S&W Quality

I will add the comment that even during "the day" S&W had occasional issues. I have a nice really nice Pre-27 6.5" that binds the cylinder on double action. Basically the ratchet is mis-fit but since no one tested it or shot it for roughly 60 years till I came along it is still an issue and probably always will be. I don't shoot it so I don't worry about it.

QA/QC costs money and it is an easy thing to cut when times are tough. I understand it and have seen it which is why I tend to only want to buy after I handle and check the gun out.
 
Yes, the old smiths, as well as colts and winchesters were made better in the distant past than they are now. To begin with they looked a hell of a lot better, in my humble opinion. They were finished better with a little more of the human touch added and not just by some computer generated machine. Even with the ability to achieve closer tolerances today with modern equipment the older smiths worked smoother and were equally dependable if not more dependable than what's manufactured today.

This I personally observed as a member of a dept with 30,000+ officers and almost 20 years of experiencing how wonderful these guns were and never seen a failure personally. No one I knew ever had a problem with their weapon whether it be the model10, or colt police positive. Even the wood grips were of higher quality, but that's just regarding appearance, which isn't as important as function.

It's true that there wasn't an internet to spread the word around about any problems, but if there was any issues then certainly being surrounded by more than 30,000 people the word would have spread among the dept. This isn't looking back in a romantic way, or longing for the good old days gone by. Looking at guns with locks and in some cases warnings printed along their sides make me sick.

I won't say all the new ones are garbage, but I won't buy any of the new ones, cause I can recognize perfection when I see it and own it. I have several smiths and am content with what I have. This is only my opinion and I don't feel it's necessary to argue about this issue, though I can see some may want to. Anything anybody has to say is certainly welcomed by me.
 
Posted by Peter:
QA/QC costs money and it is an easy thing to cut when times are tough.
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“Times are tough”? I was under the impression that the major gun manufacturers are selling guns about as fast as they can turn them out.

In these days, when every problem, major and minor, is going to show up on some Internet forum, the best way to avoid “tough times” is to produce high-quality products and back them with great customer service.

S&W’s CS department seems to be doing well, but it's not great. If they'd tighten up their CS and do something about their Quality inspectors, they’d be a really outstanding company.
 
Mike, the problem is that neither you nor anyone else has been able to provide me with numbers as to the incidence of defective guns today as opposed to those back when S&W was at the height of its prominence. You say the 1980's and 1990's was when things began sliding downhill, but that's not the only time period I've seen quoted as the beginning of S&W's decline.

Some of the problems encountered with S&W during the 1970's, when Bangor Punta owned the company, are legendary in their seriousness. Reports of guns without cylinder stop notches and guns without firing pins can be found from this time period. While you tell me that the 1980's was the "beginning of the end" so to speak for S&W quality, I've heard from other equally reliable sources that this period of time, when S&W changed ownership from Bangor Punta to Tomkins PLC, was actually one in which the overall quality of S&W products improved dramatically. That's the problem with anecdotal evidence, you too often have equally reliable sources contradicting each other which brings no one any closer to the truth.

Likewise, I've heard that S&W began declining when the pinned barrel and recessed chambers were eliminated, when short action was introduced, when they stopped making their own stocks, and with each elimination of a screw. I suspect that had there been an internet in 1899, we'd have heard that S&W began declining when these new fangled swing-out cylinder guns were introduced or when that stupid, unnecessary double action feature was foisted upon us.

Also, you're talking about guns that were produced anywhere from 13-32 years ago (1980-1999). I wonder how many S&W's produced in the last 12 years you've examined, though my guess would be not many since you've repeatedly asserted your belief that S&W went out of business in 2000.
 
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Yes, yes, I know, if J.D. Powers doesn't have a report on it the track record is 1 millionty billionty percent primo number one and anyone who says otherwise is just a rumor mongering rumor monger. :rolleyes:

I suppose it's just an INCREDIBLE fluke that in any given shipment of guns that S&W sent to the shop where I worked from 1994 to 1996 we'd return upwards 20% of them because they didn't even meet the owner's pretty shabby standards of what he'd sell in his shop.

