Gary Reeder
I posted a preliminary picture last week of a new
Monday, May 21, 2018, 14:44

Hellcat to be called the Hellcat 5. The reason for the 5 in a moment. The new Hellcat 5 is changed from the ground up. The gun has been changed from rimfire to centerfire. The cylinder is a 5 shot cylinder. I mentioned last week that the total cylinder length was 1.3" This threw a lot of people off as they forgot that the rim of the cartridge is outside the cylinder, so in reality the cartridge could be up to 1.355 in length. As much as I hate to admit it the only person to guess the cartridge right was Kelly Brost, formally of Cast Performance Bullets and before that a resident of a Tijuana jail on a charge that I am sure was mistaken as it had to do with fat gypsy ladies and a Shetland pony. I know for sure that Kelly hates Shetland ponies.

Anyway Kelly guessed the cartridge as the 32 H&R and that it is.

The Bearcat frame has undergone quite a bit of changes over the past 6 months. The old style gripframe has been changed. I have plans to do a second prototype with a standard Blackhawk style gripframe. But the Hellcat 5 has a small version of the Keith #5 gripframe. This required a complete renovation of the original gripframe, but keeping the original hammer spring set up. This was frustrating to say the least and caused a lot of 12 and 14 letter words to spring forth. But in the end it worked. So a mild mannered Bearcat became the Hellcat 5.

In all our testing the gun is accurate with it's 5" barrel and standard factory 32 H&R loads.With reloads in the same approximate weight bullets it did just as well if not better.

Now comes the question of why? Well, why not? The gun now has considerably more punch than before. The gripframe fits the average hand better, and the main reason is Just Because. I wanted to see if it could be done, and it can. The gun will be priced a bit more than our new standard Hellcat but not much more. It will be built on the all steel Bearcats only. Standard fixed sights or the new adjustable sights.