.41 Magnum / .41 Remington Magnum (Handloader issue 357)

The .41 Remington Magnum entered the American revolver market in 1964. Its development is associated with prominent revolver advocates including Elmer Keith and Bill Jordan, and with the commercial participation of Remington and Smith & Wesson. The cartridge occupied a distinct position between the established .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum names. Its history combined discussion of a possible police revolver cartridge with the interests of sportsmen seeking another substantial hunting-revolver chambering.

Smith & Wesson’s Models 57 and 58 were important early firearms associated with the .41 Magnum. The Model 57 represented the sporting and target side of the introduction, while the fixed-sight Model 58 was associated with the police-market concept. Those different models reflected the varied expectations surrounding the cartridge. In subsequent decades, the .41’s reputation became especially strong among a dedicated sporting audience, even though it never matched the broad commercial familiarity of its magnum neighbors.

Ruger’s Blackhawk family supplied another lasting setting for the cartridge. The single-action rifle-and-revolver sporting tradition gave the .41 Magnum a constituency beyond its early law-enforcement discussion. References to a Blackhawk therefore represent a separate strand of the cartridge’s history from the Smith & Wesson double-action introduction. Within Ruger’s line, frame variations and special distributor configurations added further distinctions to the literature, making a complete rifle or revolver description valuable in an archive.

This table is associated with Handloader issue 357, published in August/September 2025. The source concerns the Ruger medium-frame New Model Blackhawk Bisley in .41 Magnum. Its original notes identify a stainless revolver with a five-and-one-half-inch barrel, built on the .357-size frame. That frame identity is a defining feature of the article and distinguishes the gun from Ruger .41 Magnum revolvers traditionally associated with the larger frame. The table contains eighteen entries connected with this particular source.

The Bisley name also identifies an important branch of Ruger’s single-action family, with a grip configuration carrying its own place in the company’s sporting history. In this record, the cartridge’s 1960s origins meet a much later variation of a familiar revolver platform. The dated issue, stainless construction, medium frame and Bisley designation make the compilation individually recognizable. Preserving those details records the continuing interest in the .41 Magnum more than six decades after its introduction, while keeping this source separate from histories centered on earlier double-action revolvers or other Blackhawk configurations.

This medium-frame source is therefore best remembered as a distinct later Ruger chapter in the cartridge’s story, preserving an individual configuration rather than merely repeating the generic .41 Magnum name.

Read the original source: Handloader issue 357.

Source: Wolfe Publishing.