Thanks for joining us for another TFB Wheelgun Wednesday, where the world revolves around revolvers (at least for one day a week). If you’ve been a firearms enthusiast for long, you’ve no doubt seen a photo of a kaBoomed revolver, but this time we’ve included a bit more context and a few more contextual photos. These photos come courtesy of Jacob, one of the Range Safety Officers at the Sharpe Shooters Outdoor Range in Augusta, Georgia. Jacob pointed out that no one was hurt despite the amount of pieces produced from the overcharged, handloaded .44 Magnum cartridge. Jacob also mentioned that the shooter has been reloading for 30 years, and unfortunately discovered his explosive mistake with quite a surprise.

An extremely common question I get when looking at the world of carrying concealed is when to upgrade your carry gun. The firearms industry does a fantastic job throwing new models that up capacity and features on our handguns making it extremely tempting to upgrade every 1-2 years. There are a number of pros and cons when looking at changing your carry gun for a newer model. Let’s take a closer look at some considerations you should have when thinking about whether or not you should upgrade your carry gun.

Firearms with small, sweeping grips have been around for quite some time.  While the distinctive “Bird’s Head” grip is normally attributed to Colt Derringers of the 1860s, a look at a Barbar pocket flintlock pistol from 1740 shows a very similarly shaped stock.  Nevertheless, Samuel Colt, after the rather unusual shape of his First Model (or No.1) Derringer, started making derringers with the distinctive “Bird’s Head” grip.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of their BFR (Biggest Finest Revolver) revolver, Magnum Research has announced a limited edition version of this wheelgun. The 20th Anniversary BFR is chambered in .45-70 Government, the first production caliber of the BFR revolver, and there will be only 20 of these custom anniversary revolvers ever made.

Nothing quite conveys the power of close air support as much as the low growl of the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8 Avenger 30mm cannon, or the buzz of the GAU2/A.  Certainly, there are some revolving cannons that have a storied record in the sky.  There are a few iconic pilot survival revolvers as well.  This week on Wheelgun Wednesday, however, we will be looking at some of the less successful applications of revolvers in aerial combat and pilot survival applications.

Standard Manufacturing continues exploring unconventional revolver designs. Although their newly released SWITCH-GUN .22 Magnum revolver is not as unusual as the S333 Thunderstruck, it still has a feature not commonly seen in modern revolvers – а spring-loaded folding grip. Let’s take a closer look.

Welcome to another Wheelgun Wednesday, where we cover all things “wheelgunnery.” In this edition, we’ll veer from the light once more and delve to a darker realm. Much debate has been had about semi-autos versus revolvers, and most gun owners would probably reach for a semi-auto over a wheelgun for self defense, even if they still enjoy shooting revolvers. However, on today’s Wheelgun Wednesday at TFB, I thought we’d look at a different angle of revolver usage; the criminal element. Regardless of which good guys are still carrying six-shooters (or 5, 6, 7, 8, or 18! shooters), revolvers are still very prevalent in crimes. Let’s explore if this proves that revolvers are still viable.

Every week, I talk about topics varying from situational awareness, holster choice and gear options for carrying concealed. All those are extremely important but sometimes it’s fun to take a step back and look at what pop culture decides to carry in movies. One of my favorite reality-based movies has to be the 2004 classic Collateral. in this movie, the main character (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver going along with his day when a hired gun (Tom Cruise) pays him for a night of driving around. This film is directed by Micheal Mann who has done other classic like the TFB favorite Heat, which we’ve done a number of articles and videos on. Let’s take a closer look at some of the carry guns of Collateral, a classic gun guy movie.

At Rock Island Auctions (RIA) up for auction today is John Wayne’s .44WCF chambered Colt Single Action Army with a custom cut barrel and Catalin (a thermoset polymer) grips custom molded to John Wayne’s hands.  This particular revolver was carried and used by John Wayne in 1969’s True Grit, 1975’s Rooster Cogburn, and 1972’s The Cowboys.  Also included with the gun is Wayne’s holster and belt rig.

