One was the so-called “Treasury load,” a 110-grain jacketed hollowpoint the other was the “FBI load,” a +P 158-grain lead semi-wadcutter hollowpoint. 38 Special, there were two preeminent loads for those who didn’t like. Back in the mid-1970s, during the final law enforcement pre-9mm hurrah for the. I decided to stick with two loads that would be period-appropriate selections from the Model 13’s heyday. Twenty-yard groups with 158-grain lead semi-wadcatter (c. Since I’d installed a lighter trigger return spring-a Wolff spring I bought from Brownells-the double-action pull weight on my Model 13 was just a hair over six pounds and smooth as butter. I chose 20 feet as the yardage to check the zero on those low-profile fixed sights. My days of shooting high-test magnums out of anything smaller than a Marlin lever action are pretty much done.Īnd there’s one more argument for a three-inch gun over the classic three-inch snubbie: The added stretch of sight radius makes the sight picture much more forgiving. 38s in the 125- to 158-grain weight range. Many hot hours slaving over a chronograph have shown me the velocity increase from a two- to a three-inch barrel is considerably more significant than that between a three- and four-inch barrel-particularly with +P. I’m a sucker for three-inch Smiths in either J- or K-frame configuration. The fact that it was a three-inch made it instantly more desirable. Seems Smith & Wesson made a limited run of square-butt three-inch guns for an Australian agency-some of which managed to filter back here to the States. Well, a bit of consultation with gun writer Massad Ayoob provided the answer. It was, he said, “carried a lot and shot a little.” Miller’s three-inch Model 13 sports a bobbed hammer and service-type stocks. I knew enough about the Model 13 to know that the cataloged three-inch guns of FBI fame all had round butts.