The Best New Autopistol Cartridge of the 20th Century

The .460 Rowland.  Arguably the best new semiautomatic pistol cartridge introduced in the latter part of the 20th century, yet still struggling for legitimacy in the 21st century!  The .460 Rowland was the brainchild of Johnny Roland way back in 1993.  It's a story of genius inspiration in that Rowland realized a tool from the target shooting world could be used to create a thoroughly modern, and powerful pistol cartridge in an equally portable package.

1,850+ fps for 912 lb-ft of kinetic energy

Magnum handgun calibers have been around for nearly 100 years.  With modern steels it's no major feat to produce a .44 magnum, or even the massively powerful .500 S&W magnum within a traditional revolver platform that is suitably huge and heavy for the task.  The story has not been nearly so simple for the world of semiautomatic pistols.  Early attempts to shoehorn the .357 magnum and .44 magnum into an auto-loading handgun resulted in massive, gas-operated contrivances that are enormously heavy and clunky.  There one positive feature - the ability to shuck out massive magnum shells in short order, is thoroughly off-set by all the negatives of size, weight, and poor ergonomics.  No wonder so many people who've lusted after a Desert Eagle for years, lose their fervor for the platform and concept rather quickly.

As the semiautomatic pistol gained popularity in the 1980's, converts from the magnum revolver world certainly recognized the benefits of a portable, reasonably light pistol with superior ergonomics, yet did so with full understanding of the significant loss of power.  Essentially, if you want "power" you are forced to choose the revolver, or put up with the poor ergonomics and specialized ammo requirements of pretty much the only surviving member of the original, gas-operated semiautomatic magnum club.  Intrepid gun builders certainly set out to meld the two...to find a way to incorporate magnum power in a reasonably sized pistol, but none ever lasted.  The solution always seemed to be too expensive, to specialized, and too much trouble.  The autopistol crowd simply ignores the inherent weakness of military caliber pistol cartridges and has devised a schema going back several decades where "shoot the gun dry" seems to have become the work-around for putting down human predators.  Though nobody in their right mind would dare attempt to stop a charging 250 pound black bear with a 9mm unless they had nothing better, somehow the marketing of modern defensive pistol ammunition has deluded the ignorant into doing exactly that when trying to stop a charging 250 pound drug-crazed human!  Oh, the delusion of rationalization!

Then comes Johnny Rowland, who reached behind the semi-secretive curtain of compensated "race guns" to borrow a technology going back decades to finally bring the reasonably sized semiautomatic pistol, chambered in a honest pistol cartridge, into the magnum mainstream.

The compensator.  Otherwise known as a "muzzle brake," the recoil compensator has been around at least since World War II when it was introduced on tank guns and mobile artillery pieces to lower recoil thrust and thus allow lighter components to be used.  In fact, the modern .50 caliber sniper rifle is also the brainchild of mating a highly effective muzzle brake to a man-portable rifle to lower recoil to allow "lighter humans" to safely shoot a 13,000 lb-ft of muzzle energy cartridge.  The competition crowd saw the compensator as a way to shoot low-power ammunition from specialized pistols using the right powder combination to virtually eliminate recoil save for the modest movement induced by a lightened slide snicking back and forth, driven by a spring only half the weight of those needed for full-power, non-compensated handguns.  Even today, the physics of muzzle-brakes is not widely understood, nor appreciated by most of the handgun world, so it took a man capable of seeing the potential to create the concept we today know as the .460 Rowland "magnum" caliber.

John Rowland realized that a compensator mounted to a recoiling barrel, locked-breech pistol does a lost more than just lower felt recoil, it actually works as a free-air, gas piston working to pull the gun forward!  In so doing, it not only reduces rearward recoil of the entire system, but it also augments bore friction as a means of keeping a recoil-operated, locked breech system closed long enough to allow a modern, high-pressure cartridge to function reliably with little more stress applied to the moving components than that created by firing standard-power ammunition in a non-compensated pistol.  In a fixed barrel system such as a straight blow-back, using a compensator to reduce recoil would do nothing to slow or delay breech opening, but when the breech's ability to move to the rear requires the barrel to come along for the ride for a portion of the distance, the forward force created at the muzzle does a marvelous job of adding to the delay in breech opening.  The normal force exerted by the frictional interaction between the bullet and bore is augmented by the explosive release and redirection of powerful expanding gasses.

