Thinking real serious about send my 610-3 off to have the cylinders reamed to 10 MM Magnum which would have it everything a 41 Magnum wanted to be but never could.

Anyone here done that to a 610? How was the results and how does the gun perform? Any problems since?

__________________
Cranky Old Retired USN Guy

Thinking real serious about send my 610-3 off to have the cylinders reamed to 10 MM Magnum which would have it everything a 41 Magnum wanted to be but never could.

Anyone here done that to a 610? How was the results and how does the gun perform? Any problems since?

__________________
Cranky Old Retired USN Guy

Back when the magnum cartridge first came out, I asked Hamilton Bowen to rechamber a 610 for me. He remarked the barrel as well.

The cartridge is impressive, but quite manageable in a 610 (mine had a 5" barrel). However, you need to heavy crimp the cartridge. Bullet creep occurs occurs under recoil if you just use the standard 10mm crimp.

Accuracy was still good with the 10mm, but there is too much freebore for the .40 S&W.

Is 10mm Magnum brass still available from Starline? If so, thats surprising because the only 10MM Magnum pistol was discontinued after a very short run years ago, and it was never a factory loaded cartridge as far as I know. At one time I was interested in rechambering a 610 for the cartridge but decided it would be best utilized in an 8 3/8" barreled gun, which S&W never produced. If you do the conversion, please share the results with us.

I tried it and wasn't impressed. Sold the cylinder Dave Clements made up for me, and the Starline brass, to a gentleman on this forum. After trying a lot of loads I decided that the 10mag was only going to exceed 10mm performance by exceeding 10mm pressures. 10mm cases are small, and it's tough to get enough of the bulky, slow magnum powders in there to do any good. The 10mag case has a lot of room to play with. To beat the standard 10mm, though, you'll be putting enough H110, 2400 or AA9 in there to be approaching rifle pressures. I don't recommend spending the money, but wish you luck if you try. Accurate Arms used to provide some load data.

I would think the 10mm case should be similar powder capacity to a 41Mag case, no?
After all its a .40 caliber compared to the .41 caliber magnum.

So ww296 or h110 should work well in it, no?

Here is a link to an old article by John Taffin.
He shows a 200gr XTP bullet @1600fps using ww296.
http://www.sixguns.com/tests/tt10mag.htm

Were you unable to duplicate this performance in your gun?

thanks

-Greybeard

The 10mm mag capacity is 31.6 grs. of water. The .41 mag, which is longer and bigger around, has a capacity of 35.2 grs. of water.

I have a copy of Accurate manual number one and it does list data for the 10mm mag. Comparing their data for it and the .41 mag it will not out perform the .41 with bullets of equal weight. The only advantage it has is the availability of lighter weight bullets, if you feel that is an advantage. In a revolver it would also have the ability to chamber a lighter factory load for those that are recoil sensitive.

I tried the Taffin loads, and couldn't come close to what he was getting. I believe the reason was chamber size. My chambers were correct, but case expansion was way higher than what Taffin recorded, even with light loads, and I think there was a big pressure drop. Max loads from the Accurate manual didn't even get me regular 10mm performance. I finally equaled my 6.5" typical 10mm number, 1211fps with a 200 lead bullet, by going 2.2gr above the Accurate 10mag max for AA9 with a 195 lead bullet. That's when I decided it was time for somebody else to give it a try.