Thoughts on the Smith & Wesson 340

[Anthony]

Hello Everyone,

After listening to the Pro Arms team talk about the S&W 340 Centennial in .357 Magnum I had a thought.

Has anyone tried equipping a 340 with a set of larger grips and having it Magnaported before shooting Magnums through it?

Granted it would make the gun a bit large for an ankle holster, but the grips should not be a problem for pocket carry with a certain amount of care when picking the pants.

Many years ago I had good luck with this approach on a snubby .41 Magnum with a 3-inch barrel.  Full house loads had lots of blast, but muzzle flip and recoil was very manageable.  The 657 had traditional Magnaporting and Pachmayr Decelerator Presentation rubber grips.

I was digging around in my gun room yesterday and came across two sets of Farrar rubber J-frame grips and this got me thinking.  So I bolted one onto my 642 and fired some hot .38 Special +P through the gun rapidly with one hand.  The results are subjective of course, but very promising in my eyes based on my past experience.

Thoughts?

Anthony

[flop-shank]

Anthony, there was a guy on S&W forum who had done that (Mag-na-porting) a few years ago and he claimed it helped a lot. There was also a guy who used to ankle carry an N frame snub (Crazy kenny, I think), so I'm thinking that what you're proposing is actually quite doable. It's always cool seeing people think outside the box and explore the outer limits of what is doable for themselves.

I haven't tried a ported scandium J yet, but I've reached the point that I'm not going hotter than SB .357s in my 360 PD and that's for right handed use only (old injury to base of left thumb). The last time i tried to make full power 125 gr. magnums work in my 360 I fired one cylinder and my right hand was screwed up for a month and a half. If you don't already own a scandium J frame I would stick with the 642. I think the Airweights (642, 442 ect.) are more accurate.

I wanted to run something hotter than +Ps in my weak side front pocket gun, so I went the other direction and bought a S&W 640 (all stainless steel). I currently stoke it with Speer SB .357s. If you want to use something with more power than .38 +p that is the course I would recommend.