S&W English Made?

T

TheLastGoodFight

New member
I was told today that S&W had a very bad run a few years back with exploding handguns and splitting barrels; something to do with their "English" manufacturing process while they were foreign owned.
This is especially concerning to me as I just aquired an exquisite model 21-4 that I've been running handloads through, serial number DBE6XXX. Is there any way to know whether or not mine was manufactured during that "dark period" of horrendous quality, or will I be left wondering the rest of my life?
 
I remember reading an American Handgunner sometime after the end of the Bangor Punta era, which would have been after 1984. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/smith-wesson-corporation-history/ This article was extremely critical about S&W revolvers made during the Bangor Punta era, made claims about inferior quality, and how the S&W guns made by the current ownership had corrected all the defects of the bad, bad, Bangor Punta era.

Nothing gets printed in a Gun Magazine that is not positive or the Corporation will pull future advertisements. Gun writers get a low fixed fee for their articles, which reflects the low qualifications of the job. I have never found any board certifications, educational requirements, or industry job qualifications to be a Gun Writer. I consider them in the same class as food critics. To be a food critic, you don’t have to be able to bake a cake, you just have to be able to eat a cake. Lots of people can chew and swallow, and who can’t point a gun, pull the trigger, and spin a great story about the experience? Given the job insecurity of the pack, they are not going to put anything into print that will upset an advertiser and discourage Gun Magazine editors from using them again. The whole process turns them into temporary employees of a Corporate Marketing Bureau. Gun writers are shills for the industry.

After I read the American Handgunner article, I concluded the purpose of the thing was to push the public down to the Gunstore to buy new S&W’s, not those awful “Bangor Punta” S&W’s , which just weeks before, Gun writers and Gun Magazines were praising to the high heavens.

I am certain there were S&W’s from the Bangor Punta era that were turkeys, but I also have read of S&W’s since the Bangor Punta era which the owners claim are turkeys. Many of my Smith's are from the Bangor Punta era and they are excellent pistols. My M27 is one of the finest 357 revolvers I own, and I still love my M66’s. I also have post Bangor Punta era S&W’s and I am happy with them. The latest S&W's have outstanding machining, I never cared for recessed cylinders, they are difficult to clean. I wish they kept the hammer mounted firing pin, the barrel pin, and I don't care for the lock.

I find it amazing how the shooting public believes in print Gun writers to be unbiased and knowledgeable. These guys write infomercials all designed to get the buying public to run down to the gun store and buy something now. Not buy later, but buy now. After the Bangor Punta era ends, one gun writer disrespects that period of S&W, readers take his article seriously to the point of believing it and repeating it. I wish I had kept the article because now I could do a search by author name, and I am certain I would have found the same author praising Bangor Punta S&W’s to the high heavens, during the Bangor Punta era.

My 27-2




This beat to heck M10-5 is one of the sweetest shooting revolvers I have ever owned. I think I have tens of thousands of rounds through it.

 
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How's the gun shoot? That's the only thing that matters...

Are you running .44 Mag loads through it or something? Assuming you're loading the rounds correctly it should outlast you.

I'd take your average pinned and recessed model over something made today.
 
Howdy

Let's back up the bus a minute.

The Model 21-4 is the reintroduction of the Model 21, known as the Thunder Ranch Special. 44 Special, you can't mistake it, the blued version has the gold Thunder Ranch emblem on the side plate. A very few were nickel plated. I am a bit puzzled over your Serial Number, as the Thunder Ranch Special usually had a prefix of TRS. This model was introduced in 2004. Nothing what so ever to do with the Bangor Punta years. No longer being produced.

The Bangor Punta era was 1964 until 1984. Bangor Punta seems to always get a bad rap. At last count I have seven S&W revolvers from the Bangor Punta era, Model 36, Model 60, Model 13-2, Model 14-3, Model 17-3, Model 19-3, and Model 28-2. All of these were made between 1969 and 1975. I have been inside most of them and the internal quality is superb, easily on a par with some of the great Smiths from the twenties and thirties. It appears that at the end of the Bangor Punt era quality declined, but mine are terrific, easily better than the stuff S&W is producing now.

something to do with their "English" manufacturing process while they were foreign owned.
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A little bit confused by what you mean here. The English model vs the American model of manufacturing goes back a long, long way, back to the time of the Industrial Revolution. Basically, the English model was to hand craft products by skilled craftsmen while the American model was to mass produce them by relatively unskilled labor with the help of sophisticated machinery.

