Smith 617 Box to Match REVIEW

[P.E. Kelley]

What a shame, but at least I could fix it myself...and I have.

 

[RJH]

Great video, I would love for you to send it in with the original firing pin and put S&Ws warranty dept. to the test how well it works.  That gun would have me sending it back for sure

[P.E. Kelley]

I have since "squared" the barrel, brushed off the recoil shield burr and picked up a new Apex Firing Pin.

As far as the finish goes, I will tackle that later.

I have a hard time waiting on someone else to do what I can and perhaps to a lesser standard.

 

 

 

 

[missed it by that much]

Great video, to bad about the gun.

[MWP]

Which apex pin?

[alecmc]

Love the apex pin for my center fires, but I actually had worse results in the 617 with the apex pin. I stuck with the stock firing pin in my 617 , forget the length - but it was on the shorter side (.48x ) 

I'd spend my money on an aftermarket mainspring like the Bang Inc one.

best of luck

[JRB]

Hey Guys.

First off this is a great video, thank you.

I got my S/W 617 10 shot 2 years ago, had it all set up to shoot Action Pistol matches, in open, sights, mover base, wings, and grips.

What a disappointment this firearm was out of the box, the trigger was about 14lbs, crunchy, and not nice to play with.

Had all the work done to it by a great gunsmith, but it would never set off all 10 shots, ever. I played around with ever type of ammo I could find, and out of 1000 rounds shot it only set off 700 of them.

So this year, I went to Bedford for the AP matches in September, took my 2 38/357's with me as well as the 617, to let my best friend Kevin A try to see if it was me or the gun. It was not me, it was the gun. We tried filing the firing pin, no luck, we looked up on the web the shape of the pin, found it, but my pin was not even close to the picture, but it looked like the firing pin in my 686 PC, so we took the CL Extended firing pin out of my 686 PC, and put it into the 617, if fit perfectly, took it to the range, and guess what, of 100 rounds no miss fires, and great pin hits on the case.

I got the gun home and took it to the range at my home club, and then fired 500 round over a few hours, and not one miss fire, ( all types of ammo ).

Kevin, when we were at the Bedford range fired 10 X's at 50 yards, no issues, so the gun is accurate no question.

The back story is that S/W was unwilling to help me, would offer no suggestions, and said to bad. As I live in Canada, sending the gun back to S/W is not an easy thing to do. I also called and talked to a human at CL and he told me that the Extended fire Pin they make WOULD not fit or work in the 617. Well I proved them wrong.

So I have now in my possession 6 CL Extended firing pins, I will replace the one out of my 686 PC, and now can compete in the AP matches with my 617.

A lot of time wasted on a firearm that cost me $1000.00 CDN dollars. I will practice with it, work it in, then try to get the trigger to a point that it still fires all the round, but has a bit lighter pull.

Thank you all for your time.

J. Russell Bryan

Canadian AP Shooter

[jcc7x7]

Forgive the ignorance who is CL

I just bought a 617 which I was fortunate enough to be able to handle prior to buying.

The timing is perfect

The Barrel is on straight, woowho!

Only shot a 100 rounds today they all went bang.  Gun is accrurate

Trigger pull is heavy BUT no grinding in it, it 's actually smooth. Again its heavy.  Going to adjust the factory spring as I've been doing with the last couple of S&W's

I've been easily able to get the 7.5 lbs I prefer with a 13 lbs return spring

I want the firing pin as a back up, I'm not happy with the shallow firing pin and concerned it may lead to a problem.

Two different colors of stainless barrel vs frame but not a huge difference but there.

Overall satisfied!!!

Thanks for the info. in advance on who "CL" is

Neil

[JRB]

Hello, I was not sure if I was allowed to use the correct name, with out getting in trouble.

CL is Cylinder and Slide, Bill is a great guy, and they are most helpful most of the time, on this subject, I think the person I talked to was just not well informed about the firing pin.

I now have to check to see if the 617 is 2 different colours, I have never noticed. For sure the firearm is accurate, it just did not want to set off all the shells all the time.

J. Russell Bryan 

[jcc7x7]

Thought so , just wanted to make sure.

I've used a bunch of their stuff over the years.

Always seems like its good quality

Neil

[Carmoney]

Much as I dislike the C&S pin in a center-fire revolver, I must grudgingly admit that my 617 has one installed, because I found that I could get good ignition with a (somewhat) reduced action.

Do not dry-fire the gun without snap caps, or it will ding the crap out of your rimfire chamber edges.

[DS-10-SPEED]

12 hours ago, Carmoney said:

Much as I dislike the C&S pin in a center-fire revolver, I must grudgingly admit that my 617 has one installed, because I found that I could get good ignition with a (somewhat) reduced action.

Do not dry-fire the gun without snap caps, or it will ding the crap out of your rimfire chamber edges.

I saw this on another site:

It looks like Uberti is milling out an indent in their 12 shot cylinders so they can use extended firing pins.

I wonder if this method could work for other rimfires.

Edited November 29, 2016 by DS-10-SPEED
couldn't get picture

[louu]

Thanks for the review, thinking about one of these for my next purchase. 

[Mover480]

On 11/29/2016 at 9:26 AM, DS-10-SPEED said:

I saw this on another site:

It looks like Uberti is milling out an indent in their 12 shot cylinders so they can use extended firing pins.

I wonder if this method could work for other rimfires.

Interesting that the indent is on the bottom of the chamber, not the top like on a S&W