357/44 S&W N-Frame Conversion
 

Taking pics of stuff for GB & eBay; thought I'd post this one...

S&W Mod 27-2 .357 Magnum nickle plated revolver; 8 3/8" barrel...with a spare .357/.44 Magnum cylinder & 6" barrel...

I used to wildcat back in the 70's & 80's; this was one that I converted to fire a bottlenecked .357/.44 Magnum cartridge. I had a .357 Automag at the time, and it came with the reloading dies. One day, while reloading for my .44 magnum Ruger Blackhawk, I ran a .44 magnum case through the .357 Automag dies. Looked pretty awesome... :cool:

I knew that S&W made an N-frame .357 (same frame/cylinder as their .44 magnum/think Dirty Harry), and a friend of a friend just happened to be selling a cased nickled mod 27...

I was able to pick up a spare mod 27 nickle .357 cylinder, barrel, and sideplate, so I was in business!

I made up two finished .357/.44 magnum cartridges and shipped them off to Clymer Tools to make a finishing chambering reamer. Turned out pretty good. I did a couple of these conversions, and they do make a nice flat shooting .357 round.

Some pics of the set...

This is not the 357/44 Bain & Davis cartridge. That one uses a much longer shoulder and a shorter neck. The B&D was supposedly made with the longer tapered shoulder because of cylinder rotating problems (it would allegedly back out of the chamber with a sharp shoulder) but neither I nor my friends have had any "backing out" problems, even with hot magnum loads.

I've been using relatively mild loads with my conversion...

158gr JSP and 158gr XTP's [JHP], both with 13.0grs Blue Dot...