Some "believe" a muzzle brake works in large part by adding mass to the total weight of the barrel.  The proliferation of aluminum brakes invalidates mass as any significant part of the recoil reduction process.  In reality, the most simple way to understand how muzzle brakes work is to understand they redirect high-pressure muzzle gas in a direction other than forward - generally 90 degrees lateral to the bore axis, or slightly to the rear in some designs.  This reduces the amount of gas acting (like a rocket) to push the gun backward which lowers recoil impulse.  At the same time, judicious design of the compensator's impingement surfaces, chambers, and ports, function like a piston onto which expanding gas exerts force, thus directly pushing the muzzle forward.  By directing gas upward, muzzle rise is reduced or eliminated.  Directing gas laterally acts as a stabilizer, but also serves to vent more gas lateral to the forward stream.  By design, it is theoretically possible to design a muzzle brake that almost completely eliminates recoil, and in fact, brakes for rifles often boast recoil reduction up to 70% and more.

In my own experience, the brake designed by Lone Wolf is highly effective, as is the one supplied by Clark Custom and of course Rowland themselves.  In fact, there are many different design compensators on the market, plus those custom designed.

Rock Island Arms Tactical FS, with Clark Conversion

The foundation cartridge for the .460 Rowland is of course the .45 Automatic pistol.  Being originally being loaded to well below 20,000 psi, it's a natural choice to be modernized by increasing pressure, and in fact, the .45 caliber across the board has proven to benefit greatly from even modest power increases.  The problem with that is modest increases bring with them greatly increased strain on pistols - more than is safe.  The .45 Super load is about as hot as one dare go in a standard size 1911, and loads of that power level should probably be limited.  However, by adding a recoil compensator to the muzzle, power can be increased above the Super level by a third while holding recoiling mass velocities in check.

The first time I shot a .460 Rowland was from my Glock long-slide conversion with 6.61" barrel, using top-loaded Underwood ammunition.  Recoil was astonishingly mild!  Had I not had a chronograph to verify velocity and energy I would never have believed I was shooting a magnum cartridge, such is the benefit of a compensated barrel.  The only outward indication is the addition of about 1.75" to the muzzle with maybe an ounce of weight.  The result is the ability to shoot .45 caliber bullets at speeds exceeding 1,000 lb-ft of kinetic energy as compared to standard .45 Auto producing around 350 lb-ft in average loads.  My recently converted Rock Island with Clark conversion was equally as surprising to shoot.  Even with Underwood factory loads the 1911 pattern pistol was a pleasure to shoot, with less recoil than a standard 1911 with hardball loads!  One of the biggest misrepresentations I see about the .460 Rowland is that it kicks hard and over-stresses the slide and frame of whatever pistol it's fired from.  Well, not from one with a compensator it doesn't!  I've fired handloaded .45 Auto that kicked the cases much further out than does either of my two Rowland chambered pistols.  Unlike when shooting magnum revolvers such as the mighty .44 where a few cylinders is about all one "needs" before moving on to something less punishing, the .460 Rowland conversions are "fun" to shoot, reload, and shoot again!

Close inspection of my converted pistols has thus far not shown any additional wear, signs of frame damage, or slide wear.  I feel much more confident about the longevity of my Rowland conversions that I do my factory 10mm's, both of which kick harder than either of my Rowland chambered pistols!

So why hasn't the .460 Rowland caught on in larger numbers, with factory pistols being sold by everyone?  I suspect a large part is simply the gun public who have become increasingly stratified in the internet age.  The autopistol crowed simply dismisses anything not of the 9mm/.45 Auto chamber, and the magnum revolver crowd perceives the Rowland as an illegitimate pretender trying to topple the venerable .44 magnum from it's increasingly unsteady perch.  Few who are die-hard devotees of low-powered "urban" cartridges grew up in rural areas where powerful handguns predominate.  Go into any .45 Auto "forum" and generate posts outside the normal scope of the average 1911 devotee and suddenly notice how quiet the room becomes...   Also, one cannot simply go out and buy a pistol, then grab some ammo and start shooting.  In most cases the only way to become a .460 Rowland shooter is to start with a suitable platform, buy the conversion or conversion parts, put it all together and sort out the bugs here and there.   In this age of "plug & play" it seems most just want to walk out of the store with whatever the "clerk" told them was the best 9mm or .45 auto, and think little beyond that.

I'm encouraged by the fact that as the 10mm becomes increasingly popular in the hunting field, the .460 Rowland will be carried along by the wave as more people discover that for the simple addition of a highly effective compensator, virtually any .45 auto chambered pistol can be suddenly transformed into a "better .44 magnum" than the original.  The 1911 pattern pistol has superior ergonomics, reasonable weight, holds a reliable eight shots with rapid reloads possible, and has incredibly mild recoil for a cartridge delivering half a ton of energy.