Concur. I grew up shooting semiautos and revolvers both, with about all the free .45 M1911 hardball I wanted and all the empty .38 special brass I could carry on my bicycle. So far as revolvers went, I had a couple of .38 caliber k-frame Smiths to pick from, a couple of Webleys, an M27, a .45 M1917 and my maternal grandfather's .455 triple-lock that had the cylinder replaced with one that took .45 ACP with halfmoon clips and had the barrel shortened to about 4 inches. I was a reasonably good shot with most of them, but when it came time to purchase my own .45 revolver for myself, it was a surplus M1917. My first M1911, a former Argentine M27, came along about four months later. In November of that year, president Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and that was the end of the mail-order purchase of guns in the U.S. and those long rides I had on my bike to our nearest Railway Express Agency office, the UPS or FedEx of that day.
I haven't had a 686 or "Mountain gun* come my way yet and don't really plan on it. If I get one of the new *safety hole* Smiths, it'll probably be the one of the new M1917s or the 3½-inch M21 .45 version, unless I happen to find a good Brazilian M37/M1917 at a right price. The last pretty good one I ran across was at the Kull & Supica online auction, my bid didn't get it.
If I want a full-length underlug, I'll get a Python or Diamondback.
