It's not the easiest revolver in the world to shoot {the 8 3/8" 29 comes close to that) but it's a nice friendly .44 Special level shooter none-the-less. I went looking for this a few years ago and never did get as lucky as Dhart in that every one I check out was loose to one degree or another. This one had only the first symptoms of failure to carry up so I sent it to S&W for retiming and reblueing. Somebody had buggered with the front of the trigger and put it out of spec so, they replaced it with a MIM part. (another reason to treat the older 29s gently). It now has a very nice single and double action trigger and is well timed. I have restricted my loads to a maximum of 1,000 fps and do most of my pleasure shooting at original .44 special levels.
The grips in the picture are a set of Eagles that a friend had. He filled the grain and applied finish making them look like the Eagle Grips advertising pictures. They lasted a while before cracking out at the screw escutcheon. Now the revolver wears some late- 29-2 fruitwood targets. These are the sort that the gun experts deplored so much before they abandoned ship and went to semi-autos. For me, they are very well suited for double and single action and the wide aspect is much less painful than the narrow-topped variation left to us by the experts.
The loads I shot today were 240 gr rnfp of the Cowboy variety over 4 grains of bullseye. They have now narrowed the lube groove on these bullets but they work well enough at the circa 740 fps that charge usually gets with similar weight bullets. Very gentle load that clocks between 40 and 60 feet per second faster than the factory 246 RNs I have chronographed over the years.
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