C.R. Sam what happened with the S&W 686 you sent in?

M

Master Blaster

New member
Hi, C.R. Sam I remember that a while back you sent in a 686 to S&W because the barrel was shot out and the gun wore out before 20,000 rounds, I am curious what happened, did they replace ther gun, frame, or barrel?

I ask because I have a 686+ and the lands are becoming rounded, and it looks like polygonal rifling, there is still plenty of meat left though and I shoot almost all low power reloads.

I bought it used 2 years ago and at that time it had fired about 4,000 rounds of full power .357 remmington ammo. It was a range gun at Target master for about 6 months.

I am wondering if I should send mine back for a new barrel while S&W is still in business. I also wanted to know if you ever bent the hand pin and had the gun tie up from shooting it too fast. I did when I was dryfiring it.

I have to agree with you that stainless is less than ideal on a S&W revolver.

So what happened and what did they tell you?

Thanks
 
Master. 686 did not go back to factory. Got retired. Fired round count a little under 30,000 , additional 30,000 rounds worth of speedloader drills. Barrel was in pretty good shape. All points where things touched, rubbed or rotated worn beyon spec.

Did send a 696 back that suffered catastrophic failure at under 800 rounds, with factory cowboy ammo. Several months of back n forth and got replacement gun after intercession by outside factory industry honcho. Replacement gun was out of time, sideplate looked like from wrong gun and hammered into place, trigger raspy, etc etc.

I have had the hand pivot pin bend and retard the timing on stainless L frame Smiths nearly every time I have done rapid fire demo with them. Don't do that no mo. Rapid fire reserved for my older, blued steel guns. Easy fix but pain in the rear in the field.

When asked if stainless was reason for the timing problems with stainless L frames, answer from factory was "yes".

Don't have no stainless Smiths no mo. Problem solved.

Sam
 
Sam,

When did Smith & Wesson start using stainless parts inside the gun? My information was that stainless was used for the frame and barrel, but the insides were the same steel as used in blued guns. Flash-chromed in some instances. Thanks, Doug.
 
Doug......I have heard electroless nickle, chrome etc. Only used two stainless Smith wheelguns and they both had stainless lockwork. The replacement 696 appeared to have real steel hammer and trigger but I got rid of it before looking inside. Before even shooting it actually. It did appear to have a stainless star, which was unfinished.....one of the reasons to get rid of it.

Very rapid fire with any revolver with a lot of cylinder mass is going to be rough on the star, hand, hand pivot, cylinder stop and the hand n stop frame windows.

Sam
 
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