Rookie question! .32 revolver vs .32 ACP?

I didn't forget the .32 Rimfires... I left them off the list intentionally for several reasons...

First, ammunition is virtually unobtainable today in shootable quantities. The last manufacturing run I know of was made by CBC in Brazil for Navy Arms.

Second, there hasn't been a handgun chambered for one of the .32 rimfires since before the Great Depression, and likely not since before World War I.

Third, to the best of my knowledge, no modern (double action, swing out cylinder) revolver was ever chambered in .32 rimfire. The closest I can think of are the solid frame H&R Bulldogs.

I put the .32 rimfires in the same class as the .32-44 and .32 M&H centerfire cartridges... Neat, but obsolete as all hell.


"but the .327 Federal does not "appear to be dying"

Yeah, probably not dying. I thought Taurus had dropped production of the .327, and I just discovered that Henry is rolling out lever actions chambered for it.
 
Thank you Mike Irwin. You posted two excellent responses that covered pretty much everything.

I am a big 32 fan and own handguns chambered in all of the more popular 32 rounds. They are perfect for someone who physically can't use a 38 or 9mm or 380 for SD, and incorrectly believe they have to resort to 22 or 25.
 
Oh hell yeah, tallball, I LOVES me some .32!

As a class of cartridges, they are just so... polite... when you pull the trigger. :D

Right now in my collection I have...

CZ 70 in .32 ACP. That's my only semi-auto .32, but I really want some more...

In revolvers I have...

S&W Regulation Police in .32 Long. That was my first .32 revolver, and it's what sold me on the caliber.

A snub Model 30 in .32 Long. Not really all that useful, but when I saw it I just had to have it. :)

A Colt Police Positive in .32 New Police (.32 S&W Long). Pure impulse buy, but fun to shoot.

An S&W M&P in .32-20.

A Colt Police Positive Special in .32-20.

I really really really want to get a Marlin or Winchester lever rifle in .32-20 to go with the S&W and the Colt. I don't know why, because I live in metro Washington, DC, and the chances to shoot rifles are few and far between...


A very close friend of mine has something that I desperately covet, as well. A few years ago on his way to visit family, he stopped into a gunstore near Roanoke, Virginia, and chance upon a unicorn...

A 4" S&W Model 16 in .32 Long. It had some condition issues (looked as if it had been dropped on concrete and freckled), but overall in good condition and very good mechanical condition.

He wasn't quite sure what he was looking at, but he knew it was very special, so he grabbed it...

$500 out the door.
 
Mike, for 32acp you should really outta have a Colt 1903. They are a joy to shoot. I was lucky enough to find one that had been refinished and given new grips... so no one wanted to pay money for it. It was something like $330. The sights are tiny and it is a minor PITA to field strip, but it barely even twitches when you squeeze the trigger and shoots just where you aimed it.

And if you ever run across the elusive Beretta Model 100, it is more-or-less PPK sized, but single action. It has a 6" barrel and nice big adjustable sights. Mine is accurate like a 22.

My PPK-sized FEG is nice, too.

I have some others, but those are my favs. Keep your eyes open; I bet you can find something nice. :)
 
Just kinda rambling... while I do my morning breathing treatment. Then I will "shaur", as my Kentuckian wife calls it, and head over to see the gun show with her dad...

32acp can be kinda snappy, especially in small alloy pistols. 32 S&W long is gentle like a sweet, sweet lady. My FiL reloads it. I shoot a lot of 32 S&W long. 32 H&R magnum is mild and, to my understanding, a decent SD cartridge. 327 magnum gets back to the kinda snappy category.

I only shot 32 S&W short once. A friend found some in his garage that had belonged to his dad. He gave them to me, saying, "Maybe you'll get a 32 revolver one day." One day I DID get a 32 revolver, an old S&W Hand Ejector with rough finish that no one wanted ($125). I shot it a few times with S&W long, then remembered the old shorts that my friend had given me. I took them to the range on my next trip. All of them went "BANG!", but it was more like "bang". I even started to have the strange optical illusion that I could see the bullet as it limped along to the target. It turned out not to be an illusion. As I shot the last cylinder, the RSO and I both noticed that the last two rounds actually bounced off of the wooden backboard and ricocheted back towards me. He suggested that maybe I shouldn't shoot any more of those particular rounds, and I cheerfully concurred.

The old Hand Ejector has a rough trigger and barely any sights. I got an SP101 in 327 magnum, but the trigger is stiff, so it's not my favorite. My Single Six in 32 H&R, on the other hand, is lots of fun to shoot. It has a 6" barrel and adjustable sights. If I'd had it when I was a young un, I would have eaten even more possums and 'coons than I already did. That thing is dead-on accurate.

My Kentuckian wife, though a woman of considerable stature (6'4"), has messed up wrists. In the rare occurrence that I am out of town, I leave the Charter Arms Undercoverette in 32 H&R loaded for her. The recoil is squat. It's a nice easy snubby. She could use it to put someone out of their misery after her gigantic ferocious dogs were done mauling them (Ain't they so cute!).

I am pretty sure those are all of my 32 revolvers. Those and my 1903 Colt were instrumental in teaching my daughter to shoot when she was eight or nine. Now she is 13 and 6'2", so she shoots whatever she has a hankering for at the moment.
 
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.32 H&R Magnum - A lengthened, more powerful version of the .32 Long. Never particularly popular, but still encountered.

