Ruger Super Red Hawk .480 Revolver

Ruger Super Red Hawk .480 "Pin Cannon"

Ruger Super Red Hawk .480 Revolver


A good sized hole in the business end!


Six chambers, one more than the Taurus Raging Bull.


Special alloy heat treatable stainless with a satin finish.

Early last Spring I got a chance to see what a .480 with hunting loads could do to a bowling pin. The pins were not only being blown to pieces, they were ending up twenty feet behind the pin table! At the Reno Gun Blogger Rendezvous in early October I got a chance to shoot the very same Ruger Super Red Hawk .480. Although I didn't get to shoot it along side a .44 Magnum, my impression was that since it was a bit heavier and appeared to have slower burning powder it was no worse than my Smith & Wesson model 29 in .44 Magnum. In fact, although it seemed to push harder, it didn't seem to be as fierce.

I knew that when the right .480 Ruger came along, I would just have to have it! I've been watching Gunbroker for a while, and I suspect there are a lot of .480 Rugers up for sale with only a dozen or so rounds fired through them. A combination of ammunition cost and recoil discourages a person from using one of these just for plinking!

For successful pin shooting you want as much energy to transfer into moving the pin off the table, and as little energy as possible wasted crushing wood and breaking the pin apart. The secret to this is to use really heavy bullets with modest velocities. A hot .357 has plenty of energy, but it's more prone to break up the pin, or go clear through it, rather than moving it off of the table. A heavier .45 bullet, (perhaps a 200+ gr.) with the same power factor as the .357 will carry the pin off the table much more successfully.

Common bullet weights for the .480 Ruger ranges between 275 gr. and 425 gr. so the velocities required to get a sufficient power factor are quite low. For those of you a bit rusty as to how power factor is computed, you multiply bullet weight in grains times the velocity and then divide by 1000.

For some examples, a factory Remington .38 Special +P is around a power factor of 125. A .45 with a 220 gr. bullet and 700fps gives a power factor of 154. According to Hodgdon's website, loading a 420 gr. bullet at near maximum velocity of around 1200 fps results in a power factor of over 500! I suspect that recoil would be pretty impressive! I don't think it would be something you would want to spend all day shooting, probably more like "One shot, one rhino, then go home...." Certainly not a plinker!

I've got just about everything now on hand to get underway on the "Pin Cannon" project, including a new Chronograph (On sale at Midway) and some reloading dies. The Weigand scope rail is ready to mount, and I've got a couple of possibilities on hand for the red dot sight. All that remains to arrive is bullets and powder.

We'll keep you posted as this project progresses. Of course, I still need to finish writing up the Taurus 9mm. Econo Race Gun project series.

Stay tuned!