Author: Grumpy
The .500 WE shows its family relationship to the same basic guns in .454 and .475.
This is a Potently Powerful Package. It can be Pleasurable or Painful, it comes at a Premium Price, and it’s even Purty. It’s the latest candidate for the title of Perfect Packin’ Pistol. The cartridge it houses is Proprietary and the sixgun itself will last in Perpetuity. This Phenomenon is the latest sixgun/cartridge combination from Freedom Arms, the .500 Wyoming Express. Perfect Packin’ Pistols are highly Personal and very dependent upon the Perception of just what is Perfect and quite often dependent upon the user’s locality. For anyone looking for the most Power Per Pound of Packing weight, this is it!
Since 1983, Freedom Arms has been producing the finest single-action sixguns to ever come from a factory. In the early 1980s, Wayne Baker and Dick Casull came together to produce not only the finest single action ever manufactured but the most powerful as well. That sixgun was the Freedom Arms .454 Casull. Both the sixgun and cartridge were destined to change the sixgunning
scene drastically. The .357 Magnum had arrived in 1935 heralded as the world’s most powerful revolver, unable to be handled by mere mortals. Twenty years later the .44 Magnum arrived pushing a bullet 100 grains heavier at the same speed of the early .357 Magnum loads. As a teenager I fired an early 4″ Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum with Remington factory loads and from my perspective then, I could not see any way I could ever handle one. It was a long learning process as I grew older.
While our early heroes were experimenting with heavy .44s in various forms, Dick Casull was experimenting with the .45 Colt. Casull started using heavy loads in the then new solid head .45 Colt brass in Colt Single Actions. When he soon discovered his loads where too heavy for production Colts, he started making his own fiveshot cylinders.
It did not take long to get past the safety factor and he soon decided to build his own larger, stronger revolver. He not only entered new levels of sixgun power he also disproved the old myth of .45 Colt brass being weak. However, when his .454 Magnum became reality the .45 Colt case was lengthened to prevent any of these heavy loads entering the chambers of older .45 sixguns, especially black-powder guns where the results would be decidedly disastrous.
FA X-Draw holster, Sparks belt and Von Ringler carrier.
The Beginning
In the 1970s a very few .454 Casull chambered five-shot revolvers were produced by North American Arms, however it remained for Wayne Baker to form Freedom Arms and really begin producing what is now known as the Model 83 revolver. From the very first, these premium quality, five-shot, stainless steel sixguns were built with the best materials and exceptionally tight tolerances to be able to handle the power of the .454 Casull. In those days it was not easy to convince many writers to even try the .454. It gives me great pleasure to have been one of the first to spotlight the .454 as well as provide extensive loading data in Handgunner in the mid-1980s. It took awhile for the shooting public to discover the .454 and Freedom Arms went from a vault full of sixguns looking for owners to a back order situation. Handgun hunters especially, went for the .454 in a big way.
Freedom Arms did not stop with the .454 Casull-chambered Model 83. They soon offered their premium revolver in .44 Magnum, .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum and even the greatest of all cartridges, the .22 Long Rifle. A very few were even chambered in .50 Action Express. While Freedom Arms was producing those first .454s, John Linebaugh was experimenting with even larger calibers first using cut down .348 Winchester for his .500 Linebaugh (see The Sixgunner in this issue), which was followed up by the .475 Linebaugh using .45-70 brass. In the 1990s, Bob Baker of Freedom Arms took a good look at the .475 for chambering in the Model 83, however the rims were too large to fit the five shot cylinders of their production revolvers.
Baker experimented with the .475 by reducing the diameter of the parent .45-70 brass rims and found the cartridge would perform exceptionally well in the Model 83. However, he did not wish to produce a revolver for which shooters could not obtain factory loaded ammunition or at least factory brass of the proper dimensions. When loaded ammunition arrived from Buffalo Bore as well as factory brass from Starline, the Model 83 was chambered in .475 Linebaugh and to this day sixgunners still argue over which is more powerful, the .454 or the .475 Linebaugh. My answer in these types of situations is always “Buy ’em both!”
The next natural step up in caliber was the .500. However, this cartridge is so large that even by trimming the rim it was impossible to make it fit the Freedom Arms cylinder without also altering the cylinder ratchet. Baker hit on the answer and showed me the cartridge nearly two years ago. Meanwhile, Baker spent a long time experimenting with loads, tweaking the brass, and as he reached the top level of power possible with the new cartridge, he told me “I’m getting too old for this!” That should tell you something about the power possible in the new .500 Wyoming Express as Bob Baker handles the .454 Magnum like it’s a .44 Special.
