It’s the social event of the season for revolver lovers, where round gun enthusiasts meet up to socialize; A bright star in a dark sea of tactical training conferences and plastic guns—RevolverFest!
Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m bothering to write this–most of the readership was probably at RevolverFest 2026, and if you weren’t, your social media feed is stuffed full of pictures from it, right now. But for you people living under rock, I’ll go over RevolverFest 2026, tell you what’s up, and hopefully convince you to crawl out of your cave and go next year.
The ‘Fest
RevolverFest is the brainchild of Bryan Eastridge, of America’s Finest Revolvers, and is a mix of an industry, social, and training event. This is my second year going, and the third time it’s been on the East Coast (the 2024 Sawmill Snub Round Up was the unofficial first time, while the 2025 event was the first to bear the RevolverFest title). It consists of a one-day, walk around, shooting booth, “Industry Day” event, followed by two days of training, with multiple instructors teaching three-hour blocks. You sign up for the four blocks you want to take beforehand.
There were 11 instructors this year:
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- Bryan Eastridge, of America’s Finest Revolvers, teaching “Big Bore Revolvers”
- Hany Mahmoud, teaching “Art of the Backup Gun”
- Industry Luminary Wayne Dobbs, of Palisade Training Group, teaching “Skills and Drills”
- Chuck Haggard, of Agile Training and Consulting, teaching “Performance Ammo and Ammo Performance”
- Mike Wood, of RevolverGuy, teaching “Holster Skills”
- Caleb Giddings, of Taurus Firearms, teaching “Performance Revolver”
- Greg Eliifritz, of Active Response Training, teaching “Close Range Revolver Gunfighting”
- Lew Gosnell, of Gunsite, teaching “Single Action Revolvers”
- Bruce Cartwright, of SAC Tactical, teaching “Revolver Diagnostics”
- Justin Dyal, of Dialed-In Training, teaching “Building Double Action Skill: For the Revolver and Everything Else”
- Chauncey Wesner, the Stateline Shootist, teaching “Long Range Handgunning”
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I traveled with my buddy Eli, and another friend from North Carolina, arriving in the morning of the first day. I went to Industry Day and attended classes from Mike Wood, Caleb Giddings, Chuck Haggard, and Lew Gosnell the other days. I should also note that while Mike was an instructor, I was there as a student and paid my own way for the whole event. There is no bias or sponsorship in this article, and Mike encouraged me to be as critical as I wanted.
Industry Day
Industry Day contains something every shooter loves—the ammo for industry day is my favorite kind of ammo, OPA (Other People’s Ammo). You could walk right up to any vendor’s tent and shoot whatever gun they had for free, as well as ask them any questions.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to write about Industry Day though, since I’m pretty sure I died of drowning at some point, and waterlogging may be affecting my memory.
Yup, Day One of the event was greeted by an absolute torrent of a storm. It started raining in the morning and didn’t stop until midnight. The only changes in the weather were either “It’s raining sideways,” or, “Its raining sideways AND I saw a cat fly by.” Checking in was smooth and painless, with some free swag, a raffle ticket, and a name tag greeting you on arrival.
Colt
My friend Eli was working for Colt for the day, and upon arrival my friend and I decided to help. The range host had thoughtfully put Colt in a bay with steel targets set up at the end of a 60-yard walk, and no gravel. So, Kaylee from Colt held up the front end, talking to attendees and spotlighting products, while Eli went downrange to do the live fire stuff at another tent near the targets. It was pretty apparent that would be a lot for one person, so we went downrange with him, talking Colt products to people, supervising safety, and generally making sure everyone had a grand ol’ time.
Honestly, it was a lot of fun, kind of nostalgic to me, like being behind a gun counter again. Granted, the whole bay started to look like Flanders after a while, and stepping out from under the tent to get something for the booth, or to supervise shooters, meant that I got soaked completely through. I’ve lived in jungles under field conditions for days on end before, and didn’t get as wet or muddy as I did that day.