I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but they're on the internet... Of the first thousand or so 10mms that S&W provided to the FBI upon award of the contract, over 100 of them arrived unable to pass the FBI's standard acceptance tests, and within the first year many more (nearly half) had to be withdrawn due to a variety of issues ranging from minor to guns that broke in ways that rendered them completely inoperative.

Right off the bat that's a 10% failure rate. Even worse, it's a 10% failure rate to your PRIMARY and most visible customer.

I suppose it's also just the ramblings of a vindictive former S&W senior-level employee who flat out stated, years after the fact, that upper management knew that quality had slipped badly.

So yes, every Smith & Wesson that has ever left Springfield has been has been a paragon of reliability and endurance, and every complaint can be explained away as myth.

I know what I saw in my hands-on experience with I'd say well over 1,000 Smith & Wessons of all stripes, I know what I heard as an insider in the industry for over 3 years, and I know what NRA members were saying about Smith & Wesson handguns over that time.

And none of it was particularly complimentary.

If that's not good enough to convince you that the company had serious issues during this time, I have a funny feeling that pretty much nothing except an examination of every gun the company produced during those years could do anything to shake that dream.

As for the guns post 2000, I wasn't addressing that period in time, was I? This conversation has ranged over several distinct time frames. Others can address the post 2000 guns if you wish them to do so.

I neither know, nor care, what the company has been doing post 2000 as it is not germane to the time frame of which I'm speaking.

I will, however, fully admit that the post 2000 guns could be made to far greater quality standards (or even lesser, for all I know). To attempt to claim otherwise would be sort of silly. Even the American auto industry has managed to achieve both peaks and valleys in quality control over a similar production period.
 
I love it when people try to dismiss guns like this as “just another Internet rumor”.

Compare the chamber walls at 3:00 and 9:00 and tell me you’d want to shoot full-bore .357 loads through this thing. The wall at 3:00 is 0.10” The one at 9:00 is 0.04”.

6or7shot686.jpg
 
Mike, the problem is I've seen and read other accounts from people who are just as reputable as you are which are completely contradictory to yours. Now, maybe you were just extremely unlucky or maybe they were just extremely lucky, I don't know and neither do you and therin lies the problem: it's all anecdotal evidence.

As I'm sure you're well aware, you can find forum posts about just any gun proclaiming it to be the best thing since sliced bread or the worst hunk of excrement ever to be foisted upon the shooting public both with very convincing testimonials. If I took every report of someone having problems with a certain brand of gun at face value, I wouldn't be able to find a gun I could trust.

Also, I brought up currently produced S&W products because that is what the discussion was originally about. The OP claimed that current S&W products are the ones which are lacking in quality and mentioned nothing about those produced 10-30 years ago.

Please don't take this as a personal beef, because that's not what it's intended to be. In reading your posts over the years, I generally agree with you and respect what is usually a well-informed opinion. However, I'm not willing to take anything you say as gospel simply because it was you that said it, just as I don't expect anyone to take what I say as gospel simply because I said it. Everyone should examine the available information and make up his or her own mind based upon it. In this particular case, I've seen too many conflicting reports from equally reputable sources to be able to accept anecdotal evidence as compelling enough to prove or disprove anything.

Japle, I've never once doubted the issue you experienced nor called the credibility of your posts into question. The pictures you've provided are as compelling proof of the incident as can be expected in a forum such as this. However, individual examples do not an indictment of the entire brand make, and that has been my point all along.
 
Posted by Webleymkv:
However, individual examples do not an indictment of the entire brand make, and that has been my point all along.
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I agree. I certainly haven’t written off S&W handguns. I still have a couple of them on my “gotta have” list. For instance, I very much want a Mountain Gun in .45 Colt, but they’re currently out of production.

S&W revolvers are the only ones I buy anymore. I like Rugers, but there just doesn’t seem to be any way I can get the kind of DA pull I need for competition on a Ruger.

