Category: All About Guns
Revolvers are regaining some lost popularity, but some of the common knowledge from 20 or 30 years ago
hasn’t yet been recovered.
I’ve reached the age where I occasionally forget what other people don’t know. More accurately, I’ve forgotten what I’ve forgotten. Some of the things I’m seeing newer shooters struggle with were so thoroughly baked into my training decades ago that I stopped thinking about them. They weren’t instinctive; they were simply the accepted way of doing things when I learned them.
That’s particularly apparent to me when it comes to revolvers. The wheelgun has made something of a comeback as a defensive handgun, and I’m happy to see more people talking about, carrying and training with sixguns. At the same time, I’m seeing some remarkably inefficient — and occasionally downright sketchy — reloading techniques demonstrated in the popular media by people who ought to know better. In most cases, I suspect the problem isn’t a lack of interest or effort. It’s simply that somewhere along the way, the way we taught people to run a revolver changed—or stopped being taught altogether.
I learned differently. My revolver training came at a time when police officers and serious defensive shooters routinely spent a lot of time learning how to run a wheelgun. The techniques were drilled until they became second nature, and I hadn’t thought much about any of it in years because, to me, there was never much mystery to reloading a revolver. Watching these more recent demonstrations reminded me that what I considered basic knowledge isn’t necessarily basic knowledge anymore.
So, let’s go back to how we were taught to do it “back in the day.”
The Old Guys
I was pretty much the last generation of police officers who grew up with revolvers as duty guns. In my case, that meant the classic Smith & Wesson Model 19. By the time I attended the police academy, I had already been issued the “cutting-edge” Smith & Wesson 4506, but during the couple of years I worked the road as a sheriff’s deputy, all my training and qualifications were with a revolver. I suppose you could call me a “wheelgun-native” shooter, although I’m not sure such a distinction belongs on a business card.
I am, however, proud to point out that unlike some of the Johnny-come-lately experts demonstrating these techniques, I’ve actually pointed an actual revolver at actual bad guys during actual police work. That doesn’t make me an authority on everything involving revolvers, but it does mean I have some firsthand experience in circumstances a lot more complicated than days on the square range.
Terminology
Before getting into technique, it helps to make sure we’re all singing off the same sheet of music. First, the basics: there are three kinds of handgun reloads—a speed load, a tactical load and an administrative reload.
A speed load is the one you must perform. You’ve fired the gun empty and need ammunition RIGHT NOW in the middle of a fight. This also touches on one of the legitimate disadvantages of carrying a revolver for self-defense. Even a very well-practiced revolver shooter is going to be slower getting six (or whatever) more rounds into a cylinder than a comparably skilled shooter will be swapping magazines in a semi-auto. If you choose a wheelgun for defensive use, you should understand its limitations rather than pretending they don’t exist.
A tactical load is different because it happens when you can reload, rather than absolutely having to. Perhaps there has been a lull in the fight; you’ve fired several rounds and want to start the next few minutes of your life with a full cylinder. In fact, I’d argue a tactical reload is even more important with a revolver because it’s much slower and you’re probably starting with fewer rounds than virtually any modern defensive pistol.
Finally, there’s an administrative reload. This is what you do on the range when nothing really matters except safety. Under those circumstances, it doesn’t really matter how you get the cartridges into the gun, but that doesn’t mean you should practice poor technique. If you spend hundreds or thousands of repetitions doing something one way because you’re thinking, “I’ll do it properly when it matters,” you’re kidding yourself.
Brent is a huge proponent of the support-side revolver reload (in this case, using his left hand for a right-handed shooter).
By using this hand position, the revolver is cradled with the cylinder locked out and immobile. Now you can run,
jump and scramble without having to figure out where the holes are!
Strong or Support?
There are two basic ways to manipulate a revolver during a reload. A strong-side reload keeps the revolver in your shooting hand while your support hand performs the reload. A support-side reload transfers the revolver to your support hand, allowing your shooting hand to manipulate the ammunition and the gun during the loading process.