But other than the weather, no problems at all. A running theme this year was less new products than last, but Colt had a good spread of guns, from their big .44 to the little Night Cobra Special. The Night Cobra Special was the sleeper hit of the day. Usually, you stick a 2-inch snubby out on a table and it’s the last gun people want to shoot, but the retro look was a hit, and it meant the gun got shot quite a lot. The three-inch, blued King Cobra .22 was also popular, and I think that would make for a darn good little kit gun.
Smith and Wesson
I eventually broke from Colt for about an hour to walk the booths myself. Smith had a much smaller spread this year, but they had the little no-lock Model 36 on hand, along with some medium-size revolvers.
The retro trend that’s been a hit in the AR rifle crowd seems to have made its way into revolvers–blued guns with wood grips and modern touches were popular. Also, to Smith’s credit, they made sure not to bring any semiautos this year. Honestly, while the Smith workers were great, the company didn’t have a big presence this year–a little disappointing from America’s preeminent wheelgun maker. Also, still no sign of a new production Model 12. Boo.
Beretta/Manurhin/Uberti
New to RevolverFest this year was a dedicated booth from the pasta pistol people. Ben Grundwerg from Beretta attended RevolverFest as a student last year, but this time he was there in official capacity.
Beretta was a generous sponsor of the event, putting up two A300 shotguns as raffle prizes. They had a selection of Manurhin MR73s on hand, including the new 3-incher.
The big draw was the new 250th anniversary of America Tribute Liberty MR 73 with an unfluted cylinder, heavy barrel, and wood grips. You might ask, what’s up with an Italian company using a frog gun as an American tribute? Well, as it turns out, Chapuis–the manufacturer of the MR 73–is only like 25 miles away from an armory in St Etienne that made guns for the American Revolution. It’s a bit of a stretch, but for that pretty gun, I’ll allow it.
The Uberti booth was also fun, with another surprise hit being the S&W No. 3 replica they had on hand. You’d think the SAA clones would have been the cool guns, but I think the fact that most people hadn’t shot a No. 3-style gun before appealed to people.
Me, I shot the 1872 Open Top replica they had–to this day I think Richards/Richards-Mason conversion, cartridge-firing Colts are some of the best-looking guns ever made.
Diamondback
After many years of slinging Diamondback AR 15s across gun counters, I still get a little surprised when I remember they make a revolver. Even more shocking, every time I shoot a Diamondback SDR, I’m reminded of what good little gun it really is.
They were present with multiple SDRs laid out, in a variety of barrel lengths, finishes, and hammer configurations, including one with a 9mm cylinder installed. They also had the humpbacked, aluminum-frame SDR-A available to shoot. I put a cylinder through a 3-inch steel frame SDR, and man, if I had to buy a steel, small frame revolver these days, the SDR would be near the top. This was also where I met Mike Wood in person for the first time–more on that later.
Taurus / heritage mfg.
Caleb Giddings was out there running the Taurus booth, with a variety of guns present. Taurus helped pioneer putting optics on carry revolvers, and accordingly a fair amount of their guns had dots mounted.
I had just read Kevin McPherson’s RevolverGuy article on the 66 Combat that same day, so that’s what I shot. Based on that very short session, I agree with Kevin–the 66 had a great trigger and the optics system is something I’m intrigued by.
Lipsey’s
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to stop by Lipsey’s booth, but I’m told that they had a wide variety of cool stuff to show off, and that the Nightguard revolvers were popular. Curiously, the .44 seems to be more intriguing to customers than the .357, despite how much more popular the latter caliber is.
Pavilion Vendors
A number of smaller vendors had booths under the large central shelter. Off the top of my head, Badger Grips, Problem Solving Tools, Simply Rugged, and Firearms Trainers Association were some of the main ones. Mickey Schulch and his wife, of CarryTrainer, pulled double duty doing videos and general range help, along with keeping everyone caffeinated with their Ignis Lux coffee. I am not a coffee drinker, but I’m told the Ignis blend was very good by a few attendees that professed to be coffee snob. So, if you’re a big fan of crushed boiled beans, check it out. Simply Rugged’s Sidewinder pouch was very well represented at the event, as well as Problem Solving Tool’s holsters.
