S&W's "phasing out" of internal locks?
- Thread starter Playboypenguin
- Start date
The DW, and S&W two piece barrel system differ in form and method, but function similarly in that a rifled tube is tensioned between frame threads, and the end of the shroud.
The Dan Wesson system tightens and provides tension on the rifled tube from the threaded fastener on the front of the barrel, which is a threaded nut.
The S&W two piece, with its end cap, has threads on the back end of the barrel only, not the front, and provides only rearward pressure NOT TENSION from the fastener flange.
S&W 's barrel tube is also tapered where it meets the flange, unlike DW's.
The Dan Wesson system is pretty peachy
. You can change the barrel on a Dan Wesson yourself, and tighten it if it should come loose. On a S&W two piece barrel you need a proprietary tool to change barrels, and S&W WILL NOT SELL THE TOOL. You must ship your revolver back to S&W.
One last difference, DW two piece barrels don't blow off, S&W two piece do blow off. I've personally seen it at the NC DOC range in 2005/2006.
Regards 18DAI.
The Dan Wesson system tightens and provides tension on the rifled tube from the threaded fastener on the front of the barrel, which is a threaded nut.
The S&W two piece, with its end cap, has threads on the back end of the barrel only, not the front, and provides only rearward pressure NOT TENSION from the fastener flange.
S&W 's barrel tube is also tapered where it meets the flange, unlike DW's.
The Dan Wesson system is pretty peachy
. You can change the barrel on a Dan Wesson yourself, and tighten it if it should come loose. On a S&W two piece barrel you need a proprietary tool to change barrels, and S&W WILL NOT SELL THE TOOL. You must ship your revolver back to S&W.One last difference, DW two piece barrels don't blow off, S&W two piece do blow off. I've personally seen it at the NC DOC range in 2005/2006.
Regards 18DAI.
Playboypenguin
Moderator
Actually, Dan Wesson barrels can blow off too. I personally witnessed the failure of an 8" .44mag barrel on a Dan Wesson...but all guns can fail. That would still not have been enough to keep me from buying the one my dealer has in his shop now if it wasn't for how much I hate the tang style grip frame system they use.
As for Smith's two piece barrel system, I have heard so many people say that Smith only did that to save money. After looking at both processes it looks to me like it would actually be more expensive than the old pinned barrels.
18DAI said:
All you need is a slug that mates with the rifling and is enough softer than it to avoid damage. The aftermarket will take care of that if Smith continues to be chintzy about it.
18DAI said:
That is completely unsubstantiated by facts, statistics, or anything like a scientific study with boring ol' "control groups" and "peer review", not a reason. In other words, "anecdote" is not the singular of "data".
I've seen plenty of 1-piece revo barrels shear at the shank: S&W, Colt, Ruger, Charter...
S&W fans (and I speak as someone who owns over fifty of the things) are the biggest whiny, reactionary crybabies about ANY change in our beloved guns, and we will stretch our arms clean out of our shoulder sockets reaching for a rationale to explain why ANY change is bad.
"Five screws are CLEARLY superior to four screws! This guy's gun blew up and gave him psoriasis because it didn't have an upper sideplate screw!"
Playboypenguin said:
Shhh! You're making sense, and we can't have that here!
Although you need to substitute "crush fit" for "pinned". And that's the truth: Absent the old "pinned barrel" system, too many crush fit barrels were winding up with their sights clocked due to over-torquing. The sleeve/liner system with the integral key-and-mortise to line up the sight-carrying barrel sleeve eliminates that problem.
Brian Pfleuger
Moderator Emeritus
LOL. That would make a great sig line!
Playboypenguin
Moderator
Don't worry. It is not likely to happen again any time soon.
Yes, anecdotal information. I witnessed it, the DOC instructors witnessed it many many times. The suits from S&W came down and witnessed it and replaced the defective model 64's with shiny new M&P 40's.
Does a reporter from the Winston-Salem Journal writing about the barrels blowing off, and the story being picked up nationwide by AP count as data, or more anecdotal information? Hardly "unsubstantiated" in any case.
Does a reporter from the Winston-Salem Journal writing about the barrels blowing off, and the story being picked up nationwide by AP count as data, or more anecdotal information? Hardly "unsubstantiated" in any case.
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Tucker 1371
New member
And hopefully if this is so they saw that the reaction at first was "Yaaaaay no more horrible vile communist internal lock thing!!!!
"And then saw the subsequent reaction of "Awww maaaaan
"The lock doesn't really bother me either way but all else being equal if I could get the gun I wanted without it I would.
I've noticed that and I own less than half that number of S&Ws.
The assertion was made on another forum that not ALL S&W changes were for the worse and cited an insignificant but seemingly incontrovertible example: the replacement of the one piece crane retainer with a multi-part spring-loaded sorta-Coltish thing. It obviously had more parts, cost more to manufacture and worked well.
It took about 1 post and 5 minutes before somebody chimed in noting that the solid article occasionally required hand fitting and the elimination of this need clearly spoke to sloth, greed, cynicism and the general decline of Western civilization. I was stunned by the creativity in evidence.
I rather welcomed the "D" shaped "Chinese puzzle machined" extractor / star as those two teeny pins always struck me as fragile and seemed a crud magnet. Heresy and blasphemy! Clearly the old system was far superior though I can't recall any reason offered as to why, apart from it was older.
And, anything that's machined in as part of the frame makes the frame "disposable" and is grossly inferior to a little button that would rarely fall out. I haven't found a singular anecdote of an integral cylinder stop stud failing but I'm sure there are hundreds of examples operating just under the Internet's radar.
