Updated November, 2009

PRICE INCREASES

One of our most important vendors announced this week that they were having to raise their prices substantially. We can hardly blame them in view of skyrocketing fuel, insurance, transportation and raw material costs. Unfortunately, Bowen Classic Arms has not materially raised prices in years and simply cannot go on with some adjustments to keep pace with our own increasing costs. Accordingly, please bear with us if you see some moderate price increases over the course of the coming months. Some will take effect immediately. Thanks for your patience and forbearance.

LANYARDS

We are pleased to announce that we now have in stock for immediate delivery our high-quality British military-style lanyards. Our older source dried up and after some searching we were able to find a vendor who would reproduce duplicates of our original lanyards. If anything, the new ones are of even better quality. You can order on-line at the PARTS department off the home page. Good news, indeed, for gun retention fans who want to put that lanyard ring to good use.

.327 FEDERAL MAGNUM CARTRIDGE

Those of us who are serious small-bore, small-game revolver enthusiasts have clamored for years for the moral equivalent of the great old .32-20 but in a more modern, tougher, available package. The cartridge fairies have been listening and have come through in grand style. The .327 Federal Magnum will perform every bit as well as hand-loaded high-pressure, high-performance .32-20 loadings. Better still, the .327 is nothing more than a stretched .32 H&R Magnum which means it is quite small in diameter and can be built in 6-shot guns on relatively small frames, places the longer, larger .32-20 just wouldn't fit easily (or cheaply).

For reasons known only to the fine folks at Sturm, Ruger & Company, the .327 has ended up in their small double-action SP-101 rather than in the Single-Six. While the SP-101 is a hardy little double-action gun, many of us really, really wanted to see the gun in a small single action. The .327 will work fine in a slightly longer cylinder body section with virtually no other modifications. The walls and webs of the factory .32 H&R cylinder are thicker than many .357 Magnums so there is no reason to go to a more costly and complicated 5-shot part.

Bowen Classic Arms is adding the chambering to our line-up and will offer Single-Six and medium-frame Blackhawk and Flat Top single-action revolvers in this great little cartridge. We'll have a semi drop-in cylinder available under the RS06 catalog number for the .32 H&R Single-Six model that will utilize the original barrel suitably modified for the long-body cylinder. The receiver will be properly marked as to caliber and then re-blued. We'll also offer a more sophisticated version similar to our 'Long Hunter' package per catalog number RS07 which will feature a line-bored cylinder, custom barrel and the usual trimmings. We'll also note the availability of 6-shot line-bored conversions with factory-style cylinders in conventional calibers in all of the New Model size receivers.

We're hoping to have our initial run of cylinder blanks available this summer. As an aside, these same blanks will enable us to offer tight-chamber .22 rim fires. .22 and .25 caliber wildcats based on the .327 are contemplated, as well. We've done a few Smith & Wesson K-frame guns in .327 which have proven wonderful shooters. Unfortunately, the better cylinders for re-chambering are the scarce older K22 parts. As the supply is fading fast, we're working to produce a long-body K-frame S&W cylinder which we can utilize not only for the .327 but also the .32-20, .218 Bee, .25-20 and .256. For M53 enthusiasts, we will be able to fashion an auxiliary .22 LR cylinder. As long as we can get our paws on K22 barrels, which should be in S&W part bins for a while now, we'll be able to produce the lovely K-frame M14s and M15 in a variety of great small-game and plinking rounds, including the .327

It is not often that we have a new revolver cartridge to get fired up about but the .327 Magnum is the most important mainstream cartridge offering since the .44 Magnum for serious revolver nuts.