The revolver is dead, right?
Just 20 years ago, revolvers were dead. Colt and Dan Wesson had stopped making revolvers altogether. Taurus had just bought Rossi and was closing their revolver lines. Smith was trimming down their wheelgun offerings as was Ruger. Anyone forecasting what was to come would have surely pegged the downward spiral as one that would continue.
Well, a funny thing happened. Turned out, folks liked revolvers.
Colt is back making more than ever before. So is Smith. Two of Ruger’s top-selling product lines are the Wrangler .22 and the LCR, announced in 2017 and 2009, respectively. The biggest splash at SHOT Show 2016 was that Kimber was making revolvers. Rossi came back to the wheelgun world at this past SHOT Show.
Now, Henry, who has been a stalwart rifle and shotgun maker since they were re-booted in 1996, is making a .357 magnum revolver– and you know that I had to get one to try out.
The Big Boy is very S&W K-frame but with a brass backstrap/trigger guard.
A six-shot double-action/single-action medium-frame six-shooter, the Big Boy revolver is meant as a complementary wheel gun to the company’s popular Big Boy Brass Side Gate rifle, which carries an octagonal 20-inch blued steel barrel, American walnut furniture, and a polished hardened brass receiver. Likewise offered in .357/.38, it has a 10-round capacity via its underbarrel tube magazine.
More on what I have found out about the Big Boy in my column at Guns.com.
I will never see one in the UK that’s for sure. They are pretty. But I am not sure about the aesthetic cues to link them to their rifles. But I think if they had produced a SAA clone there would have been immediate comparisons to Ruger’s Blackhawks now the latter own Marlin. It would have been to on point shall we say? Pre-WWII Colt is then the way to go.