To solve the problem of cylinder size the Wyoming Express uses a belted case. Baker says of the new cartridge: “The .500 WE is a proprietary cartridge of Freedom Arms, Inc. using a 1.370″ length belted case. The belt provides reliable head spacing on a small shoulder which was required to work in the Freedom Arms Model 83 revolver. It also uses a .500″ diameter bullet with a maximum nose length of .395″ which gives a maximum overall cartridge length of 1.765″.
The cartridge was designed to not only get outstanding and predictable ballistic performance but to also minimize forcing cone erosion, thereby extending the useful life of your Freedom Arms revolver. This is done by matching powder column length, powder volume and bullet diameter to an expected range of bullet weights, velocity ranges and pressure levels.
Notice a couple of things here when comparing the .500 Wyoming Express to the .500 Linebaugh which inspired it. The .500 Linebaugh uses a large rim, the .500 Wyoming Express head spaces on a belt. The .500 Linebaugh brass is 1.400″ while the .500 WE is set at 1.370″. Bullets are not interchangeable with the .500 Linebaugh using .511″ diameter bullets and the .500 Wyoming Express designed for the use of true 1/2″ diameter bullets.
Left to right: .500 WE, .50 GI, .50 AE, .500 S&W Mag.
Strong Spirit/Weak Flesh
When Bob Baker first provided me with his experimental loading data for the .500 Wyoming Express with 350- and 370-grain bullets at 1,600 fps, 400s at 1,500 fps, and 440s at 1,400 fps (Freedom Arms will supply this data with their revolver) I remembered his
comment of “I’m too old for this!” I responded with “How do you think I feel with about two decades on you?” I knew there was no way I was about to be able to handle the heaviest loads in the .500 Wyoming Express. Twenty years ago, maybe; today, no way!
My heaviest loads just topped 1,200 fps and while manageable in a 71⁄2″, scope-sighted Model 83, they were brutal in the relatively lightweight 43⁄4″ version. The heaviest loads I used in the Perfect Packin’ Pistol 43⁄4″ Model 83 was the Cast
Performance Bullet Co.’s 440-grain Hard Cast Gas Checked LBT over 19 grains of Blue Dot for 1,201 fps in the 71⁄2″ version and 1,143 fps in the short barreled PPP. In the latter I was able to put three shots in 7/8″ at 20 yards and there is nothing I
am ever likely to encounter in the game fields I cannot take cleanly and completely with this load.
As I was testing both sixguns, my loads, and myself with the .500 Wyoming Express I thought of Elmer Keith and Tom Ferguson. When Keith finally got his much awaited .44 Magnum after 30 years of urging of manufacturers on his part, he reported in 1957 he had fired 600 rounds the first year; I fired more .500s than that from the Freedom Armsrevolvers in three days.
When Ferguson tested the .500 Linebaugh many years ago he fired a one-shot group and said that was enough. Both were smarter men than I am! Believe me even with the “lighter” loads the .500 WE recoils more, much more, than comparable revolvers chambered in .44 Magnum.
The middle 5-round “group” was fired by t he .50-g r. Sierra.
20-yard groups.
Test Guns
My pair of test guns were a brand new 43⁄4″ Freedom Arms Model 83 chambered in .500 Wyoming Express and my 71⁄2″ Model 83 .50 Action Express which was returned to the factory to have a second cylinder fitted in .500 WE. While it was there I had Freedom Arms fit an SSK T’SOB scope base as there is no other I will trust with really hard kicking revolvers. For a scope I chose a Leupold, as I’ve had excellent results with their products on hard kicking sixguns and single shot pistols for more than two decades. In this case the choice was one of their silver, 4X long eye relief scopes mounted with three rings on the T’SOB base.
Any Model 83 originally chambered in .50 AE can be retrofitted with a .500 WE cylinder, however at least at this time Freedom Arms is not offering the .50 AE cylinder as an option with the .500 Wyoming Express.
Freedom Arms is also offering the .500 Wyoming Express brass in plastic cartridge boxes holding 64 rounds as well as RCBS loading dies. The carbide three die set includes a special die setting gauge which is actually a washer which will place the carbide sizer at the proper position to not engage the belt on the cartridge case when full-length sizing. This washer is placed on top of the shell holder and the sizing die is then screwed down until it meets the washer. Once this is accomplished there is no danger of squeezing the belt, which would result in poor head spacing and possible misfires. Freedom Arms recommends seating and crimping in two separate operations so it would be handy to have a second sizing-crimping die.
