Dan Wesson SuperMag - .375 SM

evening, all. was sitting at my bench today, as my wife and son were taking a nap, kinda maulling over what to do next. i've got a little down time now before jumping back into the rifle projects and needed something. was casually looking over my handgun corner of the bench and my gaze fell upon my redding .375 supermag dies at the very bottom of my dies stack. i hadn't thought about this cartridge for years. revolver, either, for that matter. i turned to the safe and snatched it out. it is a beautiful handgun ...

i bought the thing at a fall gun show back in 2003. $500 got me the revolver, 2 spare barrels, the redding custom die set, a redding trim die for making cases from the .375 win, an expander die and a huge supply of fired and virgin ihmsa brass. loaded some initial test loads using hornady's 220 gr. jacketed fp and fell in love. light recoil. accurate. very comfortable in the hand. just a well put together revolver. i'd topped it with a weaver classic 2.5-8x28mm.

components i chose to use were cci200's, h110 and a cast 250 gr. lfngc from beartooth bullets. everything was moving along perfectly until pressures started to rise. then cases started sticking. upon inspection, to varying degrees of severity, each of the 6 chambers had visible machining rings that would seaze the case once it expanded under firing. in efforts to find my safe max load for the cartridge, i continued the development, tolerating the sticky cases. i settled on a very accurate load using 20.5 grs. of h110 that averaged just over 1420 fps. then i went to work, identifying which chambers were the worst of the group. i was able to identify 3 that i simply could not use with the max load with out a dowl and tapping out the case. just using the other 3, light pressure's all that was needed for extraction.

i thought about selling. couldn't. i thought about downloading. wouldn't. i fiddled with it very little over the next 3 years.

late in 2006, i made a call to dan wesson. being out of production for sometime, my expectation was very low. but the gentleman i talked to insisted on seeing the gun. i sent it in with a full box of ammo, as they no longer worked with the cartridge and had no means of making their own.

over the next several weeks, i'd get e-mails reporting their progress. one e-mail requested more ammo be sent. another e-mail said they'd found several parts to my revolver no longer made and started switching things out. what returned to me in late february, 2007 was my revolver with a new cylinder, barrel and a brand new set of dw walnut grips (free for my trouble). visually, a brand new revolver :





there were definitely improvements, but still extraction wasn't ideal. i put the gun away.

and then today, i see the dies. hold the revolver and feel a little bad for letting it sit for so long. so, i'm going to download the thing. i still have my initial load development notes. from that information, i loaded up 15 rounds of 19.0 grs. of h110. i have no memory of where the sticking started so will basically have to start over. but this 19.0 gr. load should be very mundane.

just for comparison sake, here's the round put together today with my .44 remmag handload on the left. my .454 casull handload on the right. it is one tall bugger :



i've never been a fan of downloaded cartridge but for the sake of being able to shoot full cylinders in this revolver with reliable extraction, i'll make an exception.

more to come.

k

 

 

based on this, i figured i'd be getting a revolver back, with improvements.  but not perfect.  that's exactly what i got.  and honestly, i probably got back more then what i ever expected when i made my initial call.  i'd have never guessed they'd have a cylinder and barrels for this thing.  actually, the fella at dw was kinda shocked by discovery, too.

they actually sent back the barrel they replaced, so i have 4 barrels for this thing.  the issue is consistent with whichever i fit.

you're right in that this is entirely a pressure issue.  but it isn't necessarily a max load level of pressure that initially alerted us to the problem.  from their e-mail, i know d w saw something in the cylinder that they did not like.  that they could not polish out.  and they were trying everything they could to lower the working pressures, hoping that a looser tolerance barrel would help.  it might have.  if they'd have had the dies and components, i've no doubt they'd have simply downloaded the round to a point where extraction was reliable and told me that's the load i should be using.  a process i'm starting now.  only took me the better part of 8 years to make the decision to do so.

we'll see where this goes.

k