Smith & Wesson historian Roy Jinks called the .357 Magnum revolver the company’s greatest development of the 20th century. Introduced in 1935, the revolutionary round offered law enforcement and handgun hunters greater muzzle velocity and penetrative power than any factory handgun load of its era, and the .357 Magnum would go on to become one of America’s most popular chamberings.
The .357 Magnum revolver marked a new era of handgun cartridges, where the term “Magnum” became a shorthand for power, prestige, and unprecedented performance. Some of the finest vintage examples of revolvers chambered in the iconic cartridge and its .44 Magnum sibling can be found in RIAC’s December 6 – 8 Premier Firearms Auction in Bedford, Texas. Click on the images throughout this article to learn more about each model.
Road to the .357 Magnum Revolver
Phil Sharpe’s 1937 book, ‘Complete Guide To Handloading,’ traces the birth of the .357 Magnum round to a deer hunting trip he took in Maine with Douglas B. Wesson, then-Vice-President of Smith & Wesson and grandson of the company’s co-founder. Sharpe and Wesson each carried heat-treated, hand-built Outdoorsman revolvers with heavy frames and tested a variety of experimental handloads. The concept for a powerful revolver and factory cartridge capable of bagging all manner of big game was conceived right there in the field. Famed writer and wildcatter would also prove instrumental in developing the round.
In the May 2, 1936 issue of Maine’s Lewiston Journal, the paper detailed Sharpe’s involvement with the .357 Magnum. “Phil was in close touch with the development of the gun by Smith & Wesson and the ammunition by Winchester, and did much of the design and experimental engineering of the cartridge case, the bullet, and the ballistic development of the final loading at his own expense. His records show that more than twenty different bullets were tested, and twelve different kinds of powders, before satisfactory results were achieved.”
Phil Sharpe and Winchester spent nearly a year refining the .357 Magnum load with the goal of exceeding a muzzle velocity of 1,450 fps when fired from an 8 3/4 inch barrel. In his 1938 book, ‘Burning Powder,’ Douglas B. Wesson cites the final result as, “a 158 grain bullet, 1515 foot seconds velocity, and 812 foot pounds energy.”
The .357 Magnum surpassed expectations and silenced skeptics, with numerous period reports independently citing speeds nearing or exceeding 1,500 fps, a 37% improvement over the round’s .38 Super competitor and far outclassing the .38 Special.
What is the .357 Magnum Cartridge?
Just as Smith & Wesson lengthened the .38 Long Colt case to develop the .38 Special, the .38 Special was in turn lengthened from 1.155 inches to 1.290 inches to produce the .357 Magnum cartridge. As a result, any revolver chambered for the .357 Magnum can also chamber the .38 Special, but not the other way around. This prevents shooters from loading the .357 Magnum into a revolver not equipped for the round’s higher pleasure.
The .357 part of the name is derived from the round’s .357 inch case diameter. The term “Magnum” was conceived by Douglas Wesson and his marketing team as an advertising hook. Meaning “great” or “big” in Latin, magnum had been long used by the wine and champagne industry to describe 1.5 liter bottles. These bottles were double the standard size, thought to offer a higher quality product, and were widely associated with abundance and lavish celebrations. Wesson felt the word Magnum would evoke the same sense of grandeur for the company’s new revolver and its high-velocity round.
The Registered Magnum
Released in 1935, the Smith & Wesson Registered Magnum was the first production revolver chambered for the .357 Magnum cartridge. The gun was based on a beefed-up .38/44 Outdoorsman, a platform that employed the stout N-frame, the largest of the Smith & Wesson hand ejector frames at the time. The end result was the most potent wheelgun since the Colt Walker, and Smith & Wesson promoted their new revolver as “The Most Powerful Pistol Made.”
Each of the 5,400 Smith & Wesson Registered Magnums produced from 1935 to 1939 received extensive hand fitting and were built to custom specifications. An individual registration number was stamped on the inside of each revolver, separate and unrelated to the gun’s serial number. A registration card could be optionally filled out by the owner and mailed back to Smith & Wesson in order to obtain a registration certificate, a personal guarantee of quality from President Douglas Wesson.
Wesson and Sharpe had originally conceived of the .357 Magnum revolver as a handgun hunting platform, and early marketing would focus on the gun’s effectiveness in that role. Wesson undertook numerous hunting trips with the revolver, and one advertisement touted, “A moose and an elk each dropped with one shot by the Magnum is better proof of its power than any ballistic table can give.”
Wesson also demonstrated the .357 Magnum revolver to law enforcement agencies, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In the March 20, 1937 issue of the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, Hoover enthusiastically describes a “.357-caliber weapon” with terrific shocking power. Hoover declared, “The Magnum ammunition will go through two sheets of steel, two thicknesses of pine wood seven-eights of an inch think. Bullet-proof cars and vests are of no avail against the Magnum ammunition.”
Despite Smith & Wesson offering substantial discounts to law enforcement and military personnel, the Registered Magnum was a bespoke premium revolver that came with a hefty price tag. In September 1939, the company discontinued the registration process and reduced the number of custom options.
Only about 1,400 non-registered Magnum revolvers would be manufactured over the next 15 months before the company shifted its focus toward war production. The Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver would return after WW2 in numerous forms, but the quality, history, and rarity of the Registered Magnum has made it one of the most sought-after collector guns today.
