

Many of you may know of my fondness for prewar .22/32 Kit Guns, some of which came with Regulation Police stocks on them. This is like one of those, but in .32 S&W Long caliber instead of .22 LR. In the 1990s S&W again briefly made a four inch .32 with adjustable sights -- the model 631 -- but it was not wildly successful.

I-frame .32 target models were always scarce in S&W production. Only a few hundred, or perhaps just over a thousand, were produced in the .32 Hand Ejector First and Second Model lines. Adjustable sight .32s in the .32 HE Third Model series were given square butts mounted on the rebated frame, and were called the .32 Regulation Police Target Revolver. Probably only a few hundred of those were produced over the next 23 years, and then after WWII no adjustable-sight small-frame .32s were produced until these 196 guns were made up from the newly discovered prewar parts.

An interesting little model. I am delighted to have one in my collection at long last.

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David Wilson