I own several ported pistols and see questions on here from time to time about them. I thought I would post a few findings/discoveries I have made about ported guns versus the usual internet forum conclusions. Here are a few points:

1. Ported Pistols are loud: True, they are louder than guns that are identical to them. They are not however, louder than say snub nose magnums. Loud is a relative thing, they are not loud enough to make them dangerous, unless you are firing in a phone booth or by chance have a ported snub and fire it in a confined area.

2. The flash will blind you at night: Again, the flash is brighter on a ported pistol than a non-ported gun, but not so bright that it renders you blind and certainly no brighter than the afore mentioned magnum snub being fired at night.

3. You cannot fire a ported pistol from retention without setting your clothes on fire: Pure myth.

4. Porting hurts the value of the gun. Mostly true, factory porting does not hurt the value. Non-factory porting will reduce the value of the gun to collectors and those who dislike porting. It makes it harder to get the value out of the gun, harder, but not impossible. You will not get the cost of the porting back, that true.

5. Porting does not decrease recoil: Yes and no. It does reduce muzzle flip, aid in follow-up shots and force the recoil back into the hand instead of up, which most people perceive as less recoil. I personally do not find it lessens recoil, but it does have the benefits listed above, some would argue it helped the recoil of their guns immensely as well. Recoil in many senses is subjective in the sense heavy recoil to one person is manageable recoil to another.

6. Ported guns are messy and ruin the front sight: Mostly yes, but as with anything there are exceptions. Firing lead hot/fast lead rounds make a mess out of the gun. Hoppes and a lead-away rag will remove the grime, however, it will eventually remove the color off of sight inserts, if you have them. You can reduce much of the mess by using jacketed loads instead of lead. If you get nothing else out of this, this is the best tip I can give you; it sounds crazy, but it works wonderfully well, a lady at Magna-Port gave it to me. Coat the sight and the areas of the barrel around the ports with Chapstick before you go, wipe it off before you leave the range. This works wonders, the sight and those areas of the barrel coated are absolutely spotless after the Chapstick is wiped off. It will also save you 20 minutes worth of cleaning and having to regularly buy sight inserts. I never leave the Chapstick on overnight.

Those are my opinions, they are worth the price I charged you, I hope they benefit someone. Whether you want a ported gun or not, that's something you'll have to figure out yourself.

I have two of the S&W ported barrel J Frames but only use them as either a house, or range gun.

Having shot them at night I've seen the direction & amount of the flash, which is especially pronounced on the .327 Fed Mag rounds. Based on what I've seen, flash-wise, I can only imagine what would happen if I were in my vehicle and had to shoot at someone trying to get in my door or at me through the window.

If I only had time enough to pull my gun and hold it in front of my body with the barrel angled up at the window the port would be aimed directly at my face. If I pulled the trigger then, there is no doubt in my mind that I would get a face full of flash / blast. At least with my non-ported guns the flash would be directed towards the window.

Also, if I had a passenger and someone were trying to get in that side of the vehicle and I had to fire across my passenger's body I would have to conciously think about the angle of the gun or run the risk of blasting my passenger right in the face with the flash coming out of the port.

I feel that in a house setting the chances are reduced that I would possibly have to shoot with the gun held & angled in the manner(s) described.

To be honest, none of the issues mentioned by the OP were ever a concern of mine, just the direction of the blast.

Edited to add for the record, as opposed to a bump that may lead to a who's right or who's wrong type of debate.

My wife & I were just out & about in my Astro Van and I reached across as if I were pointing a gun at the passenger window.

When I did my wife asked, "What was that all about?"

I answered, "I just found out that my arm must be 4-5 feet long."

My knuckles were right in front of her left cheek.

__________________
Ogy

Interesting post, you did bring up one point I meant to mention.

Be sure you carry low flash rounds for SD in a ported gun, or a snub nose for that matter. Excellent point you made that, I forgot.

On the other, I was comparing normal barrel length guns to snubs and stated so. I would not port a snub, it's noise and flash issues are a issue from jump street, just my opinion for me, you did what you thought best on your gun, as you should. You do make a good point on the angle of shooting out of a seated car position vs the angle of the barrel back toward your face. However, there are issues with just about any gun in certain situations, there is no perfect gun. Also I drive a larger truck, so for me shooting up probably is not going to happen, but I agree it is something to think about in a car. I don't see porting being the issue with a passenger in your scenario, unless your arms are 4-5 feet long, you are firing a snub and it will be in their face, the fireball in the face is a given.

All in all good, well thought out response, I appreciate your taking the time to kick it around.