When we start concealing a firearm on a daily basis, there are certain rules you need to follow for your safety as well as the safety of others. Sometimes these rules get broken, and you start to get all types of issues. There are certain risks and responsibilities that come with carrying a concealed firearm, and it’s not something that should be taken lightly. Call it the Darwin awards, let’s take a dive into various examples of carrying choices and consequences that followed these terrible choices.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, certain pistoleros stand out as either famous or infamous wielders of the wheelgun, be they exhibition shooters, or in this case, a serious practitioner of fighting pistolcraft.  Periodically on Wheelgun Wednesday, we will take a quick look at such personalities.  This week, let’s find out a little bit more about the outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

Welcome everyone to the 112th edition of ‘Hot Gat or Fudd Crap?’, one of our many series here on TFB. If you’re new to the series, this is where we look at the most obscure firearms that are actually for sale and ask the question – is this Gat a sweet deal or only has a Fudd appeal?  Each week the TFB staff weighs in with their thoughts, but readers get the final say in the poll at the bottom of each article.

Last week, I talked about the importance of having a different type of firearm to carry concealed when you’re out west. As a result, last week’s article started some great debates and conversations in my inbox about having a powerful handgun vs having a handgun with capacity. The old-timers came out of the woodwork last week to defend their holy grail 1911 handed straight down from the heavens by John Browning himself. So after a fair amount of debate, let’s dive into what’s a better application when talking about concealed carry handgun choice.

STP (Sport Target Pistol) is a firearms brand established by the German Büchsenmacherei Prommersberger, a company specialized in making competition handguns. Their catalog includes a variety of 1911-pattern match pistols and one wheelgun dubbed LODUR (name of a god in Norse mythology). In this installment of Wheelgun Wednesday, we’ll take a look at the history of this German company and the LODUR match revolver.

The Smith & Wesson top break revolver represented a major jump in firearms technology when it debuted in 1869.  Faster to load and unload, as well as far easier to reload while riding a horse than most other revolvers of the day, the top-break quickly became popular with lawmen, outlaws, and military forces all around the world.

Welcome everyone to the 110th edition of ‘Hot Gat or Fudd Crap?’, one of our many series here on TFB. If you’re new to the series, this is where we look at the most obscure firearms that are actually for sale and ask the question – is this Gat a sweet deal or only has a Fudd appeal?  Each week the TFB staff weighs in with their thoughts, but readers get the final say in the poll at the bottom of each article.

Recently I spent some time with friends out in the Wyoming and Montana area for a get-together trip. One of my buddies was late to the airport because he stumbled on a Glock 20. He kept going on and on about how exciting it was to see one in a gun store finally and how hard it is to find a stocked dealer in the area. It was rather puzzling to me since oftentimes the 9mm variants are always sold out in the Midwest and the larger caliber handguns are oftentimes the guns that sit in store counters. I started to look at the factors of carrying concealed and after talking with locals, there’s a fairly large difference in mindset between different parts of the country. Let’s take a deeper look into how carrying concealed out west is different and why that is.

Along with the Mexican American War and the Crimean War, the United States Civil War was a 19th-century proving ground of myriad new tactics and technologies of warfare, including the revolver.  One of the primary debates within Confederate circles was whether to field a standing army or engage in sustained guerrilla and partisan warfare against the north.  While the former took primacy, the latter was pursued in a smaller scale.

I’m a huge fan of Harrison Ford and of the Indiana Jones movies. Although Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is probably my favorite of the series, Raiders of the Lost Ark is probably a close second. The legendary Bapty Limited .455 Webley revolver used on-screen and in the movies is up for sale on Gunbroker.com through the well-known seller Mr.Gun Dealer. There is no telling exactly how much the revolver will go for but in the past several other Indiana Jones memorabilia have been sold off at an auction for nearly half a million dollars.

Taylor’s & Company have announced a new addition to their Gunfighter line of revolvers. The Gunfighter Nickel will be available in .357 Magnum and .45 LC in 4.75” and 5.5” barrel lengths. Perfect for shooters with larger hands, the Gunfighter revolvers take the 1860 Army’s grip and fit it to a new model frame cattleman.

The Korth NXS eight-shot revolver isn’t exactly new, we’ve already covered the model following it, but the NXS is Korth’s first eight-shot wheelgun. While the NX series isn’t the most traditional-looking, it has numerous features compared to its predecessors. The NXS is chambered for .357 Magnum and cut to accept moon clips, and is also convertible to 9mm, with barrel length options of four or six inches.