I strongly favor the support-side technique; it’s the method I was taught and practiced during my police training. Proponents of the strong-side reload will point out that you don’t have to completely give up your firing grip and that it can be fast when performed by someone highly proficient. The problem, at least to me, is what happens to the cylinder once you open it and start moving around.
A revolver cylinder is a floppy thing when it isn’t locked into the frame. On a square range, with your feet planted and your hands working exactly as you command, it’s not much of a problem. But a defensive reload may happen while you’re moving, running, fighting or ‘merely’ trying to keep your balance on a loose, slippery or uneven surface. I can also guarantee you’ll be dealing with an adrenaline dump that might leave your hands shaking like a toy poodle on meth. Now you’ve got to line up a half-dozen fresh cartridges with a cylinder that is moving around at the end of your arm.
A strong-side reload allows you to keep a firing grip on the gun, but at the cost of the cylinder not being anchored
in one static location. If you’re standing still, this works fine, but a real-world fight involves lots of movement.
You might be able to get a finger into the cylinder opening to stabilize it — or you might not, because keeping a semblance of a firing grip makes it awkward. Worse, the cylinder could even relatch itself while you’re trying to get everything lined up.
This is also why the support-side reload was traditionally taught to police officers back in those days when we rode dinosaurs on patrol. It wasn’t because somebody decided it was the fashionable way to reload a revolver; instead, hard-won trial and error proved the technique provided a more stable platform for manipulating the gun under less-than-ideal circumstances.
The Speed Load
The basic speed-load sequence isn’t complicated, but it needs to be practiced until you don’t have to consciously think about every step. Start by opening the cylinder with the thumb of your shooting hand. Immediately transfer the revolver to your support hand and use a couple of fingers — typically the middle and ring fingers — through the frame to hold the cylinder open against its stop.
To empty the revolver of spent cases in a support-side reload, you simply invert your hand, use your thumb
to push on the extractor rod, and gravity helps all the empty cases go to the ground.
Next, turn the revolver upside down so the muzzle points toward the sky. This is where gravity becomes your friend. With the gun inverted, use the support hand to operate the ejector rod and force the empty cases out of the cylinder.
If one of the cases sticks, you can use the palm of your shooting hand to smack the ejector rod and give it some additional persuasion. Keep in mind, however, that if the case is really stuck, this probably isn’t going to be particularly pleasant, so you may have just created two problems instead of one.
Once the empties are out, invert the revolver again so the muzzle points downward. The shooting hand can then bring the fresh ammunition to the cylinder. A speedloader is the optimal choice for a true speed load; speed strips are less handy, and loose cartridges are the last choice because you’re introducing more individual manipulations into a process where speed and simplicity are the objectives.
After the ammunition is inserted, close the cylinder firmly with the support-hand thumb, transfer the revolver to the shooting hand and go back to work.
The Tactical Load
A tactical reload starts much the same way. Open the cylinder and transfer the revolver to the support hand, but instead of inverting the gun, keep the muzzle pointed down. Operate the ejector rod enough to lift the fired cases partially out of the cylinder, then use the shooting hand to pluck out the empty cases and replace them with fresh ammunition.
This is where a speed strip becomes particularly useful. A speedloader is fast, but it also encourages you to dump the entire cylinder and replace all six rounds, even the unfired ones. With a speed strip, you can replace only the ammunition you’ve shot. This is the reason experienced revolver shooters often carry both a speedloader and a speed strip.
This is a normal daily ammunition loadout for many revolver carriers — the speed loader is for speed reloads,
the speed strip is for tactical reloads, and a couple of spare rounds in the pocket allow for a secondary tactical
reload and serve as backup.
A couple of loose rounds in your shooting-side pocket aren’t a bad idea, either. However, there is a considerable argument to be made that all “crisis” reloads should simply be treated as speed loads. If you’ve dumped several unfired cartridges onto the ground in the process, you can always retrieve them later if there’s truly a lull in the fight.
