This first picture is of the 629-3 I picked up from a dealer who bought it at a police auction. I got it for a good price, and while it was mechanically very good, it was very beat up. The picture looks much better that the gun actually did. The Niles grips were added by me after I bought it.

   

My original idea was simply to have the gun bead blasted and then lightly polish it up myself, but my gunsmith has just gotten involved in applying the DuraCoat finish from Lauer Weaponry ( www.lauerweaponry.com/ezac/index.asp ). He had already done a few rifles, shotguns, and 1911's, but I volunteered the 629 to be his first revolver.

I decided to do everything in the HK matte black finish along with replacing the front sight blade with a red insert sight blade, and use an Ed Brown extended cylinder latch. We went back and forth about leaving the cylinder in its natural stainless finish, but decided to coat it, too, and see how bad the ring line became. If it looked bad, we could just blast it back to SS.

So the picture below is after the first attempt at coating. I have since shot it and it has developed the same kind of ring you would expect on a blued gun. I'll be putting a few hundred hot 44 Loads through it over the next couple of weeks to see how it holds up.  

   

Nice gun! Do you notice any difference with an unfluted cylinder?

Geez, that looks great!
I had one each of the limited runs of both the .41 and .44 mag fluted round butt snubbies years back and they were quite a handful.
Besides your hand, I hope the finish holds up too, it looks real nice in black, kinda stealthy.

I'm not sure what I would notice as a difference. The gun is a pleasure to shoot; I don't find the recoil unpleasant.  I do have two other 3" N-frame (pictured below), a 3" 629 Combat Master, which has a factory MagNaPorted barrel, and a 3" 625 worked over heavily by the S&W Performance Center.



I find the weight of even the short barrel N-frame, combined with a good set of grips (which does not include the traditional S&W N-frame SB Target grips), makes them easy to shoot even with heavy loads.

David
What gunsmith did the work. I'd like to have a rifle done.
Could you send me the contact information.

Hubba hubba, DavidC!  That's nice!

That looks great.

Let us know how it holds up.

Well, the DuraCoat did not hold up well on the cylinder. The muzzle end of the cylinder was scoured back to the metal by the force of the escaping gases (though curiously enough, neither the frame nor the area above the forcing cone lost the DuraCoat finish), and the drag ring was very noticible, so we decided just to blast the cylinder and extractor back to matte stainless.  Still looks pretty good to me.

That looks really good with the stainless cylinder.

that does look nice!

are the hammer and trigger steel or alum?
can you blast them to match the cylinder and release?

Quoted: that does look nice! are the hammer and trigger steel or alum? can you blast them to match the cylinder and release?

The hammer and trigger are forged stainless steel (not MIM like the newer guns), and in reality, are a better match for the cylinder and cylinder latch than the picture would suggest. They aren't bead blasted, so they reflect the light from the flash differently.  It would be a major PITA to bead blast them to a complete match without touching the engagement surfaces, which if changed, would require another action job to clean up.

David, what is MIM?

VERY sharp revolvers! I REALLY like the 625. What kind carry rigs do you use for them?
SorryOciffer

Quoted: David, what is MIM? VERY sharp revolvers! I REALLY like the 625. What kind carry rigs do you use for them? SorryOciffer

I use either a belt slide holster, but I usually just carry the 625 in a fanny pack when I can't conceal my normal carry gun (full-size 1911).

re: MIM ->

MIM is a manufacturing method for producing complex shapes from high performance materials. Provided the part meets some modest standards of material strength and part size, MIM has the highest performance to cost ratio and highest shape complexity to cost ratio of any manufacturing method. MIM therefore competes with machining and investment casting in the custom components market. Your competitors in the medical, firearms, hardware, hand tools, and computer industries may be using MIM right now. HOW DOES IT WORK? MIM produces net or near-net shaped articles from metal or ceramic powders by the following method: mixing the powder with a binder - a plastic material that is used in the plastic molding industry; manufacturing a tool or die that contains a cavity in the shape of the part to be made; injecting the powder-filled plastic into the die cavity using an injection molding machine; ejecting a complex shaped, solid plastic part; removing the binder in a debinding step; sintering in a final step.