I ended up sitting next to Justin from PST one night at dinner, and I’m determined to bully him–or some kydex burner–into making a speed loader pouch design that I stumbled on. It’s a kydex, open-top, split-six-style, double pouch for Safariland loaders that was made for Ken Hackathorn, years ago. Ken gifted it to me when I was out visiting him a few months ago, and I used it for the entirety of RevolverFest. If you think there’s a future in that product, put it in the comments so I can force someone to make ‘em.
Finally, Gary Eastridge, of the Firearms Trainers Association and R&G Firearms, had a wide variety of guns and accessories out for sale from his personal collection. There was cherry stuff in there, including a hard chrome Jovino that had my mouth watering.
After wandering around, I helped Colt’s out for the rest of the day before my group left for the hotel. Soaked and tired–we had woken up at 4:00 that morning to do drive out–all we wanted to do was get out of our clothes and nap. Which we did, before dragging ourselves out of bed to eat late, meeting some other attendees on the way, and had a good time decompressing over Mexican food.
Like all good gun focused events, the real wheeling and dealing happened at night in hotel lobbies and over beer. I bought a signed copy of Jim Cirillo’s book in front of the hotel I was staying at, and I’m sure that wasn’t all the horse trading that happened that night. Finally, exhausted, my group went to sleep at about midnight after cleaning guns and drying clothes . . . just to wake up to a false fire alarm at 6:30 in the morning. Some days you just can’t win.
Training Day One (TD1)
After that rude awakening, we got back out to the range. Training started under much better conditions. It was much nicer out–the rain had stopped, and things dried up quick. I was signed up for classes with Mike and Caleb for TD1, so off I went to Bay 11 to start the day.
Mike Wood’s Holster Skills Class
Mike Wood, in addition to his charisma and astounding good looks, had the best class at RevolverFest, and you should all go train with him. In fact, don’t ever train with anyone else, just Mike. He was also the best shooter, best dressed, and . . .
What’s that? Oh, you think I’m just saying all this about Mike because I write for him and this is his website?
Well, you’d be right!
OK, joking set aside, I got a lot out of Mike’s class. As mentioned, RevolverFest 2026 was the first time I’d ever met Mike in person. I came to RevolverGuy through Justin, and I’ve only communicated with Mike through email before. It was great to see him teach in person. His class was focused on holster work, how to safely and efficiently get a gun on target–or not. See, this wasn’t a class about cutting the microseconds off your draw time. Instead, what it really consisted of was a decision making/cognitive class with an emphasis on holster skills.
Class started promptly with Mike double-checking to make sure everyone was cleared out, then doing a short lecture portion on draw stroke. Mike doesn’t have an elaborate count-style drawstroke and instead used simple terms to describe each action and step. A real emphasis was put on drawing to low ready as well as on target, and on single-hand work. After doing this dry, we moved to the range and did the same skills live in two relays, with a partner acting as a coach.
As we progressed, Mike slowly started increasing the cognitive load. He used whistle commands to indicate whether you drew to low ready or straight to firing, then moved on to having your partner tap your shoulder to start the action. Finally, we were given cards that had different commands on them that Mike would call out. Calling a number/letter combo indicated whether you would fire or not, how many rounds, how many hands you could use, etc. This all culminated in another card with scenarios that you had to interpret and respond to (for 20 bucks I’ll send you a picture of the card, so you can be a rock star in Mike’s future classes. Call me.).
As a graduate of John Hearne’s Cognitive Pistol class, as well as an attendee of the Cognitive Conclave, I always appreciate a chance to do this kind of work, since I don’t get many chances to do it on my own. After that exercise, we circled up to do a hot wash and were dismissed.
