On the Factory Floor with Marshal Brain is a tv show running on National Geographic HD channel. I am home for lunch and watching this show for a few minutes. Today, he goes through the whole process at Smith and Wesson to see's how it was designed and built. He then gets to fire it. I did not know that the barrel is intentionally higher than normal above the line of fire so the barrel will tip up to help absorb recoil. The compensator also helps. The model shown I think had an 8 3/8 barrel.
It certainly is on my "want" list. I might get a chance to actually fire one this weekend.
Smitty

http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...w#tab-Overview