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44 Mag. JP Sauer & Sohn Montana Marshall


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Blast from the past a West German made 44 Mag. JP Sauer & Sohn Montana Marshall 5 1/2" barrel (yep the Sauer in Sig/Sauer) imported by Hawes. New to me from the 60's or 70's no real way I have found to date it with the serial number. some of the details, more on shooting later: 

Picked it up for $225.00 + $25.00 shipping + $15.00 to local FFL, but to me the gun seems well worth the $265.00.

All the metal parts fit and finish is really pretty good (the cast parts: ejector housing, trigger guard, and back strap could be a little better on the finish), on the other  hand the wooden grips had to be trimmed some and still need some work. The poor fit with the sharp edges at the back strap would have left a double racing stripe in the palm of your hand if shot with a heavy load before sanding them down some. The Italians (Uberti) now do a better job on fitting the grips and still use a hammer mounted firing pin where this gun has a floating firing pin but there is no transfer bar, so the old 5 shot 6 shooter rules apply.

I don't think it was shot much and signs point to it was never cleaned, looks like the cylinder pin was never even pulled out before. I had a time getting it out the old oil was holding it in the cylinder pretty damn good. Took it out cleaned it and the hole so now it slides in and out fine. On the subject of the cylinder this one is a recessed cylinder and that may not be a good thing on a single action, you can't see if it's loaded from looking at the side. Sure I know gate open, hammer to half cock, load one, skip one, load four, gate closed, hammer to full cock, and hammer down but its nice to be able to look to make sure you're dropping the hammer on an empty hole.

Alone, with its Ruger ammo share buddy, with one of its Italian .357 cousins.

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Edited by the 4th Doctor
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I’ve had a pile of foot problems lately that have kept be from doing a lot of stuff but I finally got to shoot a few shots out of the gun yesterday. With the load I was shooting it was going just a little high, left and right wasn’t bad. The load was 6 grains of W231 with the swaged SWC 240 grain Speer bullets at about 800 fps. Normally I shoot a lighter hard cast bullet but I need to use these up. Even a slow moving 240 grain bullet still packs a punch at that weight and speed you're still really looking at a 45 ACP type of power range.

 

Good trigger pull and plenty of power on the hammer / firing pin strikes. There was a rub after shooting the grips were a little loose. Screws on the back strap and trigger guard were tight so the wood has maybe shrunk some over the 40+ years of the guns life. I was going to refinish them anyway so I may have to add a little filler to get them tight again.

 

How accurate the story is I don’t know but part of my reading has said that when JP Sauer decided to get out of the revolver game (after a bunch of law suits where fast draw wanna be’s shot themselves in the leg) they sold the tooling to another German company that makes the EAA Bounty Hunter guns. The other company bought a license from Ruger to add a transfer bar and a few other changes were made but it’s basically still the same gun.

 

Think I'm going to keep this gun and maybe look for a new home for it's Italian cousins. The Ubertis aren't bad but I'm just not warming up to the black finish on them and I've got more guns than time right now.

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