The Heavy Magnum DA Revolver Market From an Engineering and Marketing Standpoint, or How Smith & Wesson Could Double Their Market Share With a $25,000 Tooling Investment
By John Ross

Copyright 2007 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

I'm a revolver guy. I hate loading magazines. I hate bending over to pick up fired brass. I hate the complexity of malfunction drills for semiautos. I hate the inherent inaccuracy of a firearm whose sights and whose barrel are not rigidly joined. And I hate that the few truly powerful auto pistols that have ever been brought to market have all had some combination of these shortcomings: Unreliable, prone to breakage, hideously ugly, ridiculously ungainly, or grossly overweight.

Specifically, I'm a Double Action revolver guy. I like being able to swing out the cylinder and extract all the fired cases at once, instead of poking them out one at a time, and I like being able to pull the trigger and have the gun fire without my cocking the hammer first. Most of all, I like the way a double action revolver fits my hand, unlike the awkward (to me) feel of a single action cowboy revolver.

So I'm a double action revolver guy. And it's pretty hard to be a double action revolver guy without coming to the conclusion that the best double action revolvers are almost always made by Smith & Wesson. Smith & Wessons have the best triggers, the best fit and finish, the best chamber/throat/bore dimensions and hence the best accuracy, the best balance, the best looks, and the best overall feel. You may find an occasional revolver that meets or may even exceed S&W's overall excellence, like a French Manurhin model 73, but only at several times the S&W's price. Over the years I've bought more S&W double action (DA) revolvers than all other handgun makes and types put together, and my loyalty has been repaid with interest during that time. Starting when I was a teenager, S&W has fixed or rebuilt every gun that I've worn out from constant use, with never a repair charge. S&W is my favorite arms maker, bar none.

Occasionally I'll handle a revolver that will do something that a Smith & Wesson won't, and I'll wish S&W had made that gun, for then the quality would be better. These are the times that I find myself daydreaming about what I would do if I were in a position of authority at S&W, and what untapped (by S&W) segments of the DA revolver market I might have the Company enter. Not long ago, I had an epiphany: Smith & Wesson could demolish the competition in the areas it currently ignores with almost no expenditure for engineering and with a minuscule expenditure for one new piece of tooling.

I decided to prepare my thesis as if I were doing a paper for a professor at the Harvard Business School, and present it to the right people at S&W at the SHOT show in Las Vegas Feb. 11-16. After finishing this eight-page position paper, I realized that harried business executives do not like to read eight-page papers, so I knocked it down to a page and a half of bullet points.

Harried executives do not like to read eight-page papers on guns, but gun guys on Internet discussion boards LOVE facts and details, the more the better. So I'm posting my piece in its entirety here on my website, at the time I leave for the SHOT show. If you're a heavy magnum DA revolver guy, and agree I've got a good plan of action, email both me and S&W. Contact info for both of us is at the end of this piece.

So here's my analysis of the current situation in the heavy magnum DA revolver market, and how S&W should address this opportunity:

Overview:

Since Smith & Wesson introduced the .44 Magnum in 1956, shooters have demanded powerful revolvers suitable for handgun hunting and recreation. The reality is that while the .44 Magnum looks very powerful when compared to all pre-1956 handgun cartridges, it is not particularly impressive when one thinks in rifle terms. A serious hunter’s most powerful rifle is likely to be much more powerful than a .44 Magnum carbine, and remember that a .44 carbine will give some 200-300 FPS more velocity than the same round fired in a revolver.

These shooters discovered that with practice they could tolerate more handgun recoil than they had previously thought. Demand for powerful revolvers increased, and CNC machining centers made it cost-effective for factories to tool up for new designs. The result has been both a growth in the full-custom gunsmithing trade, and a wider variety of factory-made choices for the magnum revolver shooter who wants a reasonably priced gun in a powerful (.44 Magnum or greater) caliber.

Many of these powerful calibers, both factory and custom, are chambered in Single Action revolvers. This paper addresses concerns specific to Smith & Wesson, and since S&W does not make Single Action revolvers, some might consider a discussion of them irrelevant. However, the DA revolver has several important advantages over its SA cousin, even if the DA revolver is never fired double action, and these advantages are worth noting:

First, a DA revolver is much faster to empty and reload. This may not make much difference while actually hunting, but the vast majority of magnum revolver rounds are fired at ranges and while plinking. A swing-out cylinder and simultaneous extraction makes a huge difference in enjoyment during an extended shooting session.

Second, it is much easier and faster to determine if a DA revolver is loaded or not, and much harder for a lone round to be left in the gun unnoticed, compared to the Single Action.

Lastly, for many shooters the DA revolver feels better in the hand and is less painful to fire in heavy-recoiling calibers. In Single Action revolvers with their curved grip frames and wide-at-the-bottom, small-at-the-top grip shapes, some of the top custom chamberings with heavy loads will rotate the gun far enough to drive the hammer spur into the web of the shooting hand hard enough to draw blood on EVERY SHOT. (Even if the gun is only fired at game and never for plinking, it still needs to be sighted in, and even the hardiest of shooters don’t perform as well when actual injury accompanies every pull of the trigger.) Cartridges of similar power chambered in suitable DA guns don’t do this.

So let’s look at the guns that are out there now, who makes them, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what S&W can do to earn a bigger piece of this overall market.

The Players:

.44 Magnum DA Revolvers

Smith & Wesson Model 29, 629, and 329
Ruger Redhawk and Super Redhawk
Dan Wesson
Taurus
Colt Anaconda
Hamilton Bowen (custom pistolsmith) custom Redhawk

.445 SuperMag DA Revolvers

Dan Wesson

.45 Colt (Heavy Load Capable) DA Revolvers

Ruger Redhawk
Bowen custom Redhawk

.454 Casull DA Revolvers

Taurus Raging Bull
Ruger Super Redhawk (6 shot)
Bowen custom 5-shot Redhawk

.480 Ruger DA Revolvers

Ruger Super Redhawk (6 shot)
Taurus Raging Bull (5 shot)
Bowen custom 5-shot Redhawk

.475 Linebaugh DA Revolvers

Bowen custom 5-shot Redhawk

.50 AE DA Revolvers

Bowen custom 5-shot Redhawk

.500 Linebaugh DA Revolvers

Bowen custom 5-shot Redhawk

.500 S&W Magnum DA Revolvers

Smith & Wesson Model 500
Taurus 500

3/9/05 Update: S&W has added the 2300 FPS .460 cartridge to the lineup. It fits a niche not addressed by any of the proposals in this paper.

To read the rest of this article, download the PDF HERE

John Ross 02/06/2004

-Class Room Dates-
April 7th, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

April 21st, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

May 12th, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

-Range Sessions-
April 7th, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

April 21st, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

May 12th, 2007
(8:00 AM - 4:30 PM)

S&W .500 John Ross Special Edition.