S&W Model 1905, 4th Change Hand Ejector in .32-20

One gun that I've wanted for a long time has been a Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector in .32-20 (.32 WCF).

Winchester introduced the .32 WCF in 1882 for its Model 1873 lever action rifle. It was intended for use on game up to the size of deer, although it would be considered very marginal on deer by current standards. About five years later, Colt began chambering their revolvers in the round.

The .32 WCF survived the transition to smokeless powder. Aside from their single actions, Colt also chambered it in the Army Special and Official Police, and S&W added it to the Hand Ejector K-Frames.

From the time of its introduction up until around World War 2 and even past that, the .32-20 was popular for small game, controlling varmints on ranches and farms, and even self defense. Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania Game Commission stupidly barred the use of centerfire guns for small game around 15 years ago so my use of this gun will be mostly be for plinking and informal target shooting. It may also get carried on a friend's rural property where it would be useful for handling wild dogs or coyotes should we run across any.

Over the past few years I've seen a nice assortment of guns in .32-20 on Gunbroker but held off on buying one because once the Plandemic hit, ammo and even empty brass became unobtanium. That situation has recently started to get better but still isn't at the point where it was in early 2020.

I recently sold off a couple of guns that had been gathering dust for a few years and decided to put the money towards a .32-20 revolver. It so happens that my local gun monger who I've consigned guns with had one listed on Gunbroker. I won the auction yesterday and this morning I picked it up.

For a gun that's a century old it's in pretty good shape. The sideplate has some minor pitting and looks like it was lightly sanded at some point to remove rust, and then reblued, and has turned a plum brown (this was disclosed in the auction). The crane has also turned plum brown. All the screws turned freely and none are boogered up, which is nice.

There was a suitable Pachmayr grip adapter in my stash, which makes the skinny service stocks much more pleasant to hold and makes the gun more controllable in rapid fire. Recoil should be very mild in this gun so I'm not concerned with the hump on the frame from hurting the web of my hand.

I removed the sideplate and it was pretty clean inside. I just blasted it out with Remoil and then compressed air, then lubed the contact points with some FP-10 and closed it back up. The right grip has quite a bit of wear so I think this gun was carried a lot. Or maybe a prior owner shot it so much he wore the right grip panel down. Anyway, one of the grips has the gun's serial number penciled on the inner surface.

The bore and charge holes had some crud in them and there's a little bit of very minor pitting in the bore, also as described in the auction. Nothing that should prevent it from shooting well, though.

The timing and lockup are excellent and there's no end shake to speak of.

A 500 count box of Starline brass should arrive today while a set of Lee dies plus a factory crimp die should come tomorrow, so I plan to load up some ammo next week so I can shoot it next weekend.

I am most definitely looking forward to shooting it.