JRWnTN said:
I've read articles that claim the 125gr .357 Magnum loads are harder on the K-frame revolvers that factory loads using heavier bullets. Is there any difference?
Not sure quite what you're asking here, but if you want to know if 125-grain .357 Magnum factory loads are harder on K-frame S&Ws chambered in .357 Magnum, than, arguendo, 158-grain .357 Magnum factory loads, if you "do the numbers," ME is derived by a math formula which favors velocity (since it is squared) over mass (the projectile's actual weight)… and that may be deceiving.
For my part, the only K-frame I've ever admired… and this is more a fact of my relative late introduction to S&W wheelguns (we were first and foremost a Colt family)… was the 3-inch Model 65. I'm an L-frame kinda guy, and a proud possessor for the past 22 years of a 6-inch L-frame through which I've fired some of the most horrendous factory loads, the
ne plus ultra of which would be the IMI (Samson) 170-grain SJHP whick positively destroys bowling pins to the extent that I've been told to not use those for pin matches by two different Match Directors.
That Model 686 has stood up to everything I've fed it very most admirably, even those IMI loads, two cylinders of which shot the L-frame right out of it's brand-new Hogue Monogrips (causing Aaron Hogue to re-engineer the mounting "saddle") and sheered the (brand-new) Jarvis underlug's two mounting screws, causing Mr. Jarvis to go to a heavier screw!
(That was quite an afternoon... six rounds, a fast reload, another six rounds, and there I was, my lower lip quivering like a kid who'd just lost the top of his chocolate fudge ice cream cone in the sand, the L-frame pivoted out of the Monogips and the underlug hanging off the end of the barrel.)
I've never quite seen the requirement for a seven-shot revolver, although Taurus seems to have been in some sort of bragging rights capacity competition with S&W on this issue, and a little-known recent Val Kilmer/Vincent D'Onferio flick made the seven rounds a subtle plot point that not one viewer in a thousand would have picked up on… I may have been one of three in the universe since very few movie goers ever even saw
The Salton Sea.