copaup
Member
I picked up one of the new Smith and Wesson M29 Mountain Guns the other day. I'm a sucker for blued steel and wood grips, and am thrilled that Smith is at least trying to bring them back to some extent. Since I just picked up a vintage 29-2 I decided that the new Mountain Gun would be a great companion peice and something that I can shoot without worrying about causing undue wear. Six Franklins and some change later and the new MG was riding home with me.
The gun looks pretty good. The blue, while nowhere near as deep and nicely done as the classic Smith blue, is even and attractive. The tapered barrel looks fantastic, and I have always liked the way the MG felt in my hand. The gun comes with 2 sets of grips. The omnipresent Hougue Monogrip, and a set of wood grips that are reminscent of Nills. With the exception of the "Mountain" laser cut into the bottom of the grips they look pretty good. Sadly, the finger grooves were apparently designed for some kind of evil 3 fingered robot from the future as the first groove is big enough for 2 of my fingers and the others are too small. The grip is also very narrow. Hmmm, mayhaps this could be a problem. The Hougue is a Hougue, black rubber, finger grooves, and ugly as sin.
The gun has the lock, but it isn't as glaring as on the stainless guns. I never plan to lock it, and will just try to ignore its existence. I had a 629 (had to liquidate it after my first marriage ended) and the lock never gave me any problems and that gun ate some fairly warm loads.
I almost swapped the wood grips for the rubber before going to the range, but hey, I'm a tough guy. I like recoil. Rubber is ugly. I'm also not real bright. Those grips that looked too narrow? Yeah, they are too narrow. They also had some kind of slightly sharp edge up around the top that I didn't notice. Well, I noticed it after the first round of full power magnum loads. It took a nice little peice out of the web of my hand. Recoil was fearsome, even with fairly moderate loads like the 240 grain hydroshock and the 210 grain silvertip. I shot a lot of these out of my old 629, and really don't remember them hurting this much. Certainly they don't sting like this coming out of the 6.5 inch 29.
The gun was scary accurate, firing neat cloverleaf groups at 15 yards off hand with 44spl. The magnums were equally accurate, but after a few cylinders a nasty flinch set in and I called it quits for the day with the big iron.
Trigger pull is fair, but not anything special. Single action is crisp, but double action is heavy and stacks noticably at the end. Hopefully it will wear in a bit, but if not it won't be hard to find someone to clean it up a bit.
Overall I am pleased. The gun was a pussycat with 44 spl and controllable with the new gold dot 44 magnum "short barrel" load (really more of a heavy special, 200 gr at around 1075 fps). The grips have to go. I hate the way the monogrip looks on the gun and the wood grips are just plain painful. I'm thinking about either the new Ahrends target grips or similar. I carried it today in an old Don Hume pancake. It tickles me when people complain about having trouble concealing a compact Glock. I carried this howitzer 12 hours under a loose sweater and didn't get as much as a funny look. It's not replacing my Glock 19 or my Sig 229 in the carry rotation anytime soon, but every once in a while its fun to strap on a big sixgun.
The gun looks pretty good. The blue, while nowhere near as deep and nicely done as the classic Smith blue, is even and attractive. The tapered barrel looks fantastic, and I have always liked the way the MG felt in my hand. The gun comes with 2 sets of grips. The omnipresent Hougue Monogrip, and a set of wood grips that are reminscent of Nills. With the exception of the "Mountain" laser cut into the bottom of the grips they look pretty good. Sadly, the finger grooves were apparently designed for some kind of evil 3 fingered robot from the future as the first groove is big enough for 2 of my fingers and the others are too small. The grip is also very narrow. Hmmm, mayhaps this could be a problem. The Hougue is a Hougue, black rubber, finger grooves, and ugly as sin.
The gun has the lock, but it isn't as glaring as on the stainless guns. I never plan to lock it, and will just try to ignore its existence. I had a 629 (had to liquidate it after my first marriage ended) and the lock never gave me any problems and that gun ate some fairly warm loads.
I almost swapped the wood grips for the rubber before going to the range, but hey, I'm a tough guy. I like recoil. Rubber is ugly. I'm also not real bright. Those grips that looked too narrow? Yeah, they are too narrow. They also had some kind of slightly sharp edge up around the top that I didn't notice. Well, I noticed it after the first round of full power magnum loads. It took a nice little peice out of the web of my hand. Recoil was fearsome, even with fairly moderate loads like the 240 grain hydroshock and the 210 grain silvertip. I shot a lot of these out of my old 629, and really don't remember them hurting this much. Certainly they don't sting like this coming out of the 6.5 inch 29.
The gun was scary accurate, firing neat cloverleaf groups at 15 yards off hand with 44spl. The magnums were equally accurate, but after a few cylinders a nasty flinch set in and I called it quits for the day with the big iron.
Trigger pull is fair, but not anything special. Single action is crisp, but double action is heavy and stacks noticably at the end. Hopefully it will wear in a bit, but if not it won't be hard to find someone to clean it up a bit.
Overall I am pleased. The gun was a pussycat with 44 spl and controllable with the new gold dot 44 magnum "short barrel" load (really more of a heavy special, 200 gr at around 1075 fps). The grips have to go. I hate the way the monogrip looks on the gun and the wood grips are just plain painful. I'm thinking about either the new Ahrends target grips or similar. I carried it today in an old Don Hume pancake. It tickles me when people complain about having trouble concealing a compact Glock. I carried this howitzer 12 hours under a loose sweater and didn't get as much as a funny look. It's not replacing my Glock 19 or my Sig 229 in the carry rotation anytime soon, but every once in a while its fun to strap on a big sixgun.
