629 vs. 629 Mountain Gun recoil

[stansdds]

The worst recoil and blast from a revolver came one day at the outdoor range.
I had my 629 with full factory magnum loads and a 'nice guy' 4 benches down had a Ruger Super Blackhawk. I noticed it was a bit loud. ????
He walked over and offered me the ''opportunity' to try it out. He then loaded his extra 'special' hand loaded rounds, handed the gun to me and said that it might kick a little more than usual.
Well, the first round almost flipped the gun out of my hands, I then changed my grip and touched off another, then I had enough, so did the poor gun.
The cylinder refused to rotate, humm.........
The remaining rounds had all jumped their crimps locking the gun up and after we were able to remove the cylinder from the frame, I noticed all the spent rounds had their primers exceedingly flattened. We had to beat the spent casings out with a dowel.
Basically, I was holding on to a grenade.
He then mentioned that he had exceeded the recommended max load and just wanted to try it out, thanks a lot.
This was about 15 years, early 90's, before I acquired my 500 and I swear it was it was the worst blast and recoil I had ever encountered up till now. I really can't compare the two because of the time that had past, but it was really bad (he just laughed).
How that gun held together is a true mystery.

And that is why you never shoot someone else's reloads in your guns. Yikes!!!!

 

[Tinkertech]

I did not use 'his' reloads in MY 629 only in his Super Black Hawk.

 

[M29since14]

We are all different when it comes to perceived recoil. Stuff that probably wouldn’t have bothered me thirty years ago now bothers me a great deal. I think there’s a reason why S&W put the barrel on the initial production 29s that they did. The lighter barrel of the mountain gun, which is essentially the same barrel found on the 1950 Target/Model 24, may not make the gun drastically lighter, but it does make the gun kick “drastically harder,” IMO.

The Mountain Gun is at the very upper limit of recoil that I will tolerate. If I were looking around for a gun to carry in bear country that was as light as possible, I might be thinking of an M&P 10mm, or any similar 10mm that you happen to like. Some careful analysis of your actual shooting ability vs. the weight you are willing to carry with the weapons that interest you might be revealing. As I understand the problem, precision shooting is no small factor in trying to save yourself from an attack if all you have is a handgun.

All that said, if I were buying a revolver today based on what I know now, I’d probably buy the model with the original barrel profile.