I don't believe there's much out there smoother than an old M29.
Mine's a 4" blued model. Had it since the early 80's. Carried it for awhile, too, as my duty gun.
Remington used to make a .44 magnum load called a mid range load. Supposed to be a 240 grain semi-wadcutter (not as sharply contoured as your Keith style bullets) at around 1100 fps. That's what I carried in the gun. I had some more of that in speed loader on my belt and one or two speed loaders of Remington 240 grain hollow points as well.
Tough believing what those big bullets will penetrate till you take one out and shoot different stuff with it.
People would look at the back end of it (in the holster) and say, "Man, that's a big gun. What caliber is it?" I'd smile and tell them it was a S&W M27. In the holster there wasn't any good way for them to tell lack of barrel taper wasn't visible.
After I'd been carrying mine for a year or so my sometimes partner went out and bought a 6" M29, nickel plated. Big shiny gun.
One night we were "wrestling" with a big tough drunk. I've got an arm, I'm trying not to get stepped on, my partner's got the guy in a head lock and next thing I know my partner reaches down, unstraps that M29 and draws it back to smack the guy in the head with it.
There were people all around us in the lobby of the building and I could tell by the look on some faces they thought they were about to witness a shooting. I hollered, loudly, at my partner a couple times and he turned his head to look at me and I just shook my head and told him, "NO!!" and sort of nodded my head at all the people with horrified looks on their faces. He put it away, I got the guys other arm and we got the cuffs on him and took him to jail.
On the way to the jail my partner looked over at me and said, "I wasn't going to shoot him. I just wanted to get his attention." I knew that and told him I believed him. I just didn't want to see him maybe get in trouble for hurting the guy real bad. My partner was one of those guys who just didn't seem to know his own strength.
And, he couldn't shoot that M29 worth beans. I don't know if it was the recoil or just a lack of skill.
You did pretty good, double action and all. It is a smooth working piece of machinery. You can talk about K and L frames all you want (I have both) but they just don't compare to a M29.
Hey, did yours have that darn grooved trigger on it? Mine did. Darn thing would eat the skin off my trigger finger after a couple boxes of .44 magnum ammo. I bought a smooth trigger and put in it pretty quick after getting it. And I changed out the grips for a set of the soft rubber Pachmayrs.
If you were living/working out in SD there's places you might have to stretch that thing out to a 100 yds. or more. They do great at those ranges, or even more. You just gotta learn were to hold on the target (or how much of the front sight to hold above the top of the rear sight.)
