[1911Tuner]

In the summer of 2007, a friend and I designed an experiment.

He brought a pair of RG .38 revolvers with 2-inch barrels. For those who've never had the pleasure, RG barrels are ridiculously easy to remove. Knock out the crosspin and pull the barrel out of the frame. The barrel is no more than a steel tube with a pot metal shroud pressed over it.

I set the barrel/cylinger gap to as close to identical as I could, and replaced the barrel. There was just enough rifling in the leade to stabilize the bullet.

Then I lopped off one barrel flush with the frame and reinstalled it. We bought a 50-round box of 158-grain lead RN standard velocity ammunition and set up the Chrony 15 feet distant. The morning was perfect for chronographing with no wind and a light overcast with an ambient temperature of approximately 80 degrees.

We carefully fired three five shot groups from each revolver...averaged the results...and compared.

There was a 58 foot per second difference between the one with the 2-inch barrel and the one with a quarter-inch barrel with barely any rifling.

Then I figured what the hello...the Chrony was old and I wanted an excuse to buy a new one...so we removed the lopped-off barrel completely...and chronographed another five rounds just for giggles

It lost another 11 fps to the 2-inch barrel. A piece of cardboard behind the chronograph showed that the bullets barely keyholed instead of flipping 90 degrees and destroying the Chrony like we expected.

69 feet per second difference between 2 inches of barrel and no barrel...with the bullet yawing between the screens.

More...an uninterested party was drafted to fire the guns in a back-to-back blind test to see if he could discern any difference in recoil. He couldn't.

Interesting.