Having spent 11 years doing final QC for a medical equipment company, I understand what it takes to turn out a consistently near-perfect product. When I signed off on a piece of equipment, I knew it was going to be installed in a Cardiac Catheterization OR and peoples’ lives would depend on it working perfectly. S&W doesn’t usually have to meet quite as high a standard. But sometimes they do. Target and competition guns can fail and no one gets hurt. SD guns had better work, every time.

You can be sure S&W has detailed, written procedures for their QC. You can also bet those procedures are not open on the benches of their inspectors. Once an inspector gets proficient in his job, he really doesn’t have to physically go down a checklist and mark each step as done. That is, as long as he actually does know his procedures and doesn’t skip anything.

It’s easy to assume the guys who did the machining and assembly did their jobs right. That’s almost always the case. The problem is, you can’t assume anything when you’re doing the final QC. You have to look at everything and forget nothing.

Obviously, that’s not happening at S&W.
 
Japle, I wish I had known you when you had that gun. I would've paid you whatever it cost you and in addition would've bought you the same one that the company sent you. I would've in addition treated you and your wife to a beautiful steak dinner. Bad mistake returning it. It reminds me a little of the upside down airmail stamp that keeps going up in value.:(
 
Posted by gunsmokeTPF:
Japle, I wish I had known you when you had that gun. I would've paid you whatever it cost you and in addition would've bought you the same one that the company sent you. I would've in addition treated you and your wife to a beautiful steak dinner. Bad mistake returning it. It reminds me a little of the upside down airmail stamp that keeps going up in value.
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Several people told me the same thing before I returned the cylinder. Not one of them was actually willing to make me a cash offer for it.

There are people who collect rare and “one-off” stamps and coins. I’ve never heard of anyone who collects “one-off” S&W factory parts. Considering all the publicity this screw-up generated on firearms forums (over 60,000 hits last time I checked) I’d think if there was a real collector out there I would have heard about him.

During my original phone conversation with CS, I told them I wanted to keep the cylinder. I didn’t expect them to agree and I was astonished when the CS rep told me I could keep it.

That agreement didn’t last. The rep was overruled by management. The rep had told me a few other things that turned out not to be true. That’s how I ended up with the unfluted cylinder without having to pay extra for it.
 
Good or Bad !

I'm not doubting anyone's experiences with S&W....however , my new 627 Pro Series 4" revolver has been a real joy to shoot ! Very accurate out of the box and the trigger pull in both single and double action is excellent ! After shooting 150 rounds of plain jane American Eagle 158 gr ammo at 25 yards the other day....I can't say enough how pleased I am with this handgun ! I also own a S&W model 41 semi auto 22 LR that will shoot extremely well if I do my part ! ! Both appear to me to be well made in both fit and finish ! Sorry to hear about the bad experiences of some but so far mine have been good ones !
 
My model 629 has been flawless, and it doesn't shoot the screws loose as I had been warned about. I check it every time I shoot it. :cool:
 
Japle, I never seen anything posted by you regarding the gun you returned. I would've sent you the money for it so quickly that your head would've spun. Sorry I missed it and sorry you gave it back. We win some and lose some.
 
I have no idea about the QC of S&W over the years, but I am surprised at the cost of their new guns compared to the wide availability at very low prices of S&W used revolvers.
 
Three pages

Doug Bowser

OP #1

You never fallowed up on what you did, all you did was bad mouth S&W quality. What did you do about it besides complaining on the net about it?

I hate when somebody comes on the/a board and complains without a fallow up on the action they took too resolve it! Just camplain, and they are good enough with that.

Honestly, I don't even know what he's even talking about!

No thanks!
No I now understand.
No I prematurely come to a conclusion without knowing what I was talking about.

:mad::mad::mad:
 
S&W quality?

I had been "using" S&W revolvers since 1959. All had pinned barrels.
Since about 1985-6 I have had to send 4 guns back because they had
TURNED BARRELS. Did they press the barrels so they can get more repairs?
 
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