For my loading of the .500 Wyoming Express I used four hard cast gas checked designs, Oregon Trails’ 370, and from Cast Performance Bullet Co. came 370, 400, and 440 LBT bullets. For jacketed bullets my choice was Sierra’s 350 JHP and 400 JFN. These were originally designed for the .500 S&W Magnum and when seated normally in the center of the cannelure that serves as a crimping groove will protrude from the front of the Freedom Arms cylinder.
I was able to use them by crimping at the very top of the crimping groove, however Sierra will be offering .500 WE versions with the cannelure set a little higher. Even in my hands the .500 WE has proven to be exceptionally accurate. The scope-sighted 71⁄2″ version is an excellent choice for the hunting of big, heavy, mean, nasty critters, while many will find the 43⁄4″ version to be the Perfect Packin’ Pistol. Should I dare to roam among mean nasty critters looking to end my sojourn here I would certainly load it to full horsepower. If needed, I doubt I would even feel the recoil! I like ’em both.
For more info:
Freedom Arms, P.O. Box
150, Freedom, WY 83120,
(307) 883-4432,
www.freedomarms.com
Leupold,
14400 NW Greenbrier Pkwy,
Beaverton, OR 97006,
(503) 646-9171
www.leupold.com
Former National Rifle Association operations director Joshua Powell has settled civil claims of fraud and abuse brought by the New York Attorney General’s office.
The admission comes hours after Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, announced his resignation ahead of a trial scheduled to begin Monday. LaPierre cited health reasons, according to the NRA. The resignation will be effective Jan. 31.
Powell was employed by the NRA from 2016 through January 2020 and in that time “Powell breached his fiduciary duties and failed to administer the charitable assets entrusted to his care by using his powers as an officer and senior executive of the NRA to convert charitable assets for his own benefit and for the benefit of his family members,” the settlement agreement said.
“Joshua Powell’s admission of wrongdoing and Wayne LaPierre’s resignation confirm what we have alleged for years: the NRA and its senior leaders are financially corrupt,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Saturday.
The attorney general is suing the NRA, which is registered in New York as a non-profit charitable corporation, and its senior management for misappropriating millions of dollars to fund personal benefits, including private jets, family vacations and luxury goods.
The NRA tried to file bankruptcy in 2021 but a federal judge rejected its petition, saying “the NRA did not file the bankruptcy petition in good faith.”
James’ lawsuit seeks an independent monitor to oversee the NRA’s finances.
As part of his settlement, Powell admitted he breached his fiduciary duties of care, loyalty and obedience by using the NRA’s charitable assets for his own benefit and the benefit of his family. He also admitted he failed to administer the charitable assets entrusted to his care properly.
He agreed to pay $100,000 in restitution and accept a permanent bar from serving as an officer in a nonprofit. He also agreed to testify against LaPierre and others at trial.
LaPierre previously said the New York AG’s lawsuit was an “unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the NRA — the fiercest defender of America’s freedom at the ballot box for decades.”
Categories
Mysterious knot
Papers of Colonel Clyde C. Childress, USA
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TOP: Colt Richards Conversion .44 with barrel snubbed to 3″.
SECOND FROM TOP: Colt Sheriff’s Model .44-40 with 3″ barrel.
THIRD FROM TOP: Merwin & Hulbert .44-40 with 3.5″ barrel.
BOTTOM: S&W Model 1881DA .44 Russian with 4″ barrel.
The Colt Baby Dragoon .31 (bottom) was a scaled-down version
of the huge 4-pound Colt Dragoon .44 (top).
Hollywood would have us think that back in the “Wild West” every man went about his daily affairs packing a big sixgun in a leather holster on his belt. NOT! Drovers, Frontiersmen and Indian Scouts likely did, and of course Texas Rangers and all sorts of other lawmen certainly carried handguns openly.
Not so town and city dwellers. Pocket pistols were a hot item in the Old West. Town dwellers and well dressed travelers also packed iron, at first actually in pockets. As the trend progressed to bigger and more powerful they were often concealed in a holster under a coat. Consider this; Colt and S&W alone produced well over a million concealment-intended handguns between 1848 and 1900. That’s amazing considering the population of the United States in that era.
Concealable handguns were so hot an item that it’s a fact when Sam Colt got his firearms-manufacturing business up and running the second time in the late 1840s, one of his first concerns was coming up with good “pocket pistols.” That was in 1848 and those little babies were only .31 caliber, and five-shooters to boot. Collectors even call them Baby Dragoons, after the huge 4-pound horse-carried Colt Dragoon revolvers they were based upon. Even by modern standards a Baby Dragoon was light at only 22 ounces with a 4″ barrel.
Lawmen certainly went openly armed. This turn of the century Texas Ranger was named Jules Baker. Photo courtesy Herb Peck Jr. Collection.
