MAGNUM MAGNUM - Jeffersonian

COPTALK
Massad Ayoob
OPINION AND
FACTS FROM THE
MEAN STREETS
A Street Cop’s
Custom
Revolvers
In the summer of 2010, Detective
Dennis O. Reichard retired
after 36 years as a street cop and
detective. Locally famous for his
skill at solving homicide cases, he is
better known nationally as a master of
tuning the Smith & Wesson revolver,
and is now free to devote more time
to doing so. Always an enthusiastic For Second Amendment supporter, he’s
happy to do gun work for law-abiding
armed citizens and officers alike.
I first met Denny on the proshooting
tour in the early ’80s, at
matches like Second Chance and
Bianchi Cup where he competed with
the duty gun that was his trademark
for most of his police career, the 6"
S&W .44 Magnum. Hold on the Dirty
Harry jokes, please. Dirty Harry shot
blanks. Reichard’s duty load was a
Federal or Remington 180-grain HP
running 1,600 fps. He was big enough
and skilled enough to shoot it so fast
some other competitors nicknamed
him “Rolling Thunder.” In 1981, ’82,
and ’83 he won the Indiana State
Championships in the Bianchi Cup
format shooting Model 29s he’d tuned
himself. “I believe the difference was
that my guns ran smoother and faster,
which allowed more time for correct
sight alignment and trigger press,” he
reminisces today.
Denny had tuned all those 29s
himself. In 1980 he had become a certified
S&W armorer, learning directly
under S&W’s legendary master John
Contro in an in-depth, 3-week factory
course. He kept scrupulous notes he
memorized like holy scriptures. Over
the next 30 years, Reichard honed his
craft, making fine Smith & Wesson
sixguns even finer.
First a trickle, then a stream, then
a river of Smith & Wessons flowed
across his bench, each one sharpening
his ability to slick up a Smith. He did
guns for firearms instructors, taught
students how to keep their revolvers
going — and the word spread.
Realistic
Approach
about a quarter century, I’ve taught annually with Denny
in Indiana, which has given me the opportunity to see a lot
of Reichard guns go through classes. They don’t misfire,
they don’t shave lead and their owners generally finish skill tests
in the upper part of the class.
While he can provide engraved guns, Denny focuses on the inside of the
machine. His basic $60 action job gets everything working perfectly, but what
you want is his $100 job. This adds a careful honing of the contact surfaces in
the mechanism, resulting in a trigger pull that feels like running your finger over
a piece of Waterford crystal.
Check out his “geezer sight” option, an adjustable rear sight with a notch big
enough to give a clear picture for old eyes, and a faster sight picture for young
and old alike, with no perceptible loss in precision accuracy. And consider his
“scalloped trigger,” reshaped for super-fast double-action work.
Except for a glass-smooth polished
trigger, Reichard’s work is visible
only inside this
Model
329.
36 years on the street, and
decades on the bench and
in competition taught this
retired detective how to
maximize a Smith & Wesson
revolver’s performance.
D.O. Reichard at
the bench. Below:
Reichard gave
new life to
this rare 5",
5-screw pre-
Model
27 .357.
Reliability
From his first day as a cop in the mid-
70s to when he sat at the feet of Johnny
Contro, and ever since, Reichard
understood that absolute reliability was the Prime
Directive. In the countless thousands of rounds I’ve
seen fired from Reichard Smiths, I don’t recall a misfire
unless it was a dud primer.
One year at the Indiana State IDPA championships, I
experienced two misfires with factory ammo in a S&W tuned by
another famous custom house. I went direct from the match to Reichard’s
place, where he replaced the mainspring and re-tuned the gun.
It hasn’t missed a lick since. This year, my best finish at a sanctioned
IDPA match was First Master, Stock Service Revolver at the US East
Coast Championship, beaten only by overall division champ Craig Buckland, who
is so good these days I couldn’t beat him with the Magic Sword Excalibur. My gun
was a Reichard-tuned S&W Model 15, and it worked beautifully without a hitch.
Denny’s Sand Burr Gun Ranch encompasses one of the coolest old-time gun
shops anywhere, and an expansive shooting park ideally suited for a family
firearms weekend. Delivery on action work has been running four to six weeks,
but with Denny freshly retired, I expect that may shorten up a bit. I can honestly
say I don’t know of anyone in the country who can do a better action
job on a save-your-life Smith & Wesson sixgun.
*
For more info: Sand Burr Gun Ranch (574) 223-3316, www.americanhandgunner.
com/sandburrgunranch
24 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • MARCH/APRIL 2011