But, by far the most baffling thing I "learned" when I was an even newer noob: when Colt introduces a .357 Magnum revolver without recessed chambers and unpinned barrel it's acclaimed the Cadillac of revolvers from that day forward. S&W moves to employ the exact same unrecessed chambers and chucks the barrel pin and it represents the degradation and corruption of a formerly great product. Reconciling that contradicting set of observations is a trick I've still not mastered.
Even if one were to concede that 99% of changes were the spawn of Satan with an MBA, that's not good enough. It simply has to be 100% even to include a spring loaded crane retainer.
18DAI said:
Well, that IS the definition of "anecdotal", after all.
18DAI said:
So Smith had a bad run of barrels. Big deal.
Ruger had to recall all their stainless Redhawks back in the day because they were shearing off barrels at the shank left and right. By your stated criteria, this proves that one-piece barrels are inferior.
So two-piece barrels are bad and one-piece barrels are bad... Do we go to three-piece or zero-piece barrels?
Jart said:
Word. +1 Quoted For Truth. Or whatever you kids on the intertubes are saying these days to mean "I agree."
The Dan Wesson barrel system was better than S&W's recent self-ejecting patent for several reasons. DW's was user-friendly; the owner could control not only what barrel length he chose for a given task, but also the barrel-cylinder gap; and he could tweak the linear tension on the tube if he were technical minded. The overall package also earned a sterling and well deserved reputation for accuracy.
S&W's barrel downgrade was simply another reason to look elsewhere for a revolver. Their occasionally self-activating internal locks and trend toward revolvers that looked like they should fire ring caps instead of live ammo 'iced the cake'.
I was a Smith & Wesson man for years; then they stopped making them and replaced them with mutants which I could neither desire or tolerate. Sadly, this disease also claimed the 94 Winchester- almost simultaneously. In both cases I either bought the earlier models, or simply moved on to something else.
If S&W were to actually 'phase out' the internal lock, they would reclaim an aging market of guys like me who probably won't be buying guns anyway in 30 years. The 'kids on intertubes' could care less and that is certainly their choice.
S&W's barrel downgrade was simply another reason to look elsewhere for a revolver. Their occasionally self-activating internal locks and trend toward revolvers that looked like they should fire ring caps instead of live ammo 'iced the cake'.
I was a Smith & Wesson man for years; then they stopped making them and replaced them with mutants which I could neither desire or tolerate. Sadly, this disease also claimed the 94 Winchester- almost simultaneously. In both cases I either bought the earlier models, or simply moved on to something else.
If S&W were to actually 'phase out' the internal lock, they would reclaim an aging market of guys like me who probably won't be buying guns anyway in 30 years. The 'kids on intertubes' could care less and that is certainly their choice.
rantingredneck
New member
As an admitted Ruger nut, I've got no skin in the game with S&W, but I seem to remember reading something regarding the recent "no lock" runs.....
.....something about some frames that had been made prior to the Safe-T-Lock purchase and had been in storage for a number of years. They were simply assembling and selling stock on hand?
Again, just something I read on tha interwebz so take it for what it is......
.....something about some frames that had been made prior to the Safe-T-Lock purchase and had been in storage for a number of years. They were simply assembling and selling stock on hand?
Again, just something I read on tha interwebz so take it for what it is......
Sarge said:
2006... 1964... Yeah, that's "almost simultaneously".
So you only buy pre-1964 Smiths?
(Either that, or you're equivocating...)
Sarge said:
Me, too.
As a matter of fact, the only Smiths that really interest me are those made before 1957, and I haven't bought one in the last two years that was made after the start of World War Two.
But I don't make up bogus incorrect technical reasons for my aesthetic preferences, either...
azredhawk44
Moderator
I hear ya... but my "642-1" with no lock was made in 2008. The serial number is in direct linear progression with last year's 642's (which are model 642-2).
The story I heard when I bought mine was that they were a "special run for a foreign law enforcement contract that fell through."
Great way to "excuse" the manufacture of some revolvers as a test batch and see how the market fares with them versus your regular product.
The fact that the 642's and 442's disappeared off shelves almost overnight should have impressed the S&W board.
The immense hurdle S&W must now face if they want to remove the lock from new guns... is to eliminate the current inventory in a profitable manner somehow without letting the cat out of the bag that lockless guns are coming.
They could do it one model at a time... but they just screwed up by going back to the 642-2 with ILS rather than sticking with the 642-1(2008) revision.
Even if they wanted to go back to lockless guns.... they have profitability problems doing so in the short term that will hurt their stock prices.
Alex Hamilton wrote this up in an American Pistolsmith's Newsletter and American Handgunner. he had attempted to do some accuracy work on customers revolver that would not group. Apparently, the attachment method used by the factory had damaged the rifling. They would not provide him or other custom gunsmiths with a tool. He finally used a quick drying cast of some sort to the barrel and could remove the barrel without damaging the rifling. He also mentioned that the factory responder had told him that older one-piece barrels could not be fitted to the current revolvers. He quickly learned that this is not the case.
Smith and Wesson is apparently selling all the revolvers they can make. They are an "A" rated company among the stock prognosticators.
It is very likely that the great majority of these revolvers do not demonstrate spontaneous lock failure or catastrophic failure of the barrels. Some of them do.
Enough people seem to be comfortable with the state of S&W evolution to keep the company viable. The rest of us are perfecly free to be uncomfortable with it and look elsewhere.
bubba15301
New member
H&R revolvers had internal locks 40 years ago