I want a new revolver

[BillB]

But it's been since forever since I bought a new one. Actually, I only have two, a redhawk 357 and a m27 357 obviously. I dont shoot either due to their extreme sentimental value to me so I want to buy one to actually shoot.
I'm leaning towards a Smith if for no other reason than the multitude of choices. Probably a K or L frame. Now, my big issue........ new or pre-lock?????
I have to say, I really like the looks of some of Smith's newer guns. The 686+, 627 PC and the fact that I can now have a powerful revolver with more than 6 rounds ( not that that's that important)but I never see any locally to be able to handle ANY model. I live on Marylands Eastern Shore and all you find here is shotguns and fishing rods at any LGS. So, I just dont know $#!+ about a newer Smiths quality. Whenever I look on the net or YouTube to try to make a decision or see what other folks are getting for their money it's always about a 50/50 wash with a few guys getting happy feelings and others getting junk and headaches. And, the guys who are happy, what's their definition of a "quality" gun? Is it the same as mine? Dont know. I like to think I have a pretty high standard where guns are concerned.
So how about anyone here? Anybody have a newer Smith and are very pleased with the quality? Posted that you wanted probably close to $900 which seems to be the average damn revolver price these days?What model? What about it has impressed you? How do you feel about that stupid ass hole in the side plate? Can you compare the action to say, a M27-3?
Too, I'd be just as happy with an older model so I could send it out to a good smith for tuning and cosmetics. I friggin love a beautiful blued revolver, ss is great too. I will say though, nobody knows how to blue a gun anymore, no company anyway. I love my black rifles but not a revolver.
So I'm just looking for wisdom and knowledge. Old? New? Any models to avoid? A rather disjointed and circuitous route to a question I know. Perhaps that's why I can come to a decision on my own.
Blessed is he who offers advice.

[Uni-Vibe]

Don't worry about lock or no lock. When you're shooting it, you won't be thinking about the lock.

If you reload, get a 629. The .44 mag is an extremely versatile cartridge. I got a brand new one this year to reload for. It's just fine as far as quality. Good trigger, good fit and finish, quite accurate. With the .44, if you reload, you can load anywhere from .44 Spl to Grizzly-bomb .44 mag loads. What's cool is the inbetween loads, say 240 grains going about 1050 fps.

If you don't reload, get a 686. Either way, factory .44 or .357 loads are expensive, so you might as well start rolling your own. That $30 box of fifty rounds of .44 mag I can make for about $8.50.

[Det-Sog]

New vs old... I bought a new PC 629 and had to send it back in for warranty due to the barrel being canted... I bought a classic no lock 686 plus, And still had to send it to the local smith to clean up what the previous owner did to it. Darned if you do, darned if you don’t.

The new one came back from S&W pristine and 100% perfect. The older one is at the best Smith in the state and will come back an heirloom piece. Don’t let my experience deter you. Many people have good luck here.

If I could only have one, I’d get a .357. I do agree with Uni-vibe on reloading capability for the.44.

Get what you WANT. You only live once, and can’t take the money with you when you go...

[1986s4]

My sample of one new Smith was poor, a canted barrel so I asked for and received my money back. Every classic pre-lock Smith I have ever bought has been G2G. There are youtube videos on how to examine a Smith revolver.

[BillB]

Thanks for your time folks. See, this is what I get into when I've tried to garner info for myself, buy new, dont buy new, buy old only and on and on and on. I know qc gets lax sometimes and not others and some bad ones get out the door. I just have to decide when how often is too often and decide against a new one, or just save more and buy an older one.
Or, I could buy a PC speciman, like the 586 L-comp I been looking at. What do you guys think about a 3" ported 7 shot .357? Looks delicious. I'm more than ok with a 3" barrel but am wondering about the comp and if it could be a detriment in any way.
More decisions.

[grizzman]

An old 686 would be a fine choice. I have one Smith with the lock (a 629 Classic), and MIM or not, the trigger is as good as my 19-3s.

For versatile range use, I always grab the Nickel no dash 586. I don't worry about putting full house loads through it, if that's what my friends want to shoot.

[Coal Dragger]

Thanks for your time folks. See, this is what I get into when I've tried to garner info for myself, buy new, dont buy new, buy old only and on and on and on. I know qc gets lax sometimes and not others and some bad ones get out the door. I just have to decide when how often is too often and decide against a new one, or just save more and buy an older one.
Or, I could buy a PC speciman, like the 586 L-comp I been looking at. What do you guys think about a 3" ported 7 shot .357? Looks delicious. I'm more than ok with a 3" barrel but am wondering about the comp and if it could be a detriment in any way.
More decisions.

The 586 LComp looks rad man. I think that would be a slick blaster, particularly with some trigger work and larger set of stocks you can get your entire hand on. The comp will just reduce muzzle rise, at the expense of blast and noise increases.

Alternatively you could pick up one of the Korth revolvers imported by Nighthawk Custom. Not sure what your budget is but those revolvers are supposed to be superb.

https://www.nighthawkcustom.com/korth

[Det-Sog]

If it were ME, and it's not... There's no way I'd want a comped 3" .357 mag.. Too much blast. F-that. Cool, yes... Practical... Hmmm... Not for me.

If I was going to buy new... I'd get the 8-shot Performance Center 627 4", OR if you must HAVE a comp, get the full 627 V-comp. The comp out of the 5" is much more tame. I have the big brother 629 V-Comp in .44 mag and it's a tack driver. The v-comp is more $$$ but worth every penny IMHO. Go big or go home. Just my two cents.

[Wildcat]

In the past several years I’ve bought a couple of 8-shot Smiths. A 627 and more recently a 929.