In 1987 Smith and Wesson was purchased by the British Conglomerate Tomkins plc. In 2001 Saf-T Hammer, an Arizona company that made security products purchased S&W from Tomkins. This was the beginning of the often hated internal lock. The name was shortly changed to Smith and Wesson Holding Corporation which is still the official name of the company.

In any event, your Model 21-4 has nothing to do with Bangor Punta or England.

Shoot it and enjoy it, but no 44 Magnum level loads. It is a 44 Special.
 
There was never an "English" manufacturing process while Tomkins owned the company & Bangor Punta guns were not particularly problematic across the board before them.

I've never heard of a period in S&W manufacturing or ownership concerning exploding guns or splitting barrels, and I & my contemporaries were carrying Smiths on duty from the early 1970s onward.
I own a Bangor Punta Model 28, not a thing wrong with it.
I own a Smith or two from the Tomkins period.
And a handful dating through the 1980s.

I don't know where you got your info from, but I'd be very leery of anything that source ever tells you in the future.
Denis
 
DPris said:
I've never heard of a period in S&W manufacturing or ownership concerning exploding guns or splitting barrels...
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FWIW there were several online reports ca. 2010 of catastrophic Model 64 and Model 67 two-piece barrel failures involving the barrel completely separating from the gun on firing, or the forcing cone dragging against the cylinder because the barrel-frame interface apparently became twisted. This seems to have been isolated to these two models, with most of the affected guns being sold to the handful of LE agencies that still mandate .38Spl revolvers (a dying breed). S&W quietly replaced the affected guns.

This has nothing to do with any "English" ownership or manufacturing process, and it happened a number of years after Tomkins ownership ended. Although AFAIK S&W has never really acknowledged the problem publicly, it sounds to me like a simple and isolated case of a change in manufacturing processes gone bad.

I have NOT heard of any widespread problem affecting modern N frames in general or the Model 21-4 in particular.
 
In spite of stories to the contrary, S&W guns have never been made outside the U.S., at any time or any place. S&W sold many guns in England, in both World Wars for military use, and in peacetime. Those guns will, of course have British proof marks.

Copies of S&W revolvers, ranging from excellent to atrocious, have been made in South America, Germany, Spain and Asia, but those are not S&W's.

Jim
 
Yep, there have been occasional incidents of two-piece barrels busting off, but not splitting, and those had nothing to do with Tomkins or any "English manufacturing process". :)
Denis
 
I think the OP doesn't mean English manufacturing as much as he means English management and cost containment.

Tompkins didn't come into the factory, change the assembly lines so that they were left-hand drive, hang pictures of the Queen, and replace coffee and donuts with tea and scones.

Every ownership era has its ups and downs.

In the early to mid 1990s S&W went through a period in which QC apparently was seen as a negative value.

The most memorable issues from that time were barrels that weren't installed correctly, leading to canted front sights (I saw more than a dozen with canted front sights, and while working at the gunshop sent back several), improper final finishing (nothing like wondering why a gun has such a crappy trigger pull only to find that the action is full of metal chips and polishing compound), and a number of other, lesser, issues that would have been picked up in a rigorous QC environment.
 
Copies of S&W revolvers, ranging from excellent to atrocious, have been made in South America, Germany, Spain and Asia, but those are not S&W's.
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Some of the real crappers in the 19th Century came from Belgium. Some of them were blatant copies, even going so far as to mark them with S&W markings. International law being what it was at the time, it was very difficult for an American manufacturer to make a foreign company stop making counterfeit guns. However, Daniel Wesson did manage to stop one of the worst offenders.

No matter who the owners were, Smith and Wesson has always been located in Springfield Massachusetts. The current factory on Roosevelt Avenue was built in 1949. It is huge, part of it was designed to be a bomb shelter. The factory tour is still a great tour.
 
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