Originally Posted by
JEC
Hey Everyone, still trying to get caught up from SHOT but I wanted to answer a few of the questions we had at the booth and some of the stuff I've seen asked here and elsewhere. Fortunately, this group is a little (ok a lot) more educated on J-Frames and their applications. To say that the response was overwhelming at SHOT is an understatement. Our center display in the booth with the 4 models was covered up most of the time 3 to 4 deep. Thankfully we had Darryl Bolke and Bryan Eastridge there to help me the whole first day and a lot of the time the rest of the days to help show the guns off to the lines of people. The three of us could recite the spec list in our sleep I'm sure.
The question I have seen the most is why no 327 Federal Magnum. Easy answer is the aluminum frame will not handle it. Same goes for the 9mm. We would have to go with a steel frame or the more expensive Scandium frame to do those chamberings. Not to say we won't do them later, but for this initial launch we wanted to stay at a more affordable price and lighter weight.
Some asked about moon clips and why we didn't incorporate it on the UC guns. First, myself and the SME's I talked to aren't fans of them for various reasons. Secondly, I was trying to fit this in at a particular price point and would not compromise on the sights, trigger, and grips. The math on adding the moon clips just didn't work.
What about the lack of 32 H&R Magnum ammo is another question I have seen. We notified several ammo companies months ago that we were about to put a large qty of 32 H&R's into the market. The smaller boutique companies can move quicker with guys like Ted at Lost River developing a load very quickly. A couple of other companies are working on adding more 32 H&R loads and in case you haven't seen it, Double Tap is now offering a 32 H&R snake shot load. I talked at length with Federal ammo's product manager and one of the silver linings to the 30 Super Carry is that their ability to switch that tooling over to 32 H&R Magnum and 327 Federal is fairly easy. A lot of development went into 32 caliber projectiles because of 30SC and what they learned translates well to the 32 H&R Magnum. I would anticipate some new offerings coming out later this year. I remember people having the same concerns about ammo when we launched the Ruger Flattop 44 Specials in 2009 and the Ruger Single Seven 327 Fed Mags in 2014. Both ended up being extremely big sellers for us despite limited ammo options and availability and remain popular today.
The frames and barrel sleeves are hard anodized aluminum. We asked S&W about DLC on those parts, but they advised that it doesn't work on aluminum. On the "black" 432 & 442 models the cylinders are carbon steel with a bead blasted black oxide finish. The 632 & 642 cylinders are just bead blasted stainless steel.
Currently, the VZ UC grip is exclusive to these guns. I had a good talk with VZ and we are looking into the ability to offer that grip as an aftermarket option later.,
I said it here before, but these will start to ship end of February to dealers. These are not a limited edition and are not already sold out. We plan on running them for as long as people are buying them and/or S&W will make them. S&W was extremely happy with our launch and are excited about the future of these models. They have been very good to work with on this project and like I alluded to before, we have lots of more things in the works.
Some people have said they called their dealer and the dealer said they are allocated so they can't order them. That's simply not the case. We (as well as all distributors) allocate new, or hard to get items so that our sales team can spread them around to more dealers. If we didn't allocate them, a small handful of big dealers could potentially buy them all up and then sell them at inflated prices online, etc. One thing to remember though, we have 55 in house sales reps that call on almost 20,000 active FFL customers. Our reps don't just sit back waiting for customers to call in orders. They are actively calling their customers selling to them. We had 22 reps at SHOT and they all told me all their dealers who came by and saw the guns wanted to order them. If you decide you want to order one, please get with your FFL dealer (we have a Dealer Finder on our website if you need assistance) and have them get with their sales rep. We will do our best to get these orders filled as fast as we can.
The interest in the 32 H&R so far has out weighed the 38 Special by a pretty large margin. My email inbox was flooded with consumer emails about these and 70% were asking about the 32. For those that think these models only appeal to a small niche, I think the response we had argues against that.
I got asked a lot if other chamberings, barrel lengths, etc. are being considered. All I can say is that I have a notebook on my desk that has about every configuration you can think of written out. Obviously some make sense and others would be way down in the weeds. I wanted this first one to appeal to the masses and be well received so that we can do some of the more niche stuff later. I understand you will never make everyone happy, but we try to do projects that speak to the most people we can. We had a lot of serious J-Frame SME's visit the booth and the response from them was all very positive and ended with I want one or in most cases I want multiples.
I'm sure I have missed a few other questions, but feel free to post them here and I'll do my best to get you an answer. We are going to do a follow up video too answering questions, but I wanted to get them out here first.
Thank you for your patience while I was out last week.
Jason
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