Ruger’s Super Redhawk in 10mm Auto Part 2

This is a wonderful time of year. It is often heard that mature people tend to lose their enthusiasm for birthdays. Not me. My family tends to give me gifts appropriate for a twelve year old; toys, baseball caps and books. I love it. A new game for PlayStation 4, an RC drone and lots of skill development books for writers. I think we all know what that last one is about.

Christmas is only a few days away, the tree is up and lit, a nativity scene adjacent and I am looking forward to a quiet Christmas with my wife. Family is spread out and far away, which usually leads to holiday travel, but this year we decided to enjoy the relaxed comfort of our home. My wife and I will make early phone calls to wish family Merry Christmas, to tell them we love and miss them. We’ll exchange small gifts and then settle in and prepare our Christmas dinner. For now, I am going listen to Elvis – Martina McBride Christmas duets and try to keep up with the writing schedule.

Initially, the plan was to take advantage of the Super Redhawk’s stout mechanical design and produce some hyperactive 10mm handloads with pressure levels above SAAMI, but well inside the design strength of the Super Redhawk. The problem is that I could accomplish the first, but not the second as experimenting based on purely anecdotal evidence could not deemed a solid approach. “And none of these blew up…” may be an meaningful observation, but not exactly a ringing endorsement for published data. Subsequently, that objective was abandoned and more traditional load data was developed. The load data that follows are intended for use in the Super Redhawk, it is not intended for auto loader consumption. For folks who want more power, I would point in the direction of the 41 Mag, 44 Mag, 454 Casull, 480 Ruger, etc.

Four bullets were selected for this exercise, each proven to be excellent within their intended application. The cast bullets are high penetration and low to no expansion. The Hornady, far right, offers less penetration, but good controlled expansion. The Remington GS penetrates 12″ – 14″ in soft tissue and full expansion without fragmentation. Drive it faster and it just gets bigger, but still penetrates approximately the same.

Assemble the bullets into charged and magnum primed cases and they look a lot like this. It is easy to take advantage of the Super Redhawk’s long cylinder and seat bullet further out than SAAMI spec. Theoretically, the increase in net case capacity would permit larger powder charges and more flexibility powder selection. As a practical matter, it did not. While numerous newer powder types could be loaded, none resulted in improved performance.

25 Yards is good, but why not 50 yards?

Since the Ruger Super Redhawk is a hunting pistol, it seemed like a 50 yard benchmark was more meaningful than 25 yards for the deer hunter. I realize the bow hunters have secret ninja skills, but anything less that 50 yards for a firearm hunter usually involves putting on a deer suit covered in mast. I am good for a 100 yards or more with a metallic sight rifle, thanks to a relatively long sight radius. Metallic sight handguns make me a 25 yard offhand shooter. To be fair to Ruger, the included scope rings were installed with a 7x scope and shooting was done with support from shot filled bags.

Shooting a 10mm Automatic chambered revolver is quite different than shooting an auto-loader chambered for the same. The weight of the revolver absorbs the bulk of the recoil, the longer barrel cuts down on report and muzzle rise is minimal. I did use moon clips to facilitate loading and ejecting empties, but I also occasionally loaded the Ruger’s chambers individually and easily extracted them with a thumb nail.

I own and shoot 10mm Automatic, auto loading handguns. I find them to be accurate, fast handling and lethal. The Ruger Super Redhawk makes a different case for the 10mm Automatic round. It fills a gap in power between the 41 Magnum and the 357 Magnum. There is a measurable and repeatable increase in 10mm Automatic power with the revolver over even a 6″ barrel auto loader. The Super Redhawk is a stronger design and offers a greater margin of safety. The Super Redhawk is softer shooting and easier to master than an auto loader and more accurate. It is an interesting firearm.