I can say I've only owned a few revolvers in my time...but I have been shooting the on the regular since the early 80's.

I've owned Charter Arms, Taurus, S&W, and Ruger over the years. .38spcl, .357 magnum, and .44 Magnum.

I was introduced to the piss poor fit/finish of Taurus revolvers when I bought a new M44 back in 2009. Stripped screws, poor machining finish on parts, and one of the worst machined cylinder ratchets I've ever seen. Even with this, the price won me over and I bought it. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that in SA, it would often fail to lock the cylinder in position. I traded it on a fugly Ruger Super Redhawk and never looked back. I expected that from Taurus, they're a cheap company, they make cheap stuff.

Back on point. When S&W released the 8 shot 627 a few years back, I knew I had to have one. It took me quote some time, but back in Dec, I put my $$ down on one. It was the only one they had in stock, no other places had one locally, not even a used one (mine is new). I gave it a quick once over and plopped down my $$.

While I getting the funds up to go pay the thing off...I started doing research on the thing online (dumb, I know). Something I saw over and over is issues with new S&W revolvers having various out of the box issues. One of them, a screwed up barrel crown. Long story short, went to pick up my pistol...I immediately looked at the barrel crown...and saw this mess:



Yup, F'd up barrel. How that crap passed S&W QC...especially on a supposed "Pro Series" gun that is claimed to be a step above standard production, is beyond me.

I considered just taking it back, but in the end decided to sent it back to S&W to get fixed. Long story short, contacted them, shipped it back to them (for free), 3.5 weeks later I got it back fixed.

Ok...fixed barrel...now on to the next problem, the unusually hard trigger pull. Something I knew I couldn't bring up with S&W because they'd just write it off to something and send it back.

I'm not exactly sure how to explain it, but the DA trigger pull is "off". It's smooth, but unusually difficult to pull. I thought about attempting to mess with it myself, but then thought better of it. I had an old timer, well seasoned revolver fan friend of mine play with it and he noted how tough the DA pull was as well. I decided that I wasn't crazy and made the decision to get it fixed.

(A little info on my gunsmith, hes an older guy who has been doing revolvers for decades and is very good at what he does. The guy has forgotten more than I know about the inner working of the things, especially S&W.)

When I took the pistol to him a few weeks back, without even touching the thing, the first thing out of his mouth was "I've had to rework quite a few new S&W revolvers lately, every time it's the hand, it's out of timing and fighting the ratchet at the end of the DA pull."

He pulled my pistol out of the box, played with it a few times, and confirmed that to be the case. He handed it back, had me DA pull the trigger telling me to pay close attention to the last 50% of the travel, had me open the cylinder, fake the cylinder close, and pull the trigger again sans cylinder. Huge difference. The pull was consistent throughout the cycle with no ramp up at the end.

I handed it back, he made a few errant comments concerning modern S&W and then assured me that he'd get it fixed and get it back to me.

I don't have it back yet, I'm chomping at the bit to get it. I bought the thing the in Dec and here it is almost March and I haven't even fired a single round through it.



For a $900 purchase, this is just absurd. I expect this from a cheap gun, not from S&W and not from a pistol that costs that much $$.

Over the years I've had defective new guns from Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Walther, Taurus, Remington and maybe some others I don't recall at this moment.  Problems especially with Ruger.

Edit:  Glock too.

Yeah, you don't buy a new S&W revolver without first giving them a serious hands-on inspection before laying down the cash.  I have been lucky but I have also only every purchased one new S&W revolver.  All the rest of mine have been purchased used including my 627PC.  Let someone else buy/fix the lemons.

This and the Hole are the reason I only buy S&W revolvers that are around my age or older.

Shoot the gun. See if it works. I have heard Modern rifling methods use high voltage to etch the groves in handgun barrels and the crowns don't look the same as machined ones. 

If it doesn't have a barrel pin and it has a hillary hole, I'm passing on it.

I can still find old very nice S&W's for 50-60% of brand new one's and they have more then my lifetimes worth of shooting still in them.

I have exactly one non pinned barrel S&W and that is a 1982 model 18 that was bought by the DPD for females to qual with and sold off still new after the union grieved it.

While anyone of the big manufacturers can put out a lemon; especially these days... yeah... I prefer my Smiths from the 70's as of late. I've had (2) total turds in my 25 years of buying, shooting, carrying. (1) was a Glock 27 and (1) was a Springfield Loaded. Both were made exceptionally right in the end. But it goes to show you don't just buy a pistol, load it up, and put it in a nightstand, a CCW holster, or a quick access safe and call it good without vetting it.

I have no desire for a new one.

S&W has had some quality consistency issues recently but despite that if you can inspect a S&W revolver before buying it they are still be best value going in currently produced revolvers.  You can buy better (Korth) and you can by cheaper (Taurus et al) but S&W still produces the best revolver for the money.  The new guns (when not hit with human induced QC problems) are far more consistent then any revolver S&W has ever produced in the past.  If you talk to the revolver smiths that make a living tuning S&W revolvers nearly all of them will tell you they would rather do an action job or a trigger job on a new MIM based revolver than the old forged parts and hand fitted guns.  The new MIM parts and CNC machined parts are far more repeatable than the older revolvers.

I would love to see the internal hammer lock go away also but I also am not going to use that as an excuses to not buy a revolver I want.  My 627PC has the lock.  With nearly 10,000 rounds through the gun now the lock has been a non-issue.  When I buy my 629 in the near future if I find a deal on the configuration I want and the gun has the lock I am still going to buy it.  Lock or no lock S&W still dominates the competitive revolver market. The group of shooter that puts an order of magnitude more round through their revolvers in a single season than many other revolver owners do in a life time choose S&W for a reason.

Is that fanboy enough?  

Quality issues happen sometimes, unless it's Taurus then it's most of the time.  I don't understand refusing to send it back to S&W because you just assume they won't do anything.  Why not give them a chance and if they send it back unfixed you aren't out anything but if it comes back fixed you're golden.  I do agree that issues like those should never have left the factory but that's what happens when companies put production numbers ahead of quality control.  I worked in the QC business for a long time and it happens with the majority of companies regardless of what they manufacture.


I'm not sure where I stand on S&W these days, they don't seem to have anywhere near the quality issues as a lot of other manufacturers.  The locks are just ridiculous and I think they are a huge waste of money and machining but I'm sure not going to pass on buying an otherwise great revolver just because of that.  In fact, I do now own a S&W 629 V-Comp Performance Center revolver and I absolutely love it.  Quality is excellent, trigger is excellent and accuracy is excellent so it's pretty hard to beat that.  I've never touched the lock and don't even think about it so it's a non-issue.

Great. Now I read this thread. I just ordered one sight-unseen.

Shoot it. See if all is well first. If not, call S&W, their customer service is equal to no other.
Steve

I've got a wheel gun at S&W now and I'm less than impressed with their CS.

I sent in the gun in on the 22nd of February for a yoke issue. Got the standard notifications of it being received. A week later, no news. I call their CS with my RMA number, gun has new yoke and yoke screw installed. "It'll go out the latter part of next week". Why? Why is it going to take another week to ship it out to me after it's already been fixed?

Called on Monday. Still hasn't shipped. "It'll go out later this week because of a snow storm coming through, tomorrow". WTF? No updates. Still hasn't shipped and has been finished for more than a week now.

It's not like they're fitting custom parts. These are production line guns. What's the hold up?

Edit. Called again today. Pistol has been completed since last week, "it might ship out Friday or Monday". I ask why it's taking so long and the response was "that's just the amount of work they have". Again, it's been done for a week now. How much time does it take to set up a shipping label and send it out?