Carbon steel parts on stainless S&W's

B

Benton

New member
I've noticed that the more recent production stainless steel revolvers from Smith and Wesson have carbon steel triggers and hammers. Does anyone know why they began to do this?

If corrosion resistance is the goal of stainless steel use, the carbon steel parts seem like major chinks in the armor.
 
It's because stainless steel isn't doesn't have the lubricity of carbon blends. You'd have a stiffer trigger after awhile. Also, SS can tend to gall easily in certain high metal on metal contact areas.
 
I don't think this is necessarily a new policy. My M624 from the mid 1980s was done with plated trigger and hammer and I have seen M60s done like this also.

J.D. Jones, the handgun writer and owner of SKS Industries (the hand cannon people) wrote that this is to improve trigger pulls. It gives a harder surface to the bearing surfaces. J.D.s comment when reporting on this in Sixgunner (where he frequently called a spade a spade as he had no editor or advertiser to please) was for once the customer was getting the best of all worlds. Corrosion resistance but real steel lockwork parts.
 
I think Mike has hit on it.

It allows a couple of different hammers and triggers to fit everything in the line-up, both blued or stainless. Although most of the former models have been dropped from the line, why go through the extra cost of plating them like back-in-the-day? In all fairness, though, I've also read of the early issues with galling, and the more positive durability aspects of the chrome-moly parts.
 
Sorry guys, but I think you are all barking up the wrong tree. Smith & Wesson does not use carbon steel on the triggers and hammers. It is case hardened stainless steel. Roughly the same grade of the rest of the gun, but harder. And because of its composition, it will corrode.

Robert
 
IIRC, S&Ws earlier guns that appeared to have stainless triggers and hammers were actually flash-chromed carbon steel parts.

Somewhere along the way they dropped the plating...
 
S&W originally used stainless steel hammers and triggers on their stainless revolvers. Customers complained about the resulting bad trigger-pulls, so S&W went to flash-chrome-plated carbon steel for the hammers and triggers.
The good trigger-pulls then returned to S&W revolvers.


Here is a related post from another thread:

Let me start by saying, "I am not a metallurgist"

Different gun parts require different properties: hardness, strength, light weight, etc. The designer should specify materials and heat treatments (with the advice of the metallurgist) that meet the requirements of the firearm.

On a stainless steel gun, one of the design requirements is corrosion resistance. Some parts are not best made from stainless steel - (S & W used to make stainless steel triggers and hammers for their stainless guns, but these parts were not meeting the requirements, and they changed these parts to chrome-plated carbon steel. Also, some early stainless S & W revolvers had stainless steel fixed front and adjustable rear sights!)

Designing any product is a balancing act - the product has to be producible, resonably priced, desireable to the consumer, and do the job for which it was intended.

People must want stainless steel guns, or the manufacturers would not make them!

-Mk.IV
 
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