I bought the 627 in 2014, when Smith was suffering frequent quality lapses. Smith was trying to get guns out at a breakneck pace and they were missing details that I would like to think an experienced QA inspector would insist on having corrected. A couple of local friends bought revolvers at the time (2013?) and had to send them in to S&W to have some issues addressed. I was fortunate in that my 627 Pro Series did not have any of the problems that were common at the time (barrel timed OK, cylinder gap was correct, extractor fit was OK).
I thought the mainspring that came in the 627 was not strong enough. The factory provided a ribbed mainspring (I’m used to seeing flat ones) which is supposed to be the bee’s knees. Even with the strain screw bottomed out I was getting light strikes in DA. I substituted a old style mainspring and that issue was cured even though I was not using the substitute mainspring at full tension; the double action trigger pull (just about all my shooting is DA) didn’t turn out to be unpleasant.
The main trouble I had was trying to understand what I needed to make 38 special work really well with moon clips. The gun will work just fine without clips for casual range sessions. For racing, moon clips are essential. Unlike my 625, where nearly any 45-ACP cartridge will work pretty well with any of my moon clips, the 627’s 38/357 to moonclip combination has some quirks. The size of the groove above the rim is not an industry controlled feature and ammo makers do whatever they want. They are consistent about it but sizes are different from one brand to the next
The 929, bought about a year ago, was more involved.
The internal surfaces of the frame had residual beadblast media that needed to be wiped away.
The ejector rod was not tight. Fortunately the new design is not prone to locking up when the ejector rod backs out slightly. It did need to be attended to but was not a major annoyance. It does make me consider buying the clamp that is supposed to be used to tighten the rod though.
As with the 627 there were similar things in the 929 to learn about variations in 9mm brass and how they work with moonclips.
The extractor groove on the 9x19 -is- controlled but apparently there is wide latitude allowed on the diameter. Each ammunition manufacturer has staked out some part of the tolerance zone and after that it depends on how consistent their machinery is. I have access to some gauges that helped me decide what to use and now I have a good system. (Again my experience with the 625 did not lead me to expect these complications)
Initially I fed the 929 a mixture of brass and some of it didn’t want to eject cleanly. This turned out to be narrowed down to a few headstamps. I avoid that problem by feeding it specific brass.
The 929 had factory-installed a lightweight firing pin. It was hollow. The pointy end was normal but the back was bored out. According to the Internet, the lightweight pin was supposed to address pierced primers, which must have been a frequent complaint. I was getting pierced primers with the hollow pin. I asked a gunsmith if he had a spare firing pin (a solid one, perhaps a castoff from an upgrade) that I could try. I installed that one and adjusted tension on the mainspring to get reliable ignition. I have not seen a pierced primer in the last 800 rounds.
Most recently I found the screw that fastens the rear sight leaf to the frame needed tightening.
Generally, both revolvers shoot really well. I have not found these to be serious problems (for me) but I wonder how someone new to revolvers would deal with such annoyances. In the case of loose screws it could be a substantial problem if the screw walked out badly enough that parts were lost. I did not need to send the gun anywhere to make these adjustments. Some of the problems on my buddy’s guns really had to go back to Smith.
For the light strikes at full mainsping tension or the brass-caused performance issues, I would expect some level of disappointment. They annoyed me but these were things I had some notion on how to fix/tune so my dissatisfaction level was more like a 3 instead of a 7-8 that it would be for a new expensive toy that I might have to return to the factory so they could ‘get it right’.

Get whatever appeals to you. If it isn't right, Smith will do what they can.

[jh9]

I thought the mainspring that came in the 627 was not strong enough. The factory provided a ribbed mainspring (I’m used to seeing flat ones) which is supposed to be the bee’s knees. Even with the strain screw bottomed out I was getting light strikes in DA. I substituted a old style mainspring and that issue was cured even though I was not using the substitute mainspring at full tension; the double action trigger pull (just about all my shooting is DA) didn’t turn out to be unpleasant.

Springs are a rat's nest. If you're buying a S&W revolver in 2018, then in the simplest possible terms...

There are 3 mainsprings to make note of:
Regular "flat" OEM.
Wolff Type 1 "factory equivalent"
Wolff Type 2 "competition only"

There are 2 strain screws:
New factory round butt (short) available at either midway or brownells
New factory square butt (long) No part number listed on either Brownells or Midway and looks like I don't have a spare bagged that still had a pn. Be advised, there's more than one of these if you go rooting through new old stock. Factory should be just using one, I think, and we're just talking about new production guns.

There are more combinations available once you go back a few years or go custom, but that's what you're likely to find on a new production gun.

This is where people get into trouble. They start to mix and match without really knowing how the differences are relevant.

If you combine a Wolff Type-I "factory equivalent" with the long square butt strain screw, then you're probably good. The downside is that this is actually not much (if any) better than the regular OEM configuration of flat spring + short screw. Oh well. At least you got to do some gun plumbing on your day off. The upside is that this is likely to be reliable, which one would hope. Since the weight isn't better than factory. Add another $100 when you list it on gunbroker because it's custom.

If you combine a Wolff Type-2 "competition only" with the long square butt strain screw, then you've found the combination the factory uses for their "pro/PC" guns. The downside is that it should work with factory magnum primers, thus being "reliable". I say "reliable" in quotes because IME it won't light off handloaded CCI 550s consistently. So it's probably borderline. The upside is that it's noticeably lighter than the regular non-pro/PC guns.

If you combine a Wolff spring of either type with the short round butt strain screw, you're liable to get knuckling. Maybe (hopefully) bad enough to let the spring interfere with the rebound bad enