Les Jones

Guns > Gun Porn: Smith &Wesson N Frame Snubbies

I'm starting to get an itch for a large-frame, snub-nosed revolver. I'm thinking about an L frame*, seven-shot Smith &Wesson 686P .357 magnum, but these N frame, snub-nose S&Ws sure are nice.

The one below is an eight-shot S&W Performance Center 627 with Spegel grips. This example from SmithNut has two cylinders, one unfluted and one fluted. If you want one of these you'll have to look on the used market. S&W still makes an eight-shot Performance Center 627, but it's only offered with a 5" barrel.

* In increasing order of size, Smith &Wesson has the J, K, L, N and X frames. The smaller I frame isn't made any more. The J frame is mostly used for snub-nosed backup guns. The K is medium, the L is slightly bigger, and the N used to be the biggest and baddest. Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum was an N frame.

The X frame is the new oversized frame S&W developed to shoot the .500 S&W magnum cartridge. Popular Mechanics and Shooting Times also have good S&W 500 articles. Read the PM article for technical details, and the others for a practical perspective.

P.S. Smith &Wesson recently re-designed their Web site. It now shows suggested retail prices, and you can link directly to individual guns. That's the good news. The bad news is they switched from Cold Fusion to PHP and changed their file extensions, so all of my old S&W links are fubared.