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| Smith and Wesson Model 19 |
So it's been awhile since the last firearm was posted, mainly because I can only do modeling on my days off, but anyhoo, here's a new gun.
The Smith and Wesson Model 19 is a K-frame, six shot revolver in .38 Special or .357 Mag.
All firearms are the product of someone having one thing, and then upgrading it. For this fancy six-shot revolver, police agencies needed a more powerful round than their .38 Special cartridges. So as with any ammunition, a guy played with some of the measurements and ended up with a round with a little more "Oomph". The .357 (Three Fifty-seven) Magnum round was essentially the same as the .38 Special round except for the case which was .125 inches longer, that doesn't sound like much but that meant more powder, and more powder pushes the lead little farther and harder.
With this new round, it was necessary to have a gun that could accommodate it, since it was mainly going to be used by the police, they wanted the design to be a "peace officer's dream" sidearm, it would have a four inch heavy barrel K-frame with a shrouded barrel like most N-Frame revolvers (helps with the recoil, revolver barrels like to move up after firing since all its control was at the back of the gun, compared to most semi-autos where the control is more centered).
Smith and Wesson have their own labels for the size of revolver frames they make, the smallest would be "I-Frame" which were mainly .22 LR.
Onto the "J-Frame" which was just as small but had bigger calibers, "K" and "L-Frame" were generally medium sized revolvers.
"L-Frame" is large... yup...
"N-Frame" is larger (Think of Dirty Harry's S&W Model 29 which at the time of that movie was "the most powerful revolver" in the world).
Then there's the "X-Frame" for the modern Smith and Wesson Model 500, the now most powerful production revolver in the world, and I got to use one before Schwarzenegger so I may be a little biased on how great it is.
There's also the "Z-Frame" for their fancy S&W Governor, a revolver that eats .45 Colt, .45 ACP, and .410 shotgun shells. Much like the Taurus Judge.
-Mike