Revolver maintenance question

R

ranchito457

New member
A while back I bought a new smith and wesson model 66 combat mag and i loved it so much I went and bought a Ruger gp-100.I like these guns so much I catch myself looking for more revolvers. All my other handguns are semi-autos.So when I bought these two I took them cleaned them up and went from there.So yesterday while at the range the cylinder on my smith stop rotating freely making the gun inoperable at that point.At first I thought it was The internal lock acting up but it turned out that wasn't the case.So i packed it up and as soon as I got back home I called smith and wesson for a return shipping label for service-To there credit they had a label emailed to me in ten minutes.So as I was cleaning it up to ship it to them I had the idea to hop on youtube and see how to remove the cylinder.After I removed the cylinder and broke it all down -cleaned it up and reinstalled the problem was solved turns out it was just a bunch of crud build between the cylinder and rod.
So my question is this,the gun only has about 100-150 rounds through it.When cleaning after range use do I have to remove the cylinder every time and clean in there or was this some kind of freak thing?
Like I said I'm new to revolvers and just trying to figure out proper maintenance to prevent this problem from occurring again in the future.
 
Yeah, clean guns always work better.
You probably don't need to take it apart as much as described.
Spraying and lubing on the internal parts inside the assembled cylinder, from both ends, should do it ok.
 
If you're not shooting black powder you should get a lot more than 150 shots before the gun gets too fouled to function. Maybe something in there when the gun was shipped, some unknown debris from manufacturing. I'm saying it won't happen again at 150 rounds. Please come back and close out the thread with happy news and a destroyed target.
 
Check the rim thickness of the casing you shot. I've had two bad boxes of remington .38plus p out of spec. This caused binding. By looking you can see the machine not cutting the rim right. It could have been the ammo even if factory.
 
No, you should not need to disassemble anything to keep a Smith running. But one point to remember is that if unburnt powder flakes accumulate between the extractor star and the rear of the cylinder, it can cause the problem you described. The clearances are tight, and a few thousandths of crud can keep the cylinder from opening properly. May years ago the extractor rod could unscrew slightly, also preventing the cylinder from opening. But Smith went to a reverse thread on the extractor rod years ago, to counteract this tendency. You should not experience this type of problem on a modern Smith, but on an old one, it is always a good idea to make sure the extractor rod has not backed out.
 
I've never had this problem in any revolver, and I've shot hundreds of rounds without cleaning on at least a few occasions. If it does bind because of accumulated grit and residue, a quick wipe of the surfaces should be clearing the tolerances. If it were mine and it kept happening even with different ammo, I'd be worried that the tolerances are too tight.
 
I had a similar issue with my dirty reloads. I got some crud under the ejector star and I was using damaged brass that was too thick in rear. I have a friend that was a few hundred rounds in and locked his up too (same thing, crud got in there). It's pretty rare really. 10k+ revolver rounds for me and it's the only time it happened.
 
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