with the vintage nature of the gun, thetop strap and barrel were modified toresemble a Smith & Wesson M&Pfixed-sight model. Building the gunwas simple enough — ammunitionproved to be much more troublesome.

Initial test firing was conducted withstandard pistol primers, FFFg powderand a generic black powder lube.Muzzle velocity was about 725 fps butaccuracy was disappointing. After 15-20 rounds, powder and lead foulingwere so bad bullets would not stay onthe target paper at 20 yards. Consultingwith an expert may be unmanly but, inthis case, it saved the day.

Mike Venturino and his shootingcohorts had begun to unravel the lostsecrets of sustainable black powderaccuracy. Mike counseled there arethree basic elements: Use magnumprimers, use a drop tube to charge thecases with powder and use SPG lube.Armed with this intelligence, we triedagain. Muzzle velocities were stillaround 725 fps +/- 5 fps. Off-handgroups shrunk to a couple inches andfouling, even after 25-30 rounds, neverimpaired accuracy or function. Recov-ered bullets showed the skirts hadexpanded to engage the rifling as hoped.

With good ammo in hand, regulatingthe sights was a snap. The .577 Red-hawk has performed flawlessly to date.Thanks to the weight reduction afforded

by .577 chambers and bore, handling islight and quick. Recoil is substantial,much like a heavy .44 Magnum loadingbut without the bite and piercing report.Scientific penetration tests conductedagainst a handy fence post demonstratedvery modest penetration but a great dealof whack. After two or three solid hits,the post stayed right where it was,unable to escape.

Sadly, the future for newly-made.577 revolvers is pretty bleak. TheNational Firearms Act of 1934 classi-fies rifled, breech-loading guns withbores larger than .5" as “destructivedevices” and levies on the transfer ofsuch arms a $200 tax. Production forresale of destructive devices requires alicense costing thousands of dollars ayear to maintain.

Big-bore sporting long arms arelargely exempt but the BATF wouldnot extend any such sympathy to a.577 revolver and treats the gun exactlythe same as a 155MM howitzer. Quitea distinction for a revolver that wasstate of the art in 1885. Within a fewyears of their introduction, the .577revolvers disappeared, usurped bysmaller guns made possible by smoke-less power — yet another argument infavor of ammunition aschicken and gun as egg.

More info: www.bowenclassicarms.com.

form of collet crimping saved the day.All that remained to complete the

basic cartridge design was to procure asuitable parent case. Perusing spec sheetson virtually every known cartridge caseturned up nothing useful. Alas, our babywas a bastard. Nothing would do but tomake cases. Obviously, drawn brasswould have been prohibitively expensiveso we turned to the Ballard Rifle & Car-tridge Company who, at the time, pro-duced excellent turned brass (now pro-duced by Rocky Mountain CartridgeCompany). With the flexibility of CNCmachinery, they could make cases of vir-tually any description. And thus wasborn the .577 No. 2 revolver cartridge.

Redhawk ReboreThe smallest .577 revolver cartridge

still required a substantial gun. At thetime, the Ruger Redhawk was theobvious candidate since no othernormal revolver had its cylinder andbarrel shank diameters. Even then, the.577 No. 2 Revolver cartridge is a tightfit. The chamber walls and webs of the5-shot cylinder are quite thin, limitingthe gun to black powder pressures. Bar-rels with .565" bore and .577" groovediameters are not a size found in nature,so to speak, but we were able to gullour good friend Cliff LaBounty intomaking a rifling head to rebore theoriginal Redhawk barrel. In keeping

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