Best Smith & Wesson books

G

guitar1580

New member
Is the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 3rd edition, the main, 1st choice of SW books?

Are there any others that come highly recommended as a comprehensive, unbiased guide, reference, etc.?

Josh P
 
I have History of Smith and Wesson by Roy G. Jinks, the in-house historian, but it is not exactly up to date, at least in this edition. Fairly useful book and an insider.
 
Excellent! Thanks guys. I just ordered the Standard Catalog. I found it on ebay for $26.22, free shipping. They have 4 left, if anyone needs to update to a newer one.

I'll probably get the Jinks one later on too. Never hurts to have more than one perspective. Thx again,

Josh P
 
The Neal and Jinks book is good, but only goes up to 1945 and is now out of print. It is very good at serial numbers and in describing the changes to the guns over time (no dash numbers then) and even has x-rays of most of the guns, very valuable in determining the changes made and how the guns worked. Most of the information in Flayderman came from that book.

The little Jinks-Krein book has a lot about the company, and some interesting anecdotes, but little about the guns. The McHenry-Roper book is good also, but the writers did not have much "inside" information. Books by Keith, Phil Sharpe and others describe experiments with S&W's in the pre-WWII era.

Jim
 
I dunno, my copy of the Jinks book was printed in 1980 and seemed to be current up to the 70s at least. I got it used at a gunshow as I recall.
 
If you drop by Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, etc. and do a search for books by Roy Jinks several turn up. The two best are the collectors handbook which ends in the late 1940s and the book "No good thing comes without effort" which goes a couple of decades later. Both are of interest and useful.

For most purposes the SCS&W is the best place to start though.

tipoc
 
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