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More accurately, they just stopped making square butt frames (they've been making round butt ones since the dawn of time.)
Well, rather than having to tool up to produce each frame size in two variants, now they only have to do one, which helps lower production costs. Since a round butt can be converted to a square butt feel with a set of grips, while converting a square to a round requires grinding, it really made sense to let the square butt fall by the wayside.
Tamara's right. It was a cost-cutting move. They could have a larger inventory of a certain frame, and zero of the other (square butt) kind.
Some years ago I pointed out that one could easly convert a round butt K frame to any number of grip configurations by simply changing the stocks so long as the material covered both the back and front straps. At the time it was a handy option for police departments and/or officers.
I didn't care for round butt revolvers at first, but soon had to concede they're more comfortable in my hand. In due time, I had my model 27-2 converted so it can share stocks with my pre-agreement model 629.
It was Hogue that really perfected the "square-butt conversion grips" for round-butt guns, and made them look proper in both wood and rubber.
Once that happened, the demise of the square-butt was both inevitable and welcome.
Which raises an interesting question: how soon before we see "plowhandle conversion grips" for the Ruger Bird's-Head SAs? They could be done in either XR3-RED shape or Colt SAA "feel"...and in theory, the XR3-RED could then be killed off entirely.
After owning many square butt S&W's and thinking
I could not live with out one; I'm finding the round
butt models quite useful. With Hogue's "Monogrips"
as a conversion, I hardly notice the difference; cuz
in the later stages all of my S&W's wore a nice set
of Pachmayr's anyway.
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