Bought a $150 .357 Mag.

Well I grabbed this enormous revolver a day or two ago for $150.

It is marked "Arminius HW357" and was imported by FIE quite a while back.

The majority of the gun is steel but the trigger guard and vent rib are both zamak castings. It shoots great, I've put about 150 rounds of .38 special and 50 rounds of .357 magnum down range with good results and accuracy.

I mainly got it as a woods gun for .38 shotshells and occasional range use with .38sp.

I bought it on impulse and really don't know that much about it. Anybody have more information on them?

Here it is:

Yeah I didn't really buy it as a high volume shooter, I mainly bought it for a snake gun/occasional range gun. I figured that the 6" barrel would help the shotshells to group well.

The frame seems to be steel because it attracts a magnet and is blued rather than painted but there is basically NO available source of parts for them which is why I don't intend to shoot it much.

Onward Allusion said:

I had a couple of Arminius HW7 (22LR) though the years. They were actually rather well made. Always functioned fine and were more accurate than me. Due to the Zamack frame, I'd stick to target 38 spl rounds. For defense, stick to wadcutters.

Click to expand...

Frame is steel. Only the trigger guard and vent rib are made of zamak.

ljnowell said:

Is that a swing-out single action, or a double action? The trigger seems a little far back with hammer down to be a double. Interesting looking revolver anyway.

Click to expand...

It is DA/SA. The double action trigger isn't really good at all but the single action is honestly great.

Clark said:

Some of the frame bluing and polish would be hard to get on Zinc.

Click to expand...

I may be confused about what you mean.

The two zinc cast parts are simply finished with what looks like black paint. The rest of the gun is blued.

The trigger guard is seperate from the one piece frame.

Clark said:

Kiln, my observations were agreeing with your information.

I just did not use the right words.

I have rubbed a lot of cold blues on a lot of different steel, and getting something to look like the pic behind the cylinder is not easy.

Click to expand...

Ah alright, so I did misunderstand. My mistake.