Monday, November 21, 2011

J-Frame!

Back in the Ancient Blogosphere days of 6 months ago or so, there was a massive re-hashing of the old "S&W J-Frames are great first guns for women!!" fallacy and a general discussion of the ups and downs of the classic Snubby.

Generally I agree, they're full powered center-fire feather-weight guns with low capacities and are slow to reload when compared to a modern auto.  They're thicker too, since they have the "revolver" thing going, and are almost always higher priced than their comparable auto brethren.  Combine that with the fact that I'm really not a big revolver guy, there never really was any reason for me to get one.

So... I ordered one anyways.  Figured it would make a good B.A.G. Day gun, and I wanted to try doing business with a newer local(ish) dealer.  Well... eight months later the stupid gun finally showed up, and I'm probably not dealing with him again.  Something this simple shouldn't have taken so long...

Yup.  A basic S&W 442.  Same thing I've looked at longingly in the cases at the big-box dealers the entire time I was waiting for mine.  Lesson learned about said dealer... On the upside, I paid for the silly thing so long ago it almost feels like I got a gun for free!

Anywho... I do love how light the little thing is (15oz. empty) and the shape of the frame lets me really choke my grip up and get a pretty low bore-over-grip height.  I'm hoping that will let me negate some of the jump inherent with hot loads in the little thing.  We'll see how that works out on Thursday when I duck out behind the barn at Grandpa's to pop a few rounds of and see if it actually works.

The original plan was to attempt to "master the snubby" over the summer, but it just means I'll get plenty of dry-fire practice and hopefully get my reloads down while combating cabin fever up here in the frozen north.  Also it'll give me a chance to get an Apex spring kit and drop that in (the stupid little thing feels so good in my hand that it's a shame the trigger is so "meh.")

Now if only Smith hadn't drilled a stupid hole in the side of the thing.........