Of course, those cartridges may have gone underwater, landed in mud or rolled into a sewer grate. At that point, you’ve essentially thrown away perfectly good ammunition, which makes the argument for a tactical reload a bit more compelling.
If pressed for a non-negotiable answer, I lean toward the speed-load approach. My concern is that if I’m in a genuine fight, I have no idea how much manual dexterity I’ll have. Imagine trying to pluck individual cartridges from a cylinder while your fingers are doing the Macarena, then seeing your spare ammunition supply become six individual pieces of litter.
If you prefer to retain unfired rounds and replace only the empties, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The important thing is to understand the difference and practice whichever method you intend to use.
There’s that word, “practice.” Do I need to say it again?
There’s another consequence of using the support-side reload that isn’t immediately obvious. If you’re transferring the revolver to your support hand and using your shooting hand to manipulate the ammunition, your reloads need to be readily accessible to your shooting hand.
That’s the opposite of what we’ve traditionally learned with a semi-auto pistol. Spare magazines normally ride on the support side because that’s the hand we’re going to use to retrieve them. With a revolver, the process is reversed. If the gun is going into your support hand, the speedloader or speed strip should be where your shooting hand can easily reach it. This is why the typical police duty belt of the revolver era had its double speedloader pouch on the same side as the holster.
Don’t Play Catch
There’s another old habit that needs to die: Don’t dump the empty cases into your hand.
This was a common practice taught to police officers, particularly on the range, and the reason was understandable. Academy instructors didn’t want a firing line full of recruits constantly bending over to pick up brass, so trainees were sometimes taught to eject the empties into their hands and retain them during the reload.
Unfortunately, there were instances in which officers killed in the line of duty were found still holding those empty cases. The story was repeated for years as something of an apocryphal warning, but there were enough actual examples to demonstrate that it wasn’t simply an old cop story. A habit learned on the range had carried over into a life-or-death situation.
;
Think about the mechanics. If you’re holding a handful of empty cases, you’ve added another complication to a process that already requires considerable manipulation. Now you have to retain those cases while operating the gun, find your fresh ammunition and get it into the cylinder. There’s simply no advantage to introducing that additional complexity.
Let the empties hit the ground.
I know some crusty old revolver shooters will disagree with me on this, and I know there are range circumstances where catching your brass is convenient. That’s fine. But don’t practice defensive reloads by keeping the empty cases in your hand simply because you’re worried about cleaning up the range afterward. If you want to police your brass, do it after you’ve finished practicing the real-world reload skill.
Moon clips are thin steel rings that hold ammunition and allow it to be fired in a properly sized revolver.
They primarily come in 2-, 3- and 6-round versions, with the 6-rounder often called a “full moon clip.”
Whatever size, they essentially function as a speed loader.
Practice Like You Fight
The administrative reload is where most of us get lazy. While there’s nothing wrong with a casual administrative reload, don’t confuse it with practicing a defensive reload.
If you carry a revolver for protection, frequently (I say “always”) practice the same support-side reloading technique you’ll use when it actually matters. Learn where your ammunition lives and how your hand finds the speedloader or speed strip without searching for it. Above all, practice the sequence until you don’t have to consciously work your way through it.
The goal here isn’t to become the world’s fastest revolver reloader. It’s to eliminate unnecessary decisions and movements so the process remains functional when your concentration, vision and manual dexterity aren’t at their best. As trainers are fond of saying, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
What We Forgot
Ultimately, as I set out to write this story, it was eye-opening to realize I had forgotten what I had forgotten. Revolver reloading wasn’t something I figured out on my own, nor was it an instinctive skill that somehow developed through years of shooting. It was simply part of the accepted, state-of-the-art training I received when revolvers were still a normal part of defensive handgun instruction. The techniques were taught, practiced and reinforced until you didn’t have to think much about them anymore.
Then revolvers largely disappeared from police holsters, semi-autos became the dominant defensive handgun, and some of that institutional knowledge disappeared with them. Now the wheelgun is “back,” and we’re having to rediscover some of what used to be standard practice.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Every generation gets to relearn some lessons, and the current interest in revolvers is an opportunity to preserve knowledge that otherwise might continue to fade.
If you’re going to carry a revolver, learn how to reload it properly and practice the technique until the mechanics are familiar and almost automatic. You may never need to perform a reload in a gunfight—and I sincerely hope you don’t—but if you do, that’s a lousy time to discover you’ve forgotten something you never knew you didn’t know.
We hit the range to check out the CMP’s M1903A3 Springfield expert reclaimed.
I remember going to gun shows looking for Mosin rifles with $100 in my pocket and the knowledge that I’d be able to walk out with a rifle, a tin of 440 rounds and some change to get a hot dog at the vending booth.
I think a lot of us took those days for granted. The Cosmoline-scented Saturdays and the thrill of finding a gun with the markings you wanted passed like wind in the night.
While we are no longer living in the golden age of military surplus, we are entering an era of rebirth and a desire to do right by these artifacts of a bygone era. As a broad category, the retro theme on new guns has evolved past a fad into a full-blown subset of the industry with a huge amount of effort being made to recreate faithful reproductions of some of our favorite historical guns.
They say legends never die, and in this case, the CMP has resurrected the M1903A3 Springfield in a very surprising way that combines historical parts with modern technology.
A Brief History of the M1903A3
The M1903A3 was one of the last iterations of the venerable M1903 rifle, itself a product of turn-of-the-century thinking surrounding ideal military rifles. While people tend to brush over a few details to separate this rifle from the naughty Germans and their internationally renowned Mauser, the M1903 is effectively a branch of the M98 family.
From a design standpoint, it did not necessarily improve on the mechanical function of the M98; however, it was generally considered to be an improvement in accuracy due to the excellent ammunition of the era and its extremely adjustable and precise rear sight as opposed to the more crude sights on foreign rifles.
The lessons learned in World War I eventually led to the development of self-loading designs, but by the time WWII began, American forces didn’t have nearly enough arms and equipment.
So, many designs intended for WWI, such as the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), Thompson submachine gun and the M1903, were put into mass production, many with changes to speed up manufacturing.
The M1903A3 was such a design, and it removed some of the more time-consuming elements from the M1903 as well as some streamlined components, such as a rear sight that was more in line with that of the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. The M1903A3 remained an accurate rifle, with its optically equipped variant, the M1903 A4 serving as a sniper rifle. The M1903A3 saw action globally and developed a positive reputation that remains to this day.
The postwar years were less kind. Because millions were made and people just had them around, the M1903A3 was nothing special and, as a result, it was consistently used as the base for the crime of sporterization.
Back then, people just didn’t quite understand that these common guns would be extremely valuable one day, and they chopped them up, refinished, re-barreled, and drilled-and-tapped countless rifles to hell. Many of these rifles were also deactivated, welded and chromed and made into parade and drill rifles. Such was the fate for tens of thousands of otherwise good rifles.
The butchery of our national history has thankfully become something of a massive party foul these days. Restorations have become the new hobby for the educated, and a small but dedicated group of companies have rallied to start producing new parts and stocks to get these old warriors back up and running.
The M1903A3 is the subject of this article, but shooters should know that there are new stocks and barrels for dozens of models of military rifles out there, from WWI 1903 sniper rifle variants to British Enfields, American and British P14 and P17 Enfield/Eddystones, Garands and M1 Carbines, and many more. Likewise, barrels are available from companies like Criterion for almost every modern American service rifle from Krags to Navy EBR variants.
The CMP’s Challenge
There have certainly been attempts to revive Springfield rifles. The first major situation that we need to address about this project is what was done to these rifles—in particular, when they were converted to parade and drill configuration.
Yes, it’s true there are plenty of firing examples of drill rifles. Although, over the years, the majority of these have been reduced to the status of a baton for marching bands. They became props, and the only thing that needed to work was the action of the bolt itself. Because these guns no longer needed to fire cartridges, the magazine cut-off selector switch was welded in place.
For the unfamiliar, the Springfield rifle features a magazine cut-off designed primarily to help conserve ammunition. The switch, when activated, only allows the bolt to travel partway backward, not enough to actually strip a round from the magazine. The idea was that you would have five rounds in the magazine and turn the magazine off, and for long-range combat, which was one of the general theories of the day, you would single-load individual cartridges into the chamber. If close combat was expected, you would turn the magazine on and allow the rifle to feed as it normally would.
However, in doing this, the people who were disabling the rifles ended up introducing the possibility of uneven heat by way of welding and damage to other places on the receiver. This led to a number of rumors that these receivers were no good … and even dangerous.
That said, there were quite a few of these sketchy projects that did end up being functional, albeit it varied considerably on who was doing the building. Since the metal could not be re-parkerized due to the amount of welding material permanently infecting the receiver, using Cerakote or Brownells Aluma-Hyde spray paint was the order of the day.
But, this wasn’t a true fix, and I’ve never seen one of these turn out looking right. The question of the receiver’s integrity remained, and there are a lot of people who simply avoid reclaimed receivers like the plague.
This stigma has existed for as long as I can remember, and it’s consistent today. When I go through my local gun shops, I’m always hunting for military rifles, and I have passed on a number of rebuilt Springfields just for this reason.
I know plenty of guys have shot these rifles for the past 20 years in competition, with many of the guns seeing thousands of rounds of ammunition after being nice and heated up during rapid-fire stages.
There has been the presence of rumors that suggest you are effectively playing with a hand grenade, but just like so much of the Fudd lore that exists in this culture, I have never been able to track down a single example of this actually happening.
Myth Busting and Modern Magic
I recently had a meeting with my friend Chris Hord, the CMP’s chief product officer. One of the things Hord and I talked about was the persistent stigma against the reclaimed receivers and the possibly dangerous quality of the heat damage. This was the first step in this project. The CMP accumulated massive quantities of deactivated Springfield rifles over the years and needed to figure out a way to get these guns up and running again.
Knowing that their customer is ultimately not just a collector, but a shooter as well, the idea to bring these rifles back started in early 2024. It wouldn’t be good enough to just get the guns physically functional—they also had to look right as well. This began a serious effort to look into not just the mythology around reclaimed receivers, but if there was actually a sliver of truth to the old lore that these were one step away from failing. The thing about old wives’ tales is that there’s usually a small grain of truth buried in there somewhere that is enough to create doubt.
To get this project off the ground, the CMP needed to figure out an R&D process to determine if there was any truth to the rumors and address them in a way that worked on a mass scale. The heat treat on these guns was effectively case hardening. In theory, the high welding temperature could cause cracking. To figure out just what they were working with from a strength perspective, the CMP did some pretty radical test testing consisting of completely removing the heat treat from a number of receivers, making them effectively soft. These are kneeled receivers then intricately measured next to complete receivers that were in original condition. All of the receivers were then test-fired with high-pressure test loads, as well as standard ammunition. They were then measured again.
Even when completely soft, no receivers exploded, and the amount of material distortion was barely noticeable. The idea that they would simply explode because of a weld on the back of the receiver was effectively a busted myth.
To further their testing, the CMP sent out receivers to be sectioned and examined for cracking in the heat affected areas at a special lab in Atlanta. This testing showed that there was risk of damage in these areas, and the metal was affected by the high nickel content.
Welding material needed to be completely removed. To accomplish this, the CMP uses an advanced machine process to remove this material, and it is then replaced with comparable steel and then re-machined to spec. To further prove their dedication to doing this in the best, most thorough way possible, they also magnetic-particle inspect every single receiver.