Mike’s class is tied with Lew Gosnell’s as my favorite of the week, and I don’t really have any criticisms. If there was anything, it would be that this is definitely a slower, more beginner-focused class. The cognitive stuff is valuable for anyone, but the drawstroke stuff before that was more targeted towards newer shooters. To be frank, that was most of the student base, and I watched some real progress happen in that class. But for me, a longtime training and competitive shooting junkie, it was more review than a lot of learning.
Also, a lot of subpar gear set ups showed up in class. Not Mike’s fault of course. My partner, for example, had a good quality IWB leather holster from a brand you’d recognize–but the clip was too small for his belt, so it rode on it, not around it. His holster moved constantly on his belt. Compounding that, he had just gotten the holster the day before, and it hadn’t broken in, yet. For reholstering, he would hold the bottom of the holster and push the gun in hard. I was watching the whole time, no safety rules were violated, but it was disconcerting to watch. A few other students had similar problems–incorrectly sized belt attachments, inability to holster one-handed, and so on.
Overall, Mike’s class was fantastic, and if you go to RevolverFest with someone that hasn’t done a lot of training, I highly recommend it.
Caleb Giddings’ Performance Revolver
I should mention now that class sign ups this year, through “Sched,” were much better and easier than last year’s system. However, the email for signups went out at 8:00 in the morning, a few weeks before class–and guess who can’t have a phone or full internet access at work? This guy.
Accordingly, I didn’t plan on taking Caleb’s class this year, because I took it last year. Even worse, I’d won the shoot off in his class last year and gotten his Revolver Degenerate Coin and wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Buuuut everything else filled up quick, and I do love shooting guns fast and under pressure, so off I went. This year turned out to be more fun, because both Eli and my other traveling buddy took the class as well. Forget competing for a coin or score–everyone knows the real fun is beating your friends. At one point, Caleb even stopped by Eli’s shooting point after a drill and said, “you two shoot together a lot huh? You’re racing each other every drill.”
Anyway, Caleb’s class was almost the total reverse of Mike’s–an opening lecture covering grip, draw, and a few reload techniques, then out in front of reduced-sized steel to shoot. This was not a tactical class or anything, it was purely a “how to shoot the gun better” class. Primarily, we shot pairs and triples at various distances, with Caleb keeping each sequence of exercises at almost exactly 18 rounds. Caleb would come by and give individual pointers. We shot one big 18-round excresise and started doing a walk back drill as the shoot off. Caleb would set a par time, and if you hit within time you stayed, otherwise you were out. I made it to the top four, but flubbed my 35-yard shot, with Eli out at that distance as well. Our last shooting buddy made it to the top two, but was knocked out as well.
Caleb’s class really was the inverse of Mike’s, student wise–whereas experienced shooters would probably just be reviewing during Mike’s initial portions, new shooters would benefit tremendously. In contrast, Caleb’s class was probably a little much for the casual plinker crowd, and there were a few in the class. While Caleb did an admirable job of giving everyone advice, some people were struggling to hit steel slow fire at 12 yards at first, never mind from the draw. To his great credit, Caleb ran things well and even managed to work with a shooter using a cross-draw holster, putting him on the left side of the line and coaching him through a drawstroke that didn’t flag his arm. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a true cross draw holster allowed in a class.
If you have a good handle on shooting and you want some tricks to push the speed, Caleb’s class is for you. I played with a different way of gripping the gun during his class, and while I don’t know if I’ll switch, I could see the benefits. Caleb also shot the whole class with his famous beat up Taurus 82, so despite the race rig he was wearing, he probably had the cheapest gun in the class. Kudos!
And just to close things out, I managed to really make Caleb feel old. He was talking about people who remember him being on Top Shot, and I mentioned that I remembered watching him on that show . . . when I was a freshman in high school. Pretty sure I watched a gray hair grow on his head as he processed that.