.327 Federal - Longer than the H&R and more powerful. Designed to give a 6 shot compact revolver with power approaching the .357 Magnum. Neat concept, but appears to be dying.
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The .32 H&R Magnum enjoyed moderate popularity. It was comparable to standard-pressure .38 special in terms of power and recoil but allowed an extra shot on the wheel. This made it great for alloy-framed snubbies. It looks like Charter Arms is still producing their little Undercoverette in .32 H&R Magnum.

The .327 Fed Mag is not dying! A bunch of new guns just came out for it. It achieves power levels between 9mm and .357 magnum. Lighter loads recoil like .38 +p. It picks up a lot with longer barrels. Some of the recent offerings include the 7-shot GP100 in five and six-inch barrels, and the Henry Rifle in sixteen and twenty-inch barrels. The cheapest commercial load gets up around 2200 fps from the 20" rifle.
 
People do strange things.
A Cowboy of my acquaintance had a set* of .32 H&R, the Ruger "Vaquerito" revolvers and the scarce Marlin lever action. Did he blip away with mild loads for HSLD shooting? No, he loaded them to the maximum allowed by SASS, 1000 fps revolver, 1400 fps rifle.

*Cowboy shooters speak of "sets" of guns. This means two revolvers and a lever action, normally in the same caliber. Affluent enthusiasts - the guy above is both - will have multiple sets of guns to suit their taste on any given day. You have to have a shotgun, too but you don't necessarily have to have one for every set of rifle and pistol.
 
Cosmodragoon said:
The .32 H&R Magnum enjoyed moderate popularity. It was comparable to standard-pressure .38 special in terms of power and recoil but allowed an extra shot on the wheel. This made it great for alloy-framed snubbies. It looks like Charter Arms is still producing their little Undercoverette in .32 H&R Magnum.

The .327 Fed Mag is not dying! A bunch of new guns just came out for it. It achieves power levels between 9mm and .357 magnum. Lighter loads recoil like .38 +p. It picks up a lot with longer barrels. Some of the recent offerings include the 7-shot GP100 in five and six-inch barrels, and the Henry Rifle in sixteen and twenty-inch barrels. The cheapest commercial load gets up around 2200 fps from the 20" rifle.
Click to expand...
Charter still makes a .32 H&R Mag, but it's only a 5 shot. With 5 shots, I'd rather have a .38+P.

It's odd too because when .327 came out, they made it with a 6 round cylinder. Charter has made 6 shot revolvers before, but now all they focus on is 5 in centerfire, 6 in rimfire.
 
Charter still makes a .32 H&R Mag, but it's only a 5 shot. With 5 shots, I'd rather have a .38+P.

It's odd too because when .327 came out, they made it with a 6 round cylinder. Charter has made 6 shot revolvers before, but now all they focus on is 5 in centerfire, 6 in rimfire.
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The Undercoverette is actually smaller than a J-frame. It's a petite little revolver so I understand only having five shots and not making it in .327 Fed Mag. The one they released in .327 was their Patriot, which I think is built on the same frame as their larger Bulldog.
 
"The .32 H&R Magnum enjoyed moderate popularity. "

Moderate popularity and never particularly popular are really the same thing.
 
When I first got into shooting and reloading one of the most informative books I ever bought was " Cartridges of the World" it contains info on current and obsolete American and foreign Ammunition. Has drawings, limited reloading data and info on just about every round every made in a factory. Descriptions of 1500 different calibers. Still in print too.
Very good reference book that will answer a lot of ammo questions.
Gary
 
First, we need to understand the term "case support". In order to get uniform primer ignition (and uniform reliability and accuracy) it is necessary for a cartridge case to be supported against the blow of the firing pin. Traditionally, this was done by using the cartridge rim, which not only provided case support, but also was used for extraction of the fired case.

But, around 1900, some folks hit on the idea of a magazine fed or even an automatic or auto loading firearm. The best way to get that working well was to eliminate that pesky rim and just cut a groove in the case for extraction. But then, how to stop the case and support it against the firing pin blow? The desire to also increase the power of the cartridge led to a neat solution where the cartridge was made with a shoulder and neck - that allowed more powder space, and at the same time the shoulder provided for case support and ease of feeding. That worked well and when the idea of an auto loading pistol came along, the natural step was to make he cartridge with a bottle neck, copying the rifle cartridge design of the era.

But the pistol cartridge had a lot less space for powder and that limited its potential power. Two designers, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, found themselves with the same problem. John Browning simply could not figure out how to get proper support as well as extraction for an auto pistol cartridge any other way than by using the rim, so he reduced the rim to a minimum consistent with reliable feeding. In the meantime, one Georg Luger, in Germany, had a problem of a slightly different kind. He had a pistol which worked OK with a cartridge having a shoulder (7.65mm Parabellum), but his government wanted a pistol of a bigger caliber and redesigning the current model for a larger overall cartridge meant years of work. But simply loading a larger diameter bullet meant no shoulder was possible (though he tried), so he decided to support the case on its mouth, using case tension and careful chambering to avoid the deep crimp hitherto used at the case mouth.

Browning, meanwhile, continued on the path to the minimum rim size, and his .25 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol), .32 ACP, 9mm Long, and .38 ACP all were produced with small but effective rims, at the cost of some feeding problems.

But, at some point, possibly during one of the early U.S. auto pistol trials, Browning encountered the 9mm Parabellum (the German trade name for Luger's pistol) and realized that here was a pistol cartridge that had no rim, yet which was well supported. That was the end of the tiny rim on Browning's cartridges. The two Browning cartridges designed after that, the .380 ACP and the .45 ACP, were rimless, with only an extraction groove, but no true rim.

Jim
 
A lot of older versions of COTW can be found for a real discounted price at gun shows and online.
Same thing with older reloading manuals - which can be a treasure trove of information also.
 
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