Each individual receiver that’s built into a rifle is dual-field inspected and certified by serial number. If this doesn’t remove all doubt, I personally don’t know what would.
We’ve Got the Lock. How About the Stock and Barrel?
Criterion is a name that anybody in the competitive shooting world should know already. I’ve been shooting their barrels for national matches for years and have always been impressed. All three of my Fulton Armory National Match rifles (Garand, M1 Carbine and M14/M21) wear Criterion barrels, as does my CMP-restored 1898 Krag. Criterion is a large manufacturer that turns out an insane number of barrels, and I have always enjoyed the fact that they spend the time to deliver products for these older guns.
CMP Springfield here has a standard 1903 A3 barrel; it’s not chrome lined, and it’s chambered in .30-06. These Criterion barrels shoot incredibly well. Right out the gate, I tested this rifle with five different loads and the accuracy was better than I had hoped for across the board.
Off the bench at 100 meters, all of my five-shot groups were under 2½ inches with the standard metallic sites on the rifle. This is definitely 10-ring quality. In theory, with any of the tested ammunition, you should be able to fire a gold medal score if you do your part.
The five ammunition types that I tested were CMP’s 150-grain Creedmoor match load, Hornady 168-grain Garand Match, Remington 150-grain UMC, USGI HXP and PPU 150-grain FMJ. The best groups were a toss-up between the Hornady and Creedmoor, with both averaging 1½ inches for 10, five-shot groups at 100 meters fired in succession. Remington UMC and old HXP still kept groups tight, but I did notice a general difference in the match loads living up to their name. The rifle was easy to operate with all ammunition types. I experienced no failures to feed or fire even during rapid fire simulation.
The stock on this rifle really needs to be experienced to be believed: It’s a copy of the much sought after Keystone C stock, widely considered to be the best stock profile for the Springfield. The manufacturer of this stock is Minelli in Italy—and the grain pattern on mine (featured in the photos of this article) is not special order. A large percentage of the stocks arriving at CMP have incredible grain patterns.
The ergonomics of this stock are incredible, and it feels great in the hand. The profile displays a somewhat flat area ahead of the front action screw that allows the rifle to sit very stable for offhand shots. The fit and quality are topnotch, and most of the stock hardware is original but in completely refinished, like-new condition.
Odds and Ends and Collector Perspective
Reclaimed rifles are usually cheaper than originals on the street, and many people avoid them because of the reasons discussed earlier. The M1903 and A3 have been on a bit of a roller coaster in terms of cost in the last 10 years, and in the same way that I heard moaning from collectors when the CMP released the new M1 Garand, the party poopers are more worried about their collection losing value than getting people on the line at Camp Perry.
The remarkable part is that this supreme match rifle retails at $1,050, putting it firmly into reasonable territory for most people who want to get to the line. The original guns, even if they have new barrels, are suddenly less appealing. The CMP rifles are effectively “new” guns, and they shoot like it. Factoring in the cost and guesswork of getting an original gun up and running, you’d pay a whole lot more and may not get the results you see here.
I don’t care if my military rifle collection ebbs and flows in value. I want guns I can shoot and have fun with, not just lock up and not hand down to the next generation.
While I’d like to end this on a truly positive note, I’m going to come out and say that the people with 50 Garands and Springfields who are hoarding and sitting on their dragons’ gold have no business complaining about these rifles because it’s this greed and hubris that have robbed future generations of shooters access to these pieces of our American heritage.
Driving up costs by creating scarcity has driven people away from the historical sites like Camp Perry and away from these guns.
The CMP is selling Garands for around $1,000 depending on options. Don’t pay idiot tax to people at gun shows selling these guns for double that; they literally aren’t worth it. Likewise, if you are a shooter who wants performance on the line winning medals, there isn’t a reason to pad some hoarder’s pockets when you can get the new standard in Springfield rifles shipped to you.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2026 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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