TD1 BBQ Dinner
TD1 closed out with a BBQ dinner, where my group showed up wearing two guns each in our nicest leather, ‘cause it’s rare you actually get a chance to wear your BBQ guns to an actual BBQ, right? Food was fantastic, even if it wasn’t real BBQ (North Carolina boy here). Eli, just like last year, almost single-handedly cleaned the kitchen out of banana pudding (or, as I’m informed by his Appalachian accent, “’Nanner puddin’”).
After that, the raffle started. Starting with guns and working down through accessories, people were called up to the prize table to receive their rewards. Since I’ve never won anything at a raffle in my entire life, I used the chance to socialize, catching up with Bruce and Will Cartwright, Justin Dyal, Beretta Ben, and others. My inner history nerd got very excited when Dyal introduced me to a gentleman who’d been at the Columbia Conference, and I got to ask him questions for a while. To my complete lack of surprise, I didn’t win anything, so after the raffle and a little clean up, we went back to the hotel to get a full night’s sleep.
TD2 Chuck Haggard Ballistics Demo
TD2 opened with me at Chuck Haggard’s Ballistic Demo, which was more a “where does your ammo hit?” class than anything. Ballistic Gel was only the last 45 minutes of class. It opened with a lecture from Chuck, followed by sequences of groups fired at various distances, with the intent to keep all the shots in the upper half of an A-zone, with a little Tactical Anatomy and myth busting spread in. We also shot the same sequences with carry ammo, so students could see where their ammo hit.
It concluded with some rough gel testing, with Chuck clarifying the differences in actual ordnance gel and clear gel. A few people submitted ammo for testing, nothing exotic. I intended to submit some Glaser Safety slugs, just for kicks, but upon opening my blister pack I wasn’t sure if they were safe to shoot or not. Speer Gold Dot, wadcutters, and things loaded with the Hornady XTP bullet were praised by Chuck for various reasons.
Chuck’s class was good for people who hadn’t been exposed to a lot of this stuff before. I’m an old school ballistics nerd–ask me about my collection of IWBA newsletters sometime–so a lot of the technical info was stuff I already knew, a good bit of it from appearances Chuck, himself, has made on podcasts before.
Frankly, the shooting surprised me, as I’d never considered that people would carry ammo that they DIDN’T know where it hit. I carry 135 Gr. Short Barrel Gold Dot in almost every .38 Special-chambered gun I own, both for its good ballistic properties and the fact that it hits the same POA/POI in my guns as generic 158 gr LRN. The exception is my Model 12, which almost exclusively gets shot with wadcutters. It boggled me that you would ever consider walking around the streets with ammunition that you didn’t know where it hit–the whole purpose of shooting is to hit the target!
If you haven’t been exposed to a lot of terminal ballistics stuff, Chuck’s class is great. However, if you’ve done a class with some of this material before, or just nerd out on this stuff, it might be a bit of a repeat. It’s like zeroing a rifle or patterning a shotgun–once you’ve done it, doing it in class is usually a bit of a drag. I’m a big shotgunner, and the first time I did patterning in a class it was eye-opening. After that, it’s boring. Oh look, your shotgun shoots Flite Control into tight patterns, who’da thunk it? But as a first-time eye opener, shooting your carry ammo and checking it in gel is a great experience.
Lew Gosnell- Single Action Revolver
This was just for kicks. Single Actions might not be the most practical carry guns–and there’s a forthcoming article coming to RevolverGuy that goes into that in excruciating detail–but man are they fun.
Lew Gosnell is a longtime Gunsite instructor and champion Cowboy Action Shooter, and there’s very few people who are more qualified to teach how to use a single action revolver practically. Lew’s class was big on covering the manual of arms of an SA. When do you cock the hammer? Do you reload keeping the gun in your firing hand? When do you put your finger on the trigger? Also, just like a shotgun, keeping the gun constantly topped off was a big emphasis (load what you shoot). Lew comes from Gunsite and has some of that school’s habits burned into his brain, so expect to do things like a five-count draw, and scan and assess, in his block.