Thanks. It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO refreshing to get info from someone who knows FIRST HAND what he is talking about.

Thank you sir.

I can see zero aplication or benifit offered by the ports. All of the concerns and chapstick applications can be simply done-away-with, just by simply Not having the ports.

I don't know if they are louder or not..but the direction of the sound sure changes the way the noise is heard by the shooter.

My 4" 500S&W is what I would consider dangerous with the break. It is so loud that it will ring your ears pretty bad even with earplugs in. The heat and **** hitting you in the face is terrible.

I have since had the muzzle break comp replaced and it is a different gun with those holes plugged. I don't feel that recoil is more or different without the comp..It is such a relief to fire it without all that pressure hitting your face and body.



The breaks do work very well on rifles, but I believe that has to do with the weight of the powder that is being exhausted through the ports. The powder to bullet weight ratio is usually 40%,and in some cases equal to 100% of the weight of the bullet.

I am glad I ported my 4" 629 Mountain Revolver. The muzzle
flip with full house rounds was extreme. The muzzle rise is now
no more than the 44 Special that looks just like it. It's true that
there is more pounding of the thumb web. I put a 500 magnum
grip on and that fixed that.
I never intended to carry this gun anywhere but outdoors in a
rural environment. The 624's and Charter fill the urban bill.
Earplugs AND earmuffs make the sound tolerable at the indoor
range.
I have not had any problem with staining the gun or sight.
The glass bead finish is very durable. I just wipe it with whatever
solvent I am using like Butch's Bore Shine.
The fiber sight is already sealed inside a clear capsule and doesn't
seem to be affected at all.



...Nemo...

Very nice looking gun!

Lol...they all think we're crazy.

I write for Shotgun Sports Magazine, have shot trap competitively since 1989 and have done a lot of research on porting. It is an extremely hot topic among clay target shooters, as can be seen by a visit to any of the shotgunning discussion forums.

Porting is very INeffective in reducing shotgun recoil because the chamber pressure of those rounds (in target form, anyway) is very low, usually between 6,000psi and 10,000psi. Handguns and rifles, on the other hand, can generate 60,000psi or more. Any time you can bleed off some pressure before the ejecta departs the muzzle, the potential for recoil reduction exists. You can't bleed off what isn't there to start with, so shotguns don't realize anything but some reduction in muzzle rise from porting. I once owned two trap guns that were identical in every way except that one was ported and one was not. No one who shot both could discern a difference.

But since porting IS effective in higher-pressure situations, that means muzzle velocity has to be reduced somewhat in proportion to the amount of pressure that is bled off by the ports. In certain hunting situations, that could be critical. Targets, on the other hand, cannot tell the difference.

I have a collection of the Remington Ultra Mag rifles and before firing the first one I bought, a .300RUM, I considered having it ported to make it more comfortable to shoot from a bench. When I contacted a vendor about having that done, he asked me a very thought-provoking question: "If you wanted a .300 Winchester Magnum, why didn't you just buy one?" In other words, porting my .300RUM would reduce its muzzle velocity to that of a .300 Win Mag. I elected to shoot the rifle first and am glad I did as it isn't as hateful as I was expecting. My .338RUM and .375RUM on the other hand...

I own an unfired 6" Model 686-4 PowerPort and was curious as to the effectiveness of the porting but didn't want to fire a previously unfired gun to find out, so I bought a used 6" 686-5 PowerPort and shot it along with one of my non-ported 6" 686s. After all, that feature is no longer offered on any of S&W's popular "production" revolvers and it's safe to assume that decision was triggered by low sales of those models. Why? Was the porting not effective at anything but increasing muzzle flash and blowing dirt everywhere?

There is a difference but it is slight. Recoil is a little less and muzzle rise is reduced but it isn't like the non-ported gun felt like a .357 Magnum and the ported one a .38 Special. It might have been like a maximum load and a slightly reduced one or two different bullet weights at the same velocity. Remember, if porting is to be effective, muzzle velocity must be reduced. My chronograph showed that the average muzzle velocity of the ported gun was 58fps less than the non-ported one. That's only about a 4% change and a difference in the two guns' bore diameters could have accounted for that.

Still curious if a higher-pressure round might increase the effect of the porting, I bought a used 6.5" 629-5 Classic PowerPort to compare with my non-ported 6.5" 629-3 Classic. The results were pretty much what I expected - the same as in the 686 comparison but a little more so.

