The S&W N frame was designed back in 1906 for the 44 special cartridge, a 15K psi cartridge. Special heat treating allowed it to chamber the 44 Magnum ( a 35K psi cartridge) and over the years S&W has added an endurance package. But, the fact is, it's still a 100+ year old design and has limits.
The Redhawk was a clean sheet design specifically for the 44 Magnum with a lot of margin built in. It's slightly heavier brother, the Super Redhawk is also chambered for the 454 Casull (a 60Kpsi cartridge).
Fact is, the Redhawk is simply a newer stronger design. No sideplate, larger diameter cylinder that locks at the crane/frame junction, larger cylinder bolt, etc.
This doesn't mean the Smith is a dog by any stretch, just an older design with limits.
Jim
^^ This.
The Smith and Wesson was originally designed for the .44 Special. Elmer Keith started hot-rodding the hell out of the Special, and found that the Smiths could actually take it...sort've. Some of them. For awhile.
But there were lots of .44 Special revolvers out there, many of which were nowhere near as well-built as the Smith and Wesson. So Keith saw that there was a need for a new cartridge--the .44 Magnum--to allow designs that were strong enough to take advantage of the fact.
Problem: When he went to Remington, they said that they would make the ammunition, if guns were manufactured for the cartridge. When he went to S&W, they said they'd be happy to start making the guns, if somebody would produce factory .44 Magnum ammo. Neither side was willing to start moving before the other...so Elmer lied to both. Remington designed and produced the ammunition, and Smith started producing the guns.
Somewhere along the way, Bill Ruger of Sturm, Ruger got a hold of a of fired Remington .44 cases recovered from scrap. He knew that Smith was simply taking their .44 Special and chambering it in .44 Magnum, so he decided to produce a variant of the Blackhawk single-action in .44 Mag. A contact inside Remington slipped Bill a bag of loaded ammo. When he tested it, he found that the original Blackhawk single-action wasn't strong enough to handle the .44 Magnum, so he redesigned the gun into the "Flat-top" version specifically to handle the .44 Magnum.
The Smith and Wesson 29/629 isn't a weak design. It is, in fact, absurdly strong.
And to be frank, if you don't exceed the original design specs of the .44 Magnum by too much--a 240-grain bullet at 1200 fps--well, you
and your kids will break before the gun does.
If you want to play around much faster than that, or shoot massive 300-grain bullets all the time, get a Ruger. But to be frank, if what you want is a .454 or a .460, buy one of those instead of trying to make the .44 into one.
The Blackhawk, being a single-action, is a bit tougher than the N-framed S&W .44 Magnums.
Super Redhawks aren't really equivalent to the Smith and Wesson N-frame. The SRH is really aimed at things like the .454 Casull, and occupies a space between the S&W N-frame and X-Frame. That said, custom builders have rechambered SRHs into some pretty beastly cartridges.
Plain Redhawks don't have a whole lot to do with the Super Redhawk. In fact, there are very few interchangeable parts between the two. It's still absurdly strong, however, with a triple-lock cylinder and a no-sideplate frame. Some gunsmiths have chambered Redhawks into cartridges as strong as .500 Linebaugh. Unfortunately, the single-spring design that gives it a smooth DA pull, also results in a 7-pound single-action pull--a hell of a long way off from the 29/629's excellent trigger.
I have a nice 29-2 but I bought a Redhawk for the heavier loads. The extra weight is a + on recoil.
