Accuracy for what? Are you doing competition shooting? Self defense? Plinking?
Most self defense shootings are 7 yards or less.
Casual plinking.
I doubt you'll notice any accuracy deficiencies so long as your barrel is four inches or longer. Suggest consideration of six inches or more for >= .357. Barrel length is fairly important for revolvers anyways. Not only does it improve velocity, but cylinder alignment is never perfect. Longer barrels provide more influence to correct any wobble imparted by misalignment.
Never place your hand or person directly adjacent to a cylinder while firing. The combination of high velocity gases and shrapnel from alignment shaving can be quite nasty.
Random video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h96YwwLoaCk
I grew up shooting .44 mag since around age 6-7 out of my father's red hawk. Cylinder gap is no joke. Obviously risk increases with power of cartridge.
Thanks for the tip. I have quite a bit of caution about hand-in-front-of-cylinder from shooting black powder revolvers where you can get chainfires if you inadequately block the chambers in Crisco, but I wasn't aware you could get a different flavor of bad times from modern revolvers. It makes sense though.
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