EricW Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 I'm thinking hard about horse-trading for a new 4" S&W 629. Is the quality of the S&W revos as bad as I've heard? I have to order the gun to get it, so anybody care to assess the risk factor? Any new S&W owners care to chime in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Mainus Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 S&W revolvers are still the best game in town. The only gripe I have with them is the trigger pull. Expect the DA pull to be just horrendous. All of my revolvers go right to the smith as soon as I get them. As far as the rest of the gun is concerned, never had a problem with them. Except that time I double charged one of my .357 loads. It chronoe'd at 1475 but the cylinder didn't like it. A 4" 629, back-up gun for hunting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted April 24, 2003 Author Share Posted April 24, 2003 Around here a 4" 629 is a primary gun for hunting. I used to go deer hunting with my buddy in North Idaho with my 1911. You just didn't see many animals beyond 30-40 yards...........probably because you generally can't see more than 30-40 yards. I used to pick up some factory S&W's that had *stunningly* good DA triggers. Did they just stop giving a sh*t when the limeys bought them out? I would have figured the new owners in Scottsdale would have walked around the place and and raised holy hell about the QC by now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 Maybe I'm picky, but when I went looking for a new model 66, I had to kiss a lot of toads to find the princess. I checked out maybe a dozen guns and found wide barrel cylinder gaps, gritty triggers, but most common was generally loose cylinder lockups. The one I bought had OK lockup on three cylinder tubes and wobble on the other three (not severe). Shows the extractor stars are not being well fitted.. or at all fitted. The guy at the range I belong to saw my feeler gauges aand realized I knew wht I was doing and began to speak freely. He said they have been seeing a lot of poor fit on new smith guns. I would not risk ordering one, but that's your call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rufus The Bum Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 I have a 625 5" a 686 5" and a 629 8 3/8". All have been flawless. Absolutely no complaints from me. The fit, function, reliability are second to none. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
underlug Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 My last 2 purchases were a 8shot627 and 8shot 27. The triggers were horrible. On the 27 pins were brushing against the sideplate. I could never get the 627 to group and sent it to Jim Stroh for his magic. That, and a couple of trigger jobs, and these guns are as good as it gets, but the words "Performance Center" hold no magic for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRT Driver Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 My opinion is that they are hit or miss. The new CNC machined cylinders etc are really good. The MIM internal parts..not so good. I've had a few of the new ones and the only one still in my safe is a 6 shot 617 The pre integral firing pin versions are usually good. I've got a M14-6 that was made right when the MIM parts started and I've fired 20m + through it. Excellent revolver!! Several "design improvements" were cost cutting measures, not performance improvements. Fit is not as precise and the frame mounted firing pin...eh!! The new erector set trigger lever is just "cheap". Action jobs are not as smooth or as light as they used to be. Granted, with the extended firing pin, they can be as reliable, but it takes a lot more work. At least with the ones I've had. I'm sure some top notch revolver smiths can work around this. Keep in mind that the Perf Center guns have lawyer triggers!!! But the new PC 686 in Super is C-O-O-L!!! Trigger wasn't too bad either..heavy but not bad. But I wish they had made it 40 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George D Posted April 24, 2003 Share Posted April 24, 2003 I have a 629 classic and a 29 classic bought some years ago and both with the firing pin in the hammer. Both are quality built with great triggers. I bought a 686 snub-nose a year ago and the quality was noticeably inferior to the 44's. Regretably, if the laws proposed by our so-called Prime Minister are ratified, all three are to be confiscated and consigned to the furnaces ( as well as my PC945, which is excellent). I'd be inclined to look for a good older model 629. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bountyhunter Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 Around here a 4" 629 is a primary gun for hunting. I used to pick up some factory S&W's that had *stunningly* good DA triggers. Did they just stop giving a sh*t when the limeys bought them out? I would have figured the new owners in Scottsdale would have walked around the place and and raised holy hell about the QC by now. Maybe it's not just a QC issue. The whole MIM thing was started as a way to get parts which did not need to be fitted.. the objective being to cut manufacturing costs. I suspect the expert fingers that fitted those beautiful triggers back in the early days got their walking papers.... and the new manufacturing standard is: "Does it go bang?" It is definitely not the same as it was, and it seems to be somewhat uncontrolled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted April 25, 2003 Author Share Posted April 25, 2003 OK, so now that we've established that the new S&W's are less than optimal, can they be fixed? Can I just send it to a good smith and have the offending trigger group parts replaced? FWIW, I think MIM is a good process, just totally misapplied to trigger parts. The problem is the porosity of sintered parts. They're in no way equivalent to a forged or billeted part and never will be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spook Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 Erik, I only have old S&W's, so I couldn't tell you if the quality of their revo's deteriorated over the last couple of years. What I do know is that the parts that you don't like can be replaced by older parts. There are still some old triggers out there. I've just ordered a Stainless trigger for my 625. They're still in stock in some places. They're quite pricey though. If you don't like the MIM stuff, which I can understand, I would buy an "old" Smith. There are many out there. My smith thinks I'm a little ignorant for not liking the MIM stuff. He says it's a "gut feeling" most people have. Most people think MIM is weak and has bad tolerances. He claims it's cheap, but no worse than the old smith stuff. He's probably right (but I still ordered the SS trigger ) The stuff is strong though. Ruger has been building revolvers that way for years, and they're virtually indestuctible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2alpha Posted April 25, 2003 Share Posted April 25, 2003 It's not that the mim parts are so bad it's that they adopted this " jigsaw puzzle " way of fitting the parts. No more parts rotating on a pin, now they slide around each other. Yuck. Only older Smiths for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted April 28, 2003 Share Posted April 28, 2003 I remember looking over some new S&W's at the Shot show a couple years ago - sadness overwhelmed me. It made me want to start going to gun shows and buying all the old style guns I could find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted April 29, 2003 Author Share Posted April 29, 2003 Thanks everybody! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InTheBlack Posted January 12, 2004 Share Posted January 12, 2004 I was just told by an experienced gunsmith that the new J frames cannot take the old style internals. Does anyone have authoritative info or a list of which models can and cannot take the old style parts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
braindoc Posted August 8, 2004 Share Posted August 8, 2004 When you guys talk about the "new" vs "old" Smith's, what is the cutoff point of differentiation? So far I only have 1 Model 60 with the frame mounted FP, no lock. The rest are the hammer mounted firng pin. I still plan to get more Smiths though. braindoc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George D Posted August 10, 2004 Share Posted August 10, 2004 The cut-off point is when Smith stopped putting the firing pin on the hammer. This "improvement" was in conjunction with other "improvements" which sum toalled three backward steps. Most noticeable is the increased work and difficulty in improving th e DA trigger pull on the new models but there is also a substantial decrease in quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidwiz Posted August 10, 2004 Share Posted August 10, 2004 There is a good article in the August 2004 issue of The Accurate Rifle about 1k yard shooting w/ .44mag revolvers. A few of the revolvers are S&Ws and the author details how he checks out a revolver before he buys to see if it is a shooter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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