45 Talk

Only a few days from now will be the 15th Anniversary of the unprovoked Radical Islamic Terrorist Attack on our Great Nation that occurred on September 11th of 2001.

The lives of nearly 3000 people were snuffed out of existence that day. People that were only going about their normal business. Enormous damage was done to buildings and cities as well.

Please talk it over with your friends and neighbors. Tell you young children about what happened, We must never forget this event.

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I know. I am a 45 guy and this is a 45 Blog so why is this post titled 356TSW?

Within the last several years I have become more involved in this almost dead rimless cartridge.

Smith and Wesson created the 356TSW in the early 1990s to help competition shooters. Unfortunately some rules changes in the various shooting sports nullified it’s advantages even before it had a chance to get out of the gate.

The cartridge is extremely similar to a 9MM Luger with the exception that the cartridge case is .35MM longer. The cartridge is also designed to operate at 50,000PSI as opposed to the 9MM Luger’s 35,000 PSI. This brings the performance into the 357 Magnum arena

Both cartridges are loaded to the same Cartridge Overall Length. This allows the 356TSW to be fired in 9MM sized platforms.  Unlike the bottlenecked 357SIG, magazine capacity is not reduced when using 356TSW.

Additionally, the initial firearms that Smith and Wesson released for this cartridge are very attractive (at least in my opinion)

The 3566 Limited was the full size offering. All stainless construction, 5″ barrel and 15+1 standard magazine capacity.

The 3566 Compact is the ONLY all stainless compact frame, double stack autoloader that the Smith and Wesson Performance Center has produced. The additional weight made the little pistol a pleasure to shoot.

There was even a 5 shot J-frame for concealed carry, the Performance Center 940 Special. However, this little revolver, nicknamed the Pocket Rocket, is a handful to shoot.

So few folks know that this era in Smith and Wesson firearms even existed I really want to get the word out.

Additionally, when I was first researching the cartridge I only found bits and pieces of information scattered around the web. So I created www.356TSW.Com. It is my hope that those of use still using, loading and experimenting with the fine cartridge can consolidate out information, thoughts and dreams in a single location.

Perhaps the 356TSW will live on.

So please visit www.356TSW.Com and look around if you find this interesting. Contribute if you want but enjoy it even if you are not going down the 356TSW path