One of our Club members passed in June and his widow contacted us about helping her organize his firearms, ammo, and reloading gear for sale. He had a bunch of rifles and shotguns but just a few handguns.

Among his handguns was a well-worn M19-3, with a 4” barrel. Serial number starts with a 2K and puts the build date in mid-1971.  By “well-worn” I mean the bluing on the cylinder is worn and blotchey, and the same also in spots on the barrel. It was wearing non-factory wood grips with finger-grooves.

Looked it over closely and found that it’s mechanically tight with a great trigger, and the owner kept the barrel clean after shooting it. Excellent crown.  Cylinder chambers looked clean too.

I looked through his reloaded ammo and the hand-written notes he put in the boxes (about 500-rds total), and it appears all he every shot was mid-range 38 Specials loads: 158grn lead boolits over Bullseye. Some wadcutters too.  There was only one box of (unfired) .357 handloads which, per the dated note, he loaded up about a year before he passed.

The widow had the M19-3 price-tagged at $400, so that’s what I gave her (cash), plus another $100 for all his handloads.

So my question for the S&W K-frame experts is: how much standard .357 factory ammo can these older 4” K-frames actually handle?

Or should I just stick to shooting .38 Spc.. factory ammo and equivalent handloads?

The answer is quite a bit and yes. I suggest 158 gr loads for the magnums.  The old "Gun will destroy itself" gunshop BS is just that.  Will it crack the forcing cone eventually? Possibly,  at round count 50K or so.

Shooting strictly magnums is unpleasant and pricey. Just stick with .38's.

I have a m19 very much like you described. In my case the damage to the bluing was a result of being stored in an acid tanned leather holster.
That gun may have less use than you think.

Hot 125gr loads are what give people concern for wear

Is it pinned and recessed?

That was the conventional wisdom I remember. Stay away from hot 125 grain loads, they erode  and eventually crack the forcing cone.

Cool. I have a minty S&W 19

What’s it worth?

Thanks for that tip.

He did have several old leather holsters in a box on a desk in the room we were in. I didn’t really look them over though.

Yes, this one is p.&.r-ed.

Is it a 19-3, … or?

These days that's about as spicy as factory 125gr loads get but you can buy hotter 125gr (Buffalo Bore list 1700fps in their 125gr loading) or load them hotter yourself.    

Just to be on the safe side, I wouldn't shoot a lot of them in an older K frame gun but I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a couple boxes if the gun was tight.  The flame cutting of the top strap and cracked forcing cones were when the police departments and competitors were shooting thousands of rounds and Smith was cutting the forcing cones flat on the bottom so they were thinner there.  I've heard at least one gunsmith say that the older powders were part of the problem and that the biggest issue wasn't cracked forcing cones but that the K frames were getting pounded to the point they were getting loose so you had end shake that opened up the cylinder gap.  I prefer 158gr anyways.


OP if the gun was shot almost exclusively with .38s make sure that there isn't a carbon ring in the chambers.  I've shot enough 158gr lead reload .38s that I was unable to load .357s until I cleaned it thoroughly.  

Don't forget about the old 110gr Super-Vel .357, back when moar velocity was believed to make it a death ray.

The bottom of the forcing cone is the point of failure, but it should take A LOT of standard pressure 158gr .357s to crack. For most shooters it's a total non-issue. If you still shoot a couple hundred a weekend (this seems to be getting more and more rare), it will catch up eventually.

It has target adjustable sites and best I remember the under barrel part goes about halfway down

I’ll look when I get back to the shop

Thanks. I did check and the chambers were clean. I cleaned them again anyway.

The barrel back toward the forcing cone did have a spot of lead “shine” there,  so I brushed it quite a bit with bore cleaner and let it sit before running patches thru the barrel.

I like to shoot a lot of lead bullets in my revolvers, so a Lewis lead remover is a part of my cleaning routine, available at Brownells.

Thank you!  I’ll check that out.

Pricey, yes. But unpleasant? Not particularly. I like shooting 158gr .357's in my 19-2 and actually have more issues shooting magnums in my 4inch M28.

That's them right there, I've got about 500 of these. As far as I know this is the only ammo Remington ever loaded that is hot AF.  In a K/L frame they're brutal, in a J frame................nope, nope, nope.

I never stumble into deals like that

I have a 19-3 myself and I basically shoot .38s and a few boxes of .38 +P+ “Treasury” loads every year or so.  I picked her up used about 15 years ago when I was living up in Alaska. She looked to be in good shape back then and I don’t know if the previous owner went butt-wild with .357 magnum rounds, being up in Alaska, and she’s too pretty to take a chance.  So, I’m good with mainly sticking with factory .38 LRN or FMJ loads through her and these days, .357 cost way too much anyway and I see this as a win-win when I’m killing paper targets.

Man I can’t stumble on deals like that to save my life.

19-3's are awesome...

I got mine through a similar circumstance - widow selling her husbands duty gun. Small town dept so carried a lot, shot very little.

W296 125gr loads give me purpose in life.

Nothing like waiting till right before dusk and doing a cylinder dump. It's like the 4th of July.

If you had to use then in self defense, you have a handgun/flashbang combo.

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