That is a nice looking gun very business like and tasteful at the same time
Hello Shootall
The revolver shown above was made in The late
1980's mid 1990's time span when S&W was owned by The Brit's Leir-Sigler. It was named
the Model 16-4 and chambered in .
32 H&R Magnum. According to The Stats they Only made
8800 of them in 4"-6" and 8-3/8" Barrels before discontinuing them in
1993 time span. Mine was made
the first year for them being
1989. You can fire the following Calibers in this revolver being .
32 ACP, .32 S&W, .32 S&W Long & .32 H&R Magnum The Cartridge was designed for
H&R Revolvers of slightly weaker design so the velocity of it was heavily
over shadowed by the classic .38 Special at an average of
1100 FPS so it never really caught on as
a Hot new Caliber widely accepted by her shooting Public. Another Factor that Killed the Cartridge was that The H&R Company
went Bankrupt shortly after
the Cartridge was released. Federal came out with it and it was not manufactured by any other ammo companies so rounds for it can be a challenge to Locate
I always Liked
any .32 Caliber rounds in handguns so it was a natural for me to Buy this revolver. The only way to see
the true Potential of the .32 H&R Magnum is to hand load for it which I did from the start buying Starline brass to use in it. I experimented with the round to the Point of
Blowing the small magnum Pistol primers. I then switched to
Small rifle primers and over came that issue to take this round to new levels of velocity. I Chronoed a load using
Hornady's XTP 85 Grain bullet at 1485 FPS But Ran out of
Case room for more Powder so I had to quit my Experimenting.
Prior to this revolver, S&W used to make
the Model 16 that got it's Model number
Post-1957. It was called
The K-32 Masterpiece and they were used to shoot Bullseye, being Chambered in
.32 S&W Long Caliber. Prior to 1957 They were simply called The Pre-16's as they did not have model numbers stamped into the crane area. Shown below is an early Pre-16 that shipped in
1951. It has an early Post-War Barrel that is of Thin design and later S&W changed the Barrels to a wider design to make all of The Masterpiece series
weigh the same including the
K-22, K-32 & K-38. The Pre-16 is The Rarest of all of the Masterpiece series being made from
1939 a Pre-War Model to
1974 Being a Model 16-3 series. In total they made the
K-32's 35 Years and only 3,630 of them were ever produced, so they are very hard to find out there.
I was very Lucky to find mine shown and it took me almost
two years to get it. A friend of mine had it that I met on The Internet. He did not shoot it anymore, But did not want to Part with it. He Teased me with it almost two Full years till he
felt confident I would not sell Nor Trade it once we made a deal, I swapped him Two revolvers for the one shown. At the time I had no idea his was
a pre-16 with a Narrow barrel. It is a Five screw configuration with narrow Barrel and Fish Hook Speed Hammer. It is very accurate and real touchy of what it likes to shoot Load wise.
A couple of Years ago
Federal released a Newer style
.32 magnum called The .327 magnum. This New Cartridge is close in Comparison to The .38 Special-.357 Magnum. They did the same
Case Length change with the .
32 H&R Magnum that was done to The .357 magnum cases by
adding an extra 1/8" Length to The existing .32 H&R Magnum round and named it The Federal .327 Magnum. This New round is a lot Hotter than the Older .32 H&R Magnum as Velocities average
1400 compared to the .32 H&R being
1000 FPS on average.
The Hunting Load I decided to use is a Carbon copy of one that was ran in an
Older Shooting Times magazine. The Recipe for it was
10.2 Grains of AA-7 Powder under a 90 Grain Sierra Hollow Point Sports Master Bullet and a CCI-550 Magnum small Pistol Primer. The Load proved to be
One hole Ragged results at the 20 Yard line, so that was why I chose it. The velocity was shown to be
1575 FPS out of a 6" Pressure barrel, so I saw no need to Chrono The Load prior to Hunting with it. I was very Impressed with the flat shooting and high speed velocity of this Cartridge and am doing
everything I can to get the word out on Just how Potent it really is compared to The Older .32 H&R Magnum. The velocities one can achieve from this Load
surpass those for the Old Classic .357 Magnum....
After I had The
Hamilton Bowen Conversion done making this revolver a
.327 Magnum, I had some
concern of how it would shoot and group all the different rounds it used to Fire prior to it's Modification. I Loaded up some
.32 S&W Long Cartridges along with some
.32 H&R Magnum Cartridges and headed for The Range. I was soon delighted to see that this revolver now appears
to group far tighter shooting both of the Previous calibers on target. one reason for this is that Bowen
match's the cylinder throats in his process of Modification making them
all equal. That seemed to make this revolver
print much tighter groups than it did when it came from the factory. It is now
very versatile shooting
.32 ACP, .32 S&W, .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum and the new Federal .327 Magnum Rounds...Hammerdown
