The .45 ACP Snub-nosed Revolver

Glen

Moderator
Staff member
The .45 ACP Snub-nosed Revolver

Large-frame revolvers chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge were born of wartime expediency. When WWI ended, the eventual development of .45 ACP belly guns was inevitable when these mil-surp guns hit the market. Over the years, many famous names have been associated with the .45 ACP belly-gun concept (Fitz, Jovino, Bowen, etc.). This report summarizes what I have learned from one such very special .45 ACP snubbie.

Back in the ‘70s, Dave Ewer ran a business called Spokhandguns in which he built custom handguns for competition, hunting, law enforcement, etc. Most of these guns were built for customers, but a few he kept for himself. Dave and I became good friends in the ‘90s, and when he died in 2017 I bought this particular revolver from his wife.

This gun started off life as a Model 58, a fixed sight .41 Magnum (which were cheap and readily available in the 1970s). Dave mounted a 1917 .45 ACP cylinder to the frame, then fit a .45 bull barrel to the frame, and shortened the ejector rod. The barrel was chopped off at 3 1/8”, crowned, and slab-sided. He then milled the barrel and pinned in a new low profile front sight blade. The sights were regulated for Federal Gold Medal Match ammo (185 SWC) because Dave was shooting a lot of competition in those days and always had this ammo on hand. He round-butted the gripframe, and had the barrel engraved. He then bead-blasted the gun and hard-chromed it. Last, he modified the factory grips and re-cut the checkering.

Federal primers are soft, which allowed Dave to make the DA on this gun truly amazing -- hammer force was reduced to 32 ounces, the bare minimum to ignite Federal primers reliably (the mainspring had been weakened and the trigger return spring shortened considerably). I assume that this gun was 100% reliable with Dave’s ammo, but when I checked it with my handloads using Winchester primers it only went bang 80% of the time, and with CCI primers (and their harder primer cups) only 50%. This would not do. I replaced the springs with others from another action job Dave had done (less extreme). Hammer force is now above 40 ounces, is sufficient for all brands of primers, and is 100% reliable across the board.

The cylinder gap is .004”, and the barrel is 3.16” long. Since the distance from the breech face to the front of cylinder is 1.60”, this amounts to a 4 ¾” vented barrel. Not surprisingly, velocities run similar to 4” and 5” 1911s (i.e. 230s at 800-850, 200s at 900-950, and 180s at 1000-1050).

The throats on the 1917 cylinder run .455”-.456”, which is typical for these guns.

Ammunition requirements

As a result of these features, there are certain requirements for the ammunition for optimum performance, so let’s address them – powder selection, crimp, bullet weight, bullet profile, bullet diameter, bullet hardness, etc.

Powder selection is easy – powders slower than Unique (e.g. HS-6, AA #7, etc.) tended to be problematic, both in terms of accuracy and in terms of unburnt powder grains left behind (which tended to get stuck behind the extractor star and tie up the gun). Personally, I tend to gravitate towards Bullseye, Unique, 231, and PB in the .45 ACP. Other powders work just fine, but these powders are proven to be reliable in the .45 ACP.

Since this gun uses full-moon clips to establish headspace, use of a light roll crimp (if the bullet has a crimp groove) was used to secure the bullets and streamline the round’s profile for smooth loading of the moon-clipped ammo into the cylinder. If there was no crimp groove, a light taper crimp (.001”) was used.

Cast Bullets

Accuracy with soft (BHN about 8) .452” cast bullets was terrible, with lots of keyholes. Fat throats don’t mix well with soft, skinny bullets.

Accuracy with harder (BHN about 12) .452” cast bullets was acceptable, but not good. It was a little better with .453” cast bullets.

Accuracy with hard (BHN 12) cast bullets sized .454” was good.

Cast bullets with SWC profiles shot ok, but loading the full-moon clips into the cylinder required quite a bit of finagling, so if one is trying to practice/refine reloads, the benefit of a built in speed-loader was lost. TC and RN ogives feed MUCH better.

Bullet weight

225-235 grain (e.g. 452374 RN, Lee 230 TC and HP, NOE 235 gr HP, etc.) fed well, but shot 3-4” above point of aim at 50 feet. Again, .454” bullets grouped better than .452” bullets. (4.9 grains of Bullseye, about 800 fps).

210 grain cast HPs (452374 RN-HP) fed well, but needed to be .454” to group well, and shot 1-2” above point of aim at 50 feet. (5.2 gr Bullseye, about 900 fps).

185-200 grain cast HPs grouped well and shot to the fixed sights. 185 grain cast HPs based on SWC designs (e.g. H&G #68 and 452460) shot well, but full-moon clips so loaded were finicky to feed into the cylinder, and required focused attention and lots of fine motor-skill fiddling to get everything aligned and inserted. No bueno.

What worked

The Lee 200 RN-FP fed and grouped pretty well when sized .453” and roll-crimped in the crimp groove, but sometimes there was a minor hiccup in the last couple thousandths of chambering as the bullet noses encountered the throats (yes, a .453” nose is smaller than a .455” throat, but full-moon clips can restrict degrees of freedom when chambering; this can vary with individual brass and moon-clips). This led the loaded cylinder to bind when closed (if sized .452” this issue went away, but the ammo didn’t group as well).

For practice/plinking I had Mountain Molds make me a similar 200 grain RN-FP (slightly smaller meplat), with .455” driving bands, and .452”ogive just in front of the crimp groove. Sized .454”, this bullet feeds and shoots superbly, and proved capable of taking down the basketball-sized rams at 100 meters at the Whittington Center out of this 3” belly gun. (5.9 grains of Bullseye, about 900 fps).

The Lyman Devastator HP (#452374 HP) might be ideally suited to this gun – the RN ogive allows the loaded full-moon clips to glide easily into place, the gaping HP cavity ensures positive expansion, and the 178 grain weight means it should shoot to the sights. My Lyman Devastator HP mould drops bullets that run over-sized and 178 grains, making them viable candidates for this gun. I sIzed them .454” and loaded them over 6.0 grains of Bullseye (estimated velocity 1025 fps). These loads grouped OK (not great) and shot to point of aim. Groups would probably tighten up if I could fatten up this bullet a bit.

Jacketed bullets

The TC ogive of many of today’s JHPs for the .45 ACP are well-suited to this application as well. The 200 XTP fed very well, shot to point of aim, and grouped well. The test load was 5.9 grains of HP-38 for about 900 fps. Hornady says this one will expand down to about 700 fps.

I would have liked to try out the 200 grain Speer Gold Dot and similar 200 grain JHP from Sierra, but none were available due to pandemic-choked supply chains. My guess is these bullets would be right at home in this gun.

The various 185 JHPs (GD, XTP, JHC, Nosler) all fed very well and shot to the sights. The 185s in general didn’t group as well as the 200 XTP (shorter bearing surface in the over-sized .455” throats?). The 185 TC profile is well-suited to feed, and these bullets can be pushed fast enough to expand beautifully, it’s just that accuracy from these .455” throats is less than optimal with these short stumpy bullets. (test load 5.9 grains HP-38, about 900 fps).

This .45 ACP snubbie is a great little belly gun. I would love to see S&W revisit this concept with a 3” RB Model 625 (or 25). If such a gun was blessed with .452” (or .453”) throats, it could be a very versatile, accurate, and useful carry gun. Maybe if one of the distributors was to place an order…

Thank you Dave. I miss ya, buddy…

45 ACP snubbie thumb.jpg