Mag-Na-Port's Custom Night Guard

I’ll say it right up front: According to the S&W website, the .44 Magnum Night Guard is no longer in production. However, not only were they still available when we started this project, you can still find them at places like www.gunbroker.com and even your local gun store at times. Having said that, the real reason we did this project was to showcase the out-of-the-ordinary custom work Mag-Na-Port has become famous for doing. So keep in mind, you could apply the sorts of custom work featured here to any revolver. Be creative with your dreams. I just happened to like the concept of a lightweight, big-bore revolver.

And, if you ask me, I wasn’t wrong about that idea, especially after Ken Kelly at Mag-Na-Port was finished with his magic.

Mag-Na-Port

Ken Kelly runs the shop at Mag-Na-Port and is an amazingly talented custom pistolsmith (rifles and shotguns too, by the way). Mag-Na-Port has come up with some signature “looks” over the years and the idea of a 2-tone gun, with interesting highlights is right up their alley.

“Roy, I love this idea!” said Ken on the phone. “We’ll hard chrome any bits we can, do a bead blast of the stainless steel cylinder so it looks like it’s hard chromed, slick the action, port it, and I imagine I’ll come up with a few other touches just to make it fun. Oh, we’ll have to definitely polish and jewel the hammer and trigger while we’re at it!” he laughed.

I hate being that transparent, but he was right about the jewelling part.

“Can you do something with the boring-black frame finish?” I asked.

“You bet, I’ve got access to some great colors, so what color do you want?” asked Ken.

At this point, I did what I like to do and simply said, “Ken, you’re the expert, make it whatever color you think works. I told him this was going to be a field gun for me, something I’d wear on the tractor, working in the woods, to have when deer hunting, simply an all-around big-bore sixgun as near to what our own John Taffin calls a “Perfect Packin’ Pistol” as I could think of.

“Leave it up to me,” he said. I think I could hear him smiling on the phone.

The Concept

While we’ve explored the concept of big-bore, short-barreled revolvers before, I think when you chamber one of the lightweight guns in a caliber like .44 Special/Magnum, .41 Magnum, .45 Colt, even .45 ACP loaded correctly, it makes them much more carry-friendly than the same model in steel. You go from 39 ounces in stainless, to only 29 in Scandium. That adds up fast on your hip or in your pocket. Guess what gun I take when I feed chickens, check gates or mow pastures these days?

Since moving to the country, I’ve found the CCI shot cartridges to be very useful. From field rats to snakes and sneaky squirrels on the patio, they make it easier to hit than even trying to use a .22 at times. Plus, you don’t get the “carry” of a bullet, so taking a close shot at a squirrel on a branch is safe. And, I’ve found the .38-caliber shot rounds simply don’t have the thump of the .44/.45 Colt versions. A .38 shot cartridge can work, but the bigger one simply shreds a venomous snake, and knocks Mr. Squirrel clean off the patio.

Where we live, wild boars are coming up from Arkansas and some have been seen as close as just a few miles. They travel along the rivers from what I understand, and we have plenty of those in Missouri. The Department of Natural Resources here have billboards saying, “Shoot On Sight And Report The Location” regarding wild boars. They are simply so destructive you can’t let them get a hold. Also, we only recently had a cougar sighting just a half-mile from our land here. So (not counting any 2-legged miscreants who might cause trouble) having a big-bore revolver, loaded correctly, makes sense.

The Final Result

Once the gun came back from Mag-Na-Port it proved I had made a good decision to go with their shop. And, while it was surprising at first, the sort of OD green finish (a baked-on type) grew on me fast. It looked serious and capable, and right at home in the woods or riding an ATV. The bead-blast finish on the stainless steel cylinder matched the hard chrome on the screws and cylinder release, and while you may or may not agree, I think the jewelling and high polish of the hammer and trigger act like a bit of lipstick on a pretty lady.

Ken did a great action job, the wood grips from Ahrends felt good (Ahrends sent me two sets, hence the two slightly different colors in some pictures), and Ken’s porting and cosmetic cuts in the barrel were perfectly done. Ken also installed a bright-green front sight to help my aged eyes.

I’m a sucker for a crossdraw field rig, and since I had one I’ve been using from Purdy Gear, I reached out to Karla again for one to fit this gun, asking for something a bit lighter and more utilitarian since it would likely live hard. In the spirit of ruggedness, I had asked for a “rough-out” leather look and a simple 6-cartridge loop setup. What she sent was certainly lightweight, but to call it utilitarian would be silly.

“I just can’t do utilitarian,” Karla confessed to me when I chatted with her about the holster. “You’ll take what I send you.” And I did.

Karla said she experimented with a slight polish or smoothing of the rough-out leather, and the added tooling on the stiffening piece on the holster and cartridge belt was just something I’d have to get used to she said. To keep things interesting, Karla asked Robbie Barrkman of Robar to coat the buckle and hardware on the belt with his Poly T2 Teflon polymer finish in a color matching the gun. A nice touch, and it takes the bling factor down a notch for a field rig.

Shooting

I had talked about how versatile the .44 is in a recent Insider column (“Those Fabulous .44s,” July/Aug 2012) where I shot a cross-section of loads through different barrel lengths, including a rifle. Grab that issue (or go online to our digital editions) and give it a read if you like. What I mostly learned then (I used the Mag-Na-Port gun during the tests since I had just received it), was how versatile the .44 caliber truly is. From low-level .44 Special cowboy-type loads from Black Hills, to hot .44 Magnum loads from Cor-Bon and others, you can pretty much tailor the ammo to meet your needs.

I also think I’ll mostly be carrying .44 Special loads. The Buffalo Bore Anti-Personnel .44 Special load (a 200 gr. hard cast lead wadcutter) would be hard to beat in this revolver. It delivered around 890 fps from the 2.5″ barrel and was very controllable and accurate. Check out the 2″ group at 20 yards in the picture. What a great defensive, or even ranch load.

If we do start seeing hogs though, I’ll likely move up to the Black Hills 240 JHP .44 Magnum. It chronographed at an honest 1,045 from the short barrel, and unlike some other magnum loads I shot, didn’t beat me to death with recoil and muzzleblast. Still, you’d never want to shoot anything out of this gun unless you had hearing protection on, unless it’s a real emergency.

Build Your Own

This came together better than I could have hoped for. The final modifications make practical sense and look good too. Karla’s holster and belt set make carrying the .44 a breeze, and it rides on a peg just as I step into the garage, making it a snap to strap on. I was once confronted by a feral dog by the chicken coop and I reached for the gun I always had in my pocket — and realized I didn’t have it. A handy rake shooed him off, but I vowed never to have that happen again. And now it won’t.

Subscribe To American Handgunner