This was another class with Eli and I next to each other, so it was off to the races. While he shot slightly tighter groups than me throughout the day, I beat him twice on the big shoot off at the end. Three steel targets, 12 yards, students loaded with five rounds. On the buzzer, shoot one on each steel, then one on another, one on another, reload, and one more round on the last piece, so everything has two rounds on it. I won the first time, then came back the second time and won again with a time of about 11.5 or so. I ended up receiving the grandest prize of the weekend from Lew–a smile, and a gruff “Damn good shooting.”
As mentioned, I took this for fun. Running a single action fast is just a hoot, and I totally understand why Cowboy Action Shooting was so popular for years. It was also a great chance for me to get pictures for my upcoming article–I shot the whole class with my USFA out of a Barranti IWB holster. I won’t say too much more on the class itself, since my upcoming article on the subject will be much more detailed (It’s 14 single-spaced pages in Word right now), but suffice to say, if you just want to relax and shoot a cool gun for a few hours, take Lew’s class.
Wrapping up TD2
After the last block, we pulled up stakes and left. Different classes wrapped up at slightly different times, and my crew was driving home that night, so we said goodbyes quickly. I did manage to find time to sneak over to Chauncey’s bay and put a cylinder through Elmer Keith’s old .41 Magnum, so that was epic. After shaking a few babies and kissing a few hands, we left and went home, only stopping once for a post-RevolverFest tradition with my group–eating way too much meat at a Brazilian steakhouse. If you’ve never been to one before, you seriously need to go try it. You pay money, and they continuously bring you meat for as long you can stand it. What better way to conclude something American like RevolverFest, than by devouring as much steak as you can stomach?
Final Thoughts
As always, RevolverFest is one of my favorite events of the year. Wet weather on Industry Day notwithstanding, it’s just a fun time. Wheelgun people are generally nice and relaxed, the blocks all have great instructors, and you get to be around cool guns for three days. What’s not to like? Getting to talk to Harrison of Harry’s Holsters, Lou Barranti, Nick Rukavina, Bill Holt, and all the great instructors was a blast. Seeing friends from training classes, like my pals Nina and Jeremy, is always great.
I don’t have any criticism of the event itself from the perspective of a student; it’s well run and worth the money. Signing up for blocks was much easier this year, admin stuff was painless for the students, and no safety problems occurred at all.
If I had one thing to add to the event, I think a block dedicated to reloading a revolver would be nice, since a lot of the student’s loaders and techniques were inefficient. Kinda broke my heart, to see someone carrying a nice old Smith, in a good leather holster, and then have HKS loaders in nylon pouches on the other side of his belt. A block from someone that covered loops, strips, and different types of loaders, as well as ways to carry and employ them, would be helpful to a lot of people. I’d be more than willing to loan gear and help with a block like that, if the decision-makers think it’d be interesting to add.
I understand there were some problems with Clinton House from the organizer’s perspective this year (I caught a little bit of that at the muddy Colt booth, and apparently there were some other problems). Accordingly, next year RevolverFest will be back at The Sawmill Training Complex in SC. Tickets are on sale now, and there will be less available spots next year, so sign up quick if this sounded like fun.
Finally, thank you’s. Bryan and AFR, of course, for putting on the event, and all the instructors that tolerated the weather and travel just to teach this niche art. The folks that went around helping with media and general range assistance–Michael Burgess, the Magnificent Steve Havey, Mickey Schulch, Dave Simerly, and anyone else I missed. And of course, the students–no one that I was in a block with had a bad attitude, held up class, or did anything else that could become an annoyance.
If you were at RevolverFest and have a story to tell, or you have any questions about the event, put it in the comments. Otherwise, we’ll see you around. Shoot well and stay safe!
*****
Lead Image: RevolverFest 2026 group photo, courtesy of David Simerly, @dsim65 on IG
