Lipsey's S&W 432 Ultimate Carry J Frame long term shooting evaluation.

[Lost River]

I figured I would write this up as a thread that was separate from the other one about new 2024 Shot Show revolvers. This is going to be documenting shooting a fairly decent amount of rounds through the new 432 Ultimate Carry J Frame in .32 H&R.

I started a thread over on the 24 hour Campfire forum and for the sake of not re-writing everything, most of which is the same information, I am simply going to cut and paste that thread here for a couple of the posts at least:


Friends!

It has arrived!







After carrying my ever present and faithful companion, S&W 442 for almost 25 years, I picked up a new J Frame. The 442 is not going anywhere, and is still going to get carried and shot, but it has a new, easier to shoot younger brother.

My 442 definitely has some miles on it. I finally exceeded roughly 6K rounds through it, but I am not sure exactly what the round count is. Suffice to say, it is still rocking along, but looks a little worse for wear (kind of like its owner).






Last year I was asked if I wanted to be involved with a project with Lipsey's, who are the distributors who worked with S&W to bring out the Ultimate Carry J Frames. Naturally I said yes! Long story short, I developed a load that would shoot to right to the sights for the gun. As it ended up it also shot to the sights on a Ruger LCR that I had on hand for product development.

(For those who don't know, I have a small custom handgun ammo business.)

The ammo (a 100 grain poly coated full wadcutter) ran right at about 800 FPS for me, and 794-796 for the guys down in Louisiana when they did their product launch. Pretty darn consistent.

Anyways, the gun came out fantastic. Besides the truly excellent grips, the sights are the first thing that really stand out. The front sight just Pops. It immediately catches your eye.

I kind of had a hard time getting a pic of it with my phone, but it is exceptional.




The front and rear sight combo is such a night and day difference compared to what we have worked with for decades on your typical J Frame. It is just truly impressive. Wish they would have done this 30 years ago! The rear sight is a big U shaped trough and it is very easy to line up.

The grips, I was a little amused. They are almost identical in size to what I had built up with vet wrap and hockey tape on my old 442. Obviously these look a whole lot nicer!

Here is a pic of my old 442 grips and the new 432 grips. You can see how close they are. Needless to say, they are great.

Nice to get a set of factory grips out of the box that are done right. Plus they are relieved for speedloaders.






More to follow...

[Lost River]

So after working with and doing development on the .32 H&R, there was no question about which caliber I was going to get. The recoil characteristics were just night and day different. I carry 148 grain full wadcutters in my .38 Special 442 and have for years. They make the gun quite manageable and do great in terms of penetration.

What surprised me with the .32 H&R was just how light the recoil was. It was like shooting a .22 Magnum. Super light recoil, and as a bonus, you get 6 rounds instead of 5. Some have mentioned just carrying a rimfire, but it has been my experience that rimfire revolvers have always needed much heavier springs, which equates to much heavier trigger pulls to make them reliable. The .32 H&R eliminated that issue.

The real surprise for me was the penetration. I honestly did not expect much in that department. I figured it would go 14", maybe 16" I was way off base. Multiple people tested the 100 grain poly coated wadcutters. One report gave 22"s, and another came back at 24"s.

In fact, Jeff "Tank" Hoover, a writer for American Handgunner shot one of the .32 H&Rs with a bunch of different ammo, including the 100 grain poly coat wadcutters, and he got 24"s of penetration.

You can read about that in his article here:

https://americanhandgunner.com/our-e...ibextid=Zxz2cZ


It really has proven to be a "Goldilocks" load. Super light recoil, and good penetration. Pretty hard to beat.

I decided that since I got my new 432 BUG that I really needed to familiarize myself with it, and the only way to do that is shoot it, and shoot it a LOT. When I was working on the Job, I used to shoot my 442 quite frequently, all the way out to 50 yards. In fact I cannot tell you the number of people who told me that snubby revolvers were only good for "bad breath distance" and you can't hit anything with that past arms distance, etc, etc. Only to show them on the range how very wrong that thinking was.

So my idea is to shoot the heck out of this gun over the next year or so and post up the results here. See how it does accuracy wise and how the gun holds up. Not so much a torture test, but to get used to shooting a J Frame a good bit once again. Plus using one with such dang nice sights will be a very nice change of pace! Plus I will take my old 442 Centennial along with some 148 grain poly coated wadcutters and see how they do as well.

It will give me an opportunity to shoot the Old School along side the New School and see how it all shakes out.

[Totem Polar]

Looking forward to more updates as they happen, T, thanks for posting this!

You’ve pretty much just cemented which iteration I’m going to get, once the minor bugs are worked out (I’ve learned—more than once—not to buy first runs of anything, anymore).

Nice write up on a great gun/ammo/distributor project. Congrats on your part in this whole excellent launch.

[4given]

Lost River, I am waiting for my 632UC to come in and I already have a couple of boxes of your .32 wadcutters to try in it. I’m hoping it shoots them well as I want to use them as my carry ammo.

The waiting is the hardest part … somebody should write a song about that … 😁

[Totem Polar]

The waiting is the hardest part … somebody should write a song about that … 😁

That’s a little Petty, don’t you think?

[awp_101]

That’s a little Petty, don’t you think?

Tom, Richard or Charles E.?

[Totem Polar]

Tom, Richard or Charles E.?

Richard would have been pulling a fast one.

[mikey357]

Tom, Richard or Charles E.?

The "Bard of Micanopy", of course...

[Lost River]

Lost River, I am waiting for my 632UC to come in and I already have a couple of boxes of your .32 wadcutters to try in it. I’m hoping it shoots them well as I want to use them as my carry ammo.

The waiting is the hardest part … somebody should write a song about that … 😁

I know you might find it shocking, but those wadcutters are what I am carrying!

Prior to the penetration tests and results, which really opened my eyes, I would not have thought that they would have driven that deep, but obviously sectional density is not just a made up thing like the moon landing. Not saying the moon landing was faked, just that maybe the moon itself is fake. ** The next time you run into a conspiracy theory nut tell them the moon is not real!**

Anyways, I had planned on making a much heavier, deep penetrating load (for carry purposes), but after the gel penetration results from a couple of sources, I though "Why? This load has pretty much zilch for recoil and penetrates two feet of gel. How can you beat that?"

I probably will do another heavier load, something along the lines of a heavier grain, higher velocity, SWC load, but for day to day carry, I just don't see how you can beat the "Goldilocks" load of the 100 grain full wadcutter loads performance.

[Ghost Dog]

I know you might find it shocking, but those wadcutters are what I am carrying!

Prior to the penetration tests and results, which really opened my eyes, I would not have thought that they would have driven that deep, but obviously sectional density is not just a made up thing like the moon landing. Not saying the moon landing was faked, just that maybe the moon itself is fake. ** The next time you run into a conspiracy theory nut tell them the moon is not real!**

Anyways, I had planned on making a much heavier, deep penetrating load (for carry purposes), but after the gel penetration results from a couple of sources, I though "Why? This load has pretty much zilch for recoil and penetrates two feet of gel. How can you beat that?"

I probably will do another heavier load, something along the lines of a heavier grain, higher velocity, SWC load, but for day to day carry, I just don't see how you can beat the "Goldilocks" load of the 100 grain full wadcutter loads performance.

Just wondering, could you take what you learned and download a bit for .32 Long? Still quite a few million of those out there, and sounds like you would get 16" Clear Ballistics/13" Organic even from the Long that so many dismiss, yet Bad Boy Leroy Brown couldn't have been wrong in that whole damn town