Back in July, TFB’s Will P reported that the upcoming auction of Jim and Theresa Earle’s Wild West collection included a firearm that had some serious history. The .44-40 Colt had been used by Billy Wilson of Billy the Kid’s gang. Sheriff Pat Garrett, a one-time gambling and drinking associate of Billy the Kid, was out to take down Billy and his gang. (In their time of friendship, Garrett was known as Big Casino and Billy as Little Casino).

Florida-based Diamondback Firearms have announced the introduction of the Sidekick, a new 9-shot single and double action rimfire revolver. The Colt Single Action Army-styled Sidekick has a 4.5″ barrel, a smooth black Cerakote finish, and checkered polymer grip panels. The pistol will be available in November and has an MSRP of $320.

Premier auctions of Rock Island Auction Company always contain a number of rare, unique and historically significant wheelguns. About a month ago, we published an article telling about  Elmer Keith’s No. 5 Colt SAA revolver that is consigned to the September 2021 Rock Island Premier Firearms Auction. In this installment of Wheelgun Wednesday, we’ll take a look at another interesting gun found in the catalog of this auction – an 18-shot revolver that belonged to Maximilian I of Mexico.

“Why, Johnny Ringo… you look like somebody just walked over your grave.” – Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, from the 1993 film Tombstone. Ringo’s legend is inexorably tied to Holliday and his compatriots, the Earp brothers. During the last two years of his life, 1881-1882, Ringo tangled with them multiple times, and it’s suspected that one of them may have gunned him down in the Arizona Territory’s Chiricahua Mountain Range in the summer of 1882. Officially, however, Ringo’s death was ruled a suicide. The Colt SAA revolver that reputedly fired the fatal shot by Ringo’s own hand was listed by serial number in the coroner’s report, and it’s been kept track of perfectly for the last 139 years. Now this well-documented piece of wild west and firearms history is headed to auction.

Welcome everyone to the 107th edition of ‘Hot Gat or Fudd Crap?’, one of our many series here on TFB. If you’re new to the series, this is where we look at the most obscure firearms that are actually for sale and ask the question – is this Gat a sweet deal or only has a Fudd appeal?  Each week the TFB staff weighs in with their thoughts, but readers get the final say in the poll at the bottom of each article.

In the pantheon of stories about the Wild West, “ Lonesome Dove” is often hailed as one of the best. Writer Larry McMurtry’s seminal novel was published in 1985, and earned the following year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A few years later, the book was adapted for a television miniseries screenplay starring dual leads Robert Duvall as Captain Augustus McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Captain Woodrow F. Call, two gun-slinging old Texas Rangers turned ranchers. The series enjoyed overwhelmingly positive reception and significant acclaim, as many critics have credited it with reviving the once-dead Western film genre. The series was nominated for eighteen Emmys in 1989, of which it won seven. As you’d expect for the category, the show featured many classic firearms like revolvers and lever-action rifles, of the style that Cimarron Firearms specializes in today.

Revolvers are sometimes revered as being really simple self-defense tools compared to semi-automatic pistols, although, if you’ve ever seen the inside of one, you’d quickly notice that the operation is far from simple. I’ve enjoyed all sorts of wheelguns for decades now, but I was usually overwhelmed by trying to learn all of the internal components that make revolvers tick. Othais at the C&Rsenal YouTube channel has come to rescue me and those that have felt that same desire to know more, yet didn’t have a good 101 source, namely, Revolver 101, to lay it down in simple terms. Othais was generous in giving TFB permission to embed the video and to use some screenshots from it for TFB’s Wheelgun Wednesday.

Recently, on a normal day at McClelland Gun Shop in northeast Dallas, Texas, an old revolver was brought in to the store’s gunsmith for a routine hammer repair. Neither the gun’s owner nor the McClelland employees could’ve guessed the amazing piece of history they were about to uncover. It turns out this patinated old wheelgun had likely seen action in the hands of one of the legendary Pancho Villa‘s bandito gang members or Mexican Revolutionary guerrilla fighters in the early 1900s, and the owner didn’t even know it.

In a recent search warrant executed by the 114th Precinct of the New York Police Department, several weapons, ammunition, and body armor were confiscated and the suspects arrested and charged with criminal possession of weapons. While this may be a frequent occurrence across the nation for police departments, what caught my eye with this snippet from the NYPD Instagram page was the grouping of novelty knives and non-firearms that were confiscated which made this search warrant look more like a raid on the Ninja Turtles hideout rather than a routine warrant execution.