Merwin & Hulbert offered their Pocket Army .44s with twin barrel sets.
They were 3.5″ and 7″ and could be changed in seconds.
Cowboys and outdoorsmen likewise went openly armed.
Photo courtesy Herb Peck Jr. Collection.
The Bad News
That was the good news. The bad news was they were punch handicapped. With really hot loads, they were popping to break 700 fps with a 48-grain round ball. In foot-pounds of energy that’s sort of in-between a .22 Short and .22 Long. After those five pipsqueak charges were fired it would take an experienced shooter about 10 minutes to get them up and running again. The gun had to be broken into three pieces for reloading. I doubt if many wayfarers gave up their Bowie knives upon buying a Baby Dragoon.
But get this — Sam Colt sold 15,000 of those little .31s in only a year or so and then upgraded to a Model 1849. It used the same frame but with a loading lever beneath the barrel. Reload time was cut at least in half. Hear this too. The Colt factory turned out more than 325,000 of them before production ceased in 1873. That’s 24 years. It took Colt 68 years and several government contracts to produce 357,000 Colt Peacemakers. Who says people in the old days didn’t carry concealed?
Those gun-toters weren’t stupid either. They knew the little .31s were puny. Using the rebated cylinder design Colt eventually put five-shot .36 caliber cylinders on the little Model 1849 frame and called them Model 1862s. (Collectors named them Pocket Navy and Pocket Police depending on their exact configuration.) Those would push an 80-grain round ball all the way to 850 fps. That brought pocket pistol power up to .32 ACP ballistics. Things were humming then.
This Colt Richards Conversion may be snubbed off, but it would still
look dangerous from across a card table.
These are Model 1862 .36s. Front is Pocket Police. Rear is Pocket Navy.
Metallic Magic
Now think in terms of metallic cartridges. S&W actually got their business up and rolling in the 1850s and 1860s with concealed-carry-type handguns. This was their No. 1, which actually was the introductory vehicle for the .22 Short. Between 1857 and 1881 they sold over a quarter million of those itsy-bitsy little SAs.
Today’s cowboy-action shooters would be perfectly happy with those puny popguns. Heck they even try to make their big .45s recoil like .22 Shorts. But, back in those days when you didn’t smoke up your assailant’s sorry butt with the handgun, a knife fight likely commenced. People really wanted more power from their CCW guns.
For that reason, in 1876 S&W introduced the .38 S&W cartridge for pocket handguns and the revolver introduced along with it has always been known as the Baby Russian. (Gun people of the late 1800s sure liked that “baby” moniker.) It was so called because the design was scaled down from large frame revolvers the company was making for the Russian Government. A year later Colt came up with their idea of a concealed carry, cartridge firing handgun and this one was even DA! The Colt Model 1877DA was made in .38 Colt and .41 Colt calibers. Somehow they then became dubbed “Lightning” and “Thunderer” respectively.
None of these new concealed weapon calibers struck like lightning. The .38 S&W had loads with 145- to 150-grain bullets over 14 or 15 grains of black powder, while the .38 Colt load used 150-grain bullets over a whopping 19 grains of the same. The .41 Colt was loaded with 200-grain bullets and about 21 grains of black powder. None of these loads could have given over 750 fps, even from a long barreled revolver. Still they were better than a .22 Short. At last people started leaving the Bowie knives at home.
These mid-sized concealed. concealables were introduced in the
1870s. Top to bottom: Merwin & Hulbert Pocket .38, Colt Lightning
.38 and a Colt Thunderer .41.
The rise of trouser belt loops actually made it possible for larger more powerful handguns to be holstercarried while These mid-sized concealed.
Early concealment handguns were meant for pocket carry.
Little Big Guns
Another trend in CCWs got started circa the late 1870s and early 1880s. That was when gun-toters began packing short-barreled versions of big revolvers in holsters under their coats, instead of a diminutive one in their pocket. A for instance would be the so-called Colt SAA Sheriff’s Model with 3″ barrel and no ejector rod or housing. By this time S&W was also making its SA New Model No. 3 with short barrels, and their Model 1881DA was simply the No. 3 adapted to a DA trigger mechanism. It was common with 4″ barrel.
Why the change about that time? Because trouser belts for men became common. Now, I’m no expert on Old West clothing, but my seamstress wife does have some antique pattern catalogs from that era showing men’s pants starting to have belt loops Hence there was finally something to hitch a revolver holster onto without giving obvious notice the wearer was packing iron.
Old West gunmen were also known to have gunsmiths aid them in their quest for concealable handguns, and also to find innovative ways to pack them. For instance around 1881 El Paso City Marshall Dallas Stoudenmire was known to pack a Colt Richards Conversion .44 with its barrel shortened from 8″ to only 3″. Then he had a special leather-lined pocket built into his trousers to house it. By the 1890s shoulder holsters were common. Reformed outlaw John Wesley Hardin was packing either or both a Colt Lightning and S&W Model 1881DA in
such a rig when he was gunned down in an El Paso saloon.
After its five tiny round balls were fired the Colt Baby Dragoon .31 had to be dismantled to three pieces for reloading.
As concealed-carry handguns got more powerful, fighting knives got smaller.
Left: Colt Baby Dragoon .31 & Steve Brooks Bowie knife. Right: Colt Sheriff’s
Model .44-40 with dagger by unknown maker.
Other Ideas
Some companies got downright brilliant about concealed-carry and self-defense handguns. Merwin & Hulbert for instance offered a Pocket Army .44. It was a normal-sized sixgun and much too large to carry in a pocket. But, they offered the option of two pre-fitted barrels. One was 7″ long and the other 3.5″. They could be switched in a matter of seconds. The idea was for the long barrel to be worn openly on the trail, and then the short one replaced for concealed carry. Then M&H took matters one step further. The revolver’s butt came to a point called the “skullcrusher” for when altercations became more intimate. Wouldn’t lawyers have a field day with that now?
Over the years I’ve managed to add an assortment of Old West concealed carry weapons to my shooting collection of handguns. A Baby Dragoon .31 and both versions of Model 1862 .36s are from Colt’s second generation of cap & ball revolver production of the late 1970s and early 1980s. There’s also an S&W Model 1881DA .44 Russian, a Merwin & Hulbert Pocket Army, and a Colt SAA Sheriff’s Model. Both of those are .44-40s. Some years back I even went to the trouble of having Wisconsin gunsmith Kenny Howell build me a facsimile Richards
Conversion .44 with snubbed-off barrel similar to Dallas Stoudenmire’s favored concealed sixgun. It’s in the original .44 Colt caliber.
The little S&W No. 1s and Baby Russians have eluded me so far but there is a “Baby” Merwin & Hulbert .38 in my collection that is of similar size and power to the S&W Baby Russian. Also, about this time someone is likely thinking, “What about derringers? The dummy is forgetting them.” No I’m not. I’ve just never been interested in them, and won’t blow smoke up your wazoo and say someday I’ll do an article covering derringers. Somebody else can do that. This is a revolver article.
The puny Baby Dragoon .31 penetrated two 7/8″ boards and lodged in the third.
The point of a Merwin & Hulbert’s butt was called “The Skullcrusher.”
Duke’s Opinion
So here’s my take on Old West concealed-carry handguns. The little .31 caliber Colts were better than nothing, but if you had to take on someone with one you better hope they weren’t wearing a lot of clothing or a heavy leather vest. I shot mine into a baffle box and it went through two 7/8″ pine boards and lodged in the third. I think it was these pipsqueaks that gave rise to the legends
of pocket bibles or a sheriff’s badge stopping a bullet. Ditto in spades for the S&W No. 1 .22 Short.
The S&W Baby Russian and M&H .38s were a great step up. They were still compact enough to actually be pocket-carried, and yet have a modicum of pistol power. There are plenty of accounts about wounds from guns like that causing death from infection days or weeks after a gunfight. Unfortunately, often it was the bad guy that expired weeks later while the good guy was beaten or knifed to death at the scene. They weren’t stoppers.
That leaves us with the short-barreled, big-bore revolvers meant to be holster-carried. Actually they were pretty good self-defense handguns. The .44 Russian would have had a 246- to 255-grain bullet over 23 grains of black powder. From a 3″ or 4″ barrel that load gives 725 to 750 fps. The .44-40 load would have a 200- grain bullet over a full 40-grain charge. It was snorty! Even from a 3″ or 3.5″ barrel it will break 800 fps. If none of that impresses you “modern” guys then just think again. In terms of muzzle energy those ballistics pretty much equal a .45 ACP from one of the compact Model 1911s.
Personally, if I had been walking the streets of a tough town in the 1880s, and had my choice of what to carry concealed, it would be a toss up between the S&W Model 1881DA .44 Russian, or the Merwin & Hulbert .44-40. The Colt Sheriff’s Model .44-40 is attractive but it would be my third choice just because of the slow reload factor. Both the S&W and M&H offer simultaneous cartridge extraction.
And then I would have slipped an S&W or M&H “Baby” .38 in a pocket for backup — and had a knife in my boot too. And if you were a bad guy after me then, you might keep in mind I might have a good friend nearby equally ready. Like Clint Smith says, “Always cheat, always win.”
