Korth Ratzeburg Combat 3 Inch .357 Magnum

Korth built revolvers the way watchmakers build movements, and this 3 inch Combat in .357 Magnum is the kind of example that explains why people pay what they pay. It comes out of the Ratzeburg plant, the original West German facility where Willi Korth's small crew hand-fit every gun before it left the bench. The barrel rib reads .357 Magnum, the frame wears the round Korth medallion, and the underside carries the Made in West Germany Korth Ratzeburg roll mark. This is the real thing, not a later Lollar or Nighthawk production gun.

The 3 inch barrel is where it gets interesting. Most Korth Combats wore 4 inch or 6 inch tubes. The shorter barrel pulls the balance back into the hand and makes for a carry-length revolver that still shoots like a target piece. You get a heavy underlugged barrel, a full-length ejector shroud, and the adjustable rear sight paired with a serrated ramp front. The cylinder shows Korth's signature flutes and the bored-through chambers that feed the famous tight lockup.

The finish is deep Korth blue, polished to a near-black gloss across the frame, cylinder, and barrel, with a matte sighting plane to cut glare. Light rolls across the metal in a way only this kind of hand polishing produces. The grips are smooth-figured walnut, a target profile filling the hand with a palm swell and a steel grip screw escutcheon.

Mechanically these are in a class apart. The double-action stroke runs glass-smooth, the single-action break is short and clean, and lockup is bank-vault tight. Korth's adjustable trigger system and roller-bearing action are what put these guns above anything else coming out of Europe.

This one comes with its original Korth box and the factory Präzisionsrevolver literature. For a collector chasing short-barrel Korth Combats, the 3 inch length is the one that rarely turns up.