Obviously, porting is not effective enough to cause people to want a ported hunting revolver. Short-barreled magnums, on the other hand, probably are much nicer on the hand with porting. Then there's the "looks factor" - porting on a handgun just looks nasty, macho and downright cool.

Ed

I will add this caveat. I think some of the reason for the PowerPort feature's ineffectiveness might be the location of the port. Being right at the muzzle, it didn't "spread out" the bleed-off of pressure like ports that are further from the muzzle can.

Having shot both comped and non-comped handguns of similiar make,
I don't care for comped guns, especially handguns. IMO, the benefits aren't needed and the tradeoffs aren't worth it, even with my 500 S&W.
Heavy recoil rifles may be a different story. The benefits of porting/comped may be worth it. I've not shot comparatively, guns like a Barrett in 50BMG uncomped.

Never leave off the cool factor. For a similar comparison, would you drive a 1 ton black dually diesel pickup truck, or a pink prius? Both will take you where you need to go, maybe.

If nothing else, a ported revolver will tend to make you much more aware of how clean or dirty a load is.

__________________
Dick Burg

True. I have fired a snubby, ported .357 (a 2.5", 6 shot Rossi) from compressed retention. It did not set anything on fire, but the blast did dislodge my contact from my right eye (yes, I was wearing shooting glasses).

I only did it once

a good tip with the chapstick....thanks!

__________________
SWCA#2208
KK4EMO

There is/are good reasons the military uses some form of recoil/flash
supression on the big iron like the 50BMG you mention.
I notice that especially in the semi-auto Barrett when hand held
say out of the side of a chopper they almost always use a compensator
that directs a good part of the blast back at a 45 degree angle.
This obviously would not be a good idea in a handgun but looks
like it goes a way towards actually yanking the gun forward against the recoil.
The 50BMG sniper rifles I have seen use just about everything out there
on the muzzle but the many holed cylinder seems to be popular.

The mounted MaDeuce is one of the only BMG's you see without
some form of compensator on it. There has to be a reason

Military Tech in Action | Fox News

Anyone spot what's wrong with this picture?

...Nemo...

Flip open lens caps still closed?

I have a TC Contender with the 223 hunter barrel with brake installed. Not bad for the shooter, but anyone standing next to and behind the shooter will know when it goes off.

__________________
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

I only own one ported gun. A PC pre lock 586-5 L-comp.

I agree with the OP's evaluation. I can see no benefits to ported revolvers and to me, porting is a negative to be avoided.

In fact, I gave up pursuit of the S&W PC13, and made my own from a 3" 13-3, mostly due to the fact that I didn't want the ported barrel. Regards 18DAI

Jerry Miculek disagrees with those who don't think Mag-na-porting is worthwhile:

Mag-na-port Gun Recoil Reduction- review and high speed comparisons with Jerry Miculek - YouTube

As for me, I couldn't imagine shooting my 6-1/2" Model 500 without the factory porting. Physics still applies, but the recoil impulse is spread out over a longer period with porting, thereby making it more manageable (i.e comfortable) to shoot. JMHO.

I haven't read the article yet but have a Taurus snub ported and a Smith snub not ported that I shot last weekend again. I used 230 gr ammo. The Taurus was very easy to control while the Smith went back in the bag after 6 rounds. I will say that the Taurus had rubber grips and a few ozs heavier but there was a huge difference. I will be going back with the Hogue rubber grips on the Smith next trip to se how much difference that makes. So far from my expierence the ports do help and I am glad mine is ported. Now to read the article.

I've have had a magna-ported 3inch 65 since the mid 80s....... the "thing" back then was to port the barrel, bob the hammer, an action job and maybe go double action only......... I did the first three, red ramped the front sight and added my first set of Spegel boot grips.

Shooting the old FBI P+ SWCHP load the porting really did nothing.......

Shooting full bore .357s...158 gr.......... some perceived reduction in muzzle flip.....but the blast told me I never wanted to shoot it indoors without ear protection..............

By the end of the 80s with all the "issues" reported w/ 125gr .357s in K frames..... and the issues the OP pointed out in his original post..... I retired that 65 to the safe...(in favor of a 3" 66 or 3913).... I never tried to sell it because in 5 years of use I was able to shoot 100% qualification scores with that gun.......and for the last 23 years I wish I had never ported it!!!!!!!

Like 18DAI....... I longed for a PC 3" K-frame...... but every one I saw was ported........so I passed!

What flavor Chapstick?

__________________
NICK-SWCA-NRA BENEFACTOR LIFE

Hi:
Somewhere either here or in Florida (two houses) I have a S&W Model 29-2 Blued with a 6 or 6 1/2" (?) barrel that is "Ported". Factory or after market (?). I have not fired it but have thought about cutting the barrel back, changing the barrel, or trading it for a "Non Ported" Model 29. Decisions, Decisions ?

Good original post! The information was enlightening, but I think I'd still reserve porting to hot hunting guns.
Thanks to all for taking the time to share their insights.

__________________
Registration? NEVER!

I think anyone firing a .500 Mag with something other than a dinky Trail Boss load ought to be using double ear protection. I’ve never shot my .500s without doubling up.

Brakes tend to work better as velocity increases but I’d like to know what rifle round uses as much powder as the bullet weighs?
In my cases:
7.62x39 approx 28 gr powder, slug weighs 123gr, 23%
.300WSM, approx 70 gr powder, slug weighs 165 gr, 42%
.458 Win Mag, approx 70gr powder, slug weighs 500gr, 14%.

I would add that my .458 Win Mag is a Ruger No. 1 and it is Magna Ported. I never noticed much benefit from it and it disfigured a classically elegant gun. Wish I hadn’t done it. Don

I think the porting is effective in reducing felt recoil. I carry the 940PC and 66-4PC guns and qualify with them during our Day and Night qualifications. I do not perceive any additional muzzle flash, nor do I find the blast unpleasant. My Glock 33 spits more flame, and cracks more sharply than my F-Comp.

I'm not sure I heard a word you just said...still staring at the photos

I do not like a ported handgun. I have a 629 PC that came ported that I used hunting. I had to start using hearing protection while hunting. Later I got another 629 PC that was not ported to hunt with and I like it much better.

Several years back I was flipping through stacks of old gun magazines from the 60s through 80s. There was an article at the time that Mag-na-port had just been introduced that sought to determine effectiveness. They took three revolvers (2.5", 4" and 6" bbls) and had them mag-na-ported, mounted in Ransom rests, and rigged up some way to measure reduced muzzle flip. Their conclusion was it was a waste of effort on the 2.5" and 6" guns, but did produce some reduction in muzzle flip on the 4" gun. Their rationale was that a 6" gun already has a decent amount of muzzle weight which naturally resists muzzle flip. And on the 2.5" gun, there was simply not enough 'moment arm) AKA leverage on the gun to make any difference.

I can't remember which of the several hundred magazines I went through it was posted in. I'm sure I put a post-it note on that article though.

l was introduced to ported handguns in Nov '13 when l picked up a 629-4 PowerPort.. Comparing it to my DX l can say there lS a bit of a difference in recoil/muzzle flip. ln the noise l cant comment on because l have never fired a 44Magnum without ear protection.. EXCEPT when l am hunting big game...

Rifles are a completely different subject.. Kinda like the difference between propeller planes and jets.. Rifles being JETS.. Handgun being prop driven

l worked for Kenny Jarrett awhile back doing maintenance an on occasion would fill in tuning/breaking in rifles.. THe breakin for a barrel is to shoot/clean 20 rounds . Cleaning after each shot.. Breakin of barrels are done WITHOUT the muzzle breaks installed.. Race fans--There ''IS'' a difference... Just imagine touching off a 30-378 Wby without the break lnstalled

Unmentioned is the hearing loss that WILL happen if you touch off any reasonable round in a really confined space. I work for a maritime enforcement agency where we constantly find ourselves in ships companionways, engine rooms and other confined spaces lined with steel. I have had the situation to discharge a .357 SIG and a .45 auto in such conditions. When you get a hearing loss such as that it is cumulative.
We are now being issued "hush puppy's" in the form of either a Ruger .22LR or a FN .45 ACP with a suppressor for use in those circumstances, you wouldn't believe the difference! We still carry our S&W M&Ps in .357 for normal duty and deploy the suppressed weapons when we have to board a vessel. I am guessing that firing a hot load in your home would also have some detrimental effect on one's hearing. Not judging or fomenting the use of suppressors, but putting in what I know is medical fact situation when shooting indoors. Of course that is why we wear ear protection when training, but that is not always practical in the field.
Our new MPs and older Uzis are being fitted with suppressors as well.
Another issue relating to safety from shooting in our situation is boarding tankers, you need to capture any blast that might ignite fumes-have not had that pleasure-yet, but it may come in the immediate future. Hearing loss has been documented for many years. Take care of your ears, I understand they only issue 2 per person these days. All of the above situations are aggravated by any type of porting.

KAOV1MAN; has active hearing protection such as 'Wolf Ears' been tried and found wanting?

__________________
Registration? NEVER!