Colt and the .357 Magnum
The Registered Magnum represented the first in a long line of .357 Magnum revolvers from Smith & Wesson, but it wasn’t long before other manufacturers joined the party. In 1935, Colt began offering both the New Service revolver and the Single Action Army in .357 Magnum.
.357 Magnum was the last cartridge Colt introduced to its first generation line of SAAs. According to David Brown’s ‘The 36 Calibers of the Colt Single Action Army,’ only 625 standard frame First Generation Single Action Army revolvers were produced in .357 Magnum before production for the model ended in 1940, making surviving examples one of the rarities in their genre.
The 1940 manufactured example below with a 4 3/4 inch barrel was shipped to Hugh Higgins, an officer with the Colorado Springs Police Department from 1926 to 1960. The .357 Magnum would become an increasingly popular round with law enforcement in the decades after WW2, as more affordable revolver models became available.
After the war, Colt scrambled to develop double action revolvers that could chamber the .357 Magnum. The Colt Trooper, based on the Colt Officer’s Model Match, offered a budget-friendly design, while the blandly named “Colt .357 Magnum” revolver would fill the role of a more premium model. The successful Trooper would continue to see production until 1985, but the Colt .357 Magnum revolver would be phased out in 1961 after only 15,000 were manufactured.
In 1955, the debut of the Colt Python would eclipse the Colt .357 Magnum and become one of the most famous models associated with the round. Dubbed “the best revolver in the world” by British firearms author Ian V. Hogg, the Python presented customers with a masterpiece of meticulous hand fitting and offered Colt’s new Royal Blue finish. Thanks to its balance, weight, precision, and smooth trigger pull, the Colt Python is still one of the hottest revolvers in modern arms collecting.
Smith & Wesson Expands its .357 Magnum Roster
After WW2, the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum became a standard catalog item with a more limited range of features. In 1957, the company began assigning their revolvers model numbers. The Model 27 filled the niche of the Registered Magnum while the Model 28, formerly called the Highway Patrolman revolver, presented a no-frills version of the platform.
For police agencies and officers who were tight on cash, the Model 28 offered a reliable .357 Magnum revolver. For reference, a Model 27 would have been $120 in 1964, where a Model 28 was priced at $85. Though more affordable compared to its premium sibling, the Model 28 was still more expensive than popular law enforcement handguns like the S&W Model 10 and the Colt Police Positive, demonstrating that even a stripped down .357 Magnum revolver still came at a cost compared to its .38 Special competitors.
Shooting skills writer and retired Assistant Chief U.S. Border Patrol Inspector Bill Jordan guided Smith & Wesson in developing the Combat Magnum, which would become the Model 19. In Jordan’s opinion, an ideal police sidearm would be smaller than previous .357 Magnum revolvers and feature a 4 inch barrel and a shrouded extractor rod. While not as strong as the N-frame models, the K-frame Model 19 was lighter and easier to carry.
The Magnum Era
The .357 cartridge established “The Magnum Era,” where larger caliber revolvers dominated the firearms market for decades. In the mid-1950s, Elmer Keith encouraged Remington Arms to develop a stronger factory variant of the .44 Special cartridge and Smith & Wesson to produce a revolver frame capable of handling the new round’s extreme pressures.
The .44 Magnum was born in early 1956. Before Smith & Wesson could unveil their new DA N-frame revolver, Bill Ruger beat them to the market with his single action Blackhawk model. Both guns and their successors enjoyed continued popularity, with the S&W Model 29 gaining worldwide fame in 1971 thanks to Clint Eastwood’s ‘Dirty Harry’ film.
Elmer Keith lobbied Remington and Smith & Wesson again in 1963, this time advocating for a cartridge that could strike a middle ground between .357 Magnum and its powerful .44 Magnum sibling. Though the resulting .41 Magnum cartridge never reached the heights of of the .357 or the .44, it attracted a loyal following in the handgun hunting community.
The .357 Magnum Revolver Today
The market for the .357 Magnum revolver continued to thrive throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Ruger GP100 debuted in 1985 and the Colt King Cobra hit the market the following year. Ruger’s .357 Magnum Blackhawk continued to thrive, and platforms like the Dan Wesson Model 12, Freedom Model 83, and Taurus Model 689 ensured shooters had no shortage of options when selecting a .357 Magnum revolver.
In the early 1950s, custom gunsmiths began converting lever action rifles like the Winchester Model 1892 to .357 Magnum. The cartridge and lever gun pairing proved an ideal match, but the first factory production .357 Magnum lever action didn’t hit the market until the Marlin Model 1894 in 1979. Browning and Winchester both followed with versions of the 1892 produced by Miroku of Japan. Recently, the American-made Henry Big Boy has demonstrated the popularity of the .357 Magnum rifle for hunting, varminting, and good range fun.
.357 Magnum Revolvers for Sale
90 years after its debut, the mighty .357 Magnum remains one of the best all-around revolver cartridges. Though the round has long since been surpassed in terms of sheer power, the .357 Magnum strikes an ideal balance of strength and precision, can be chambered in a wide range of revolvers and rifles, and is readily available at almost any store that carries ammunition. For arms collectors, the .357 Magnum revolver includes some of the most historic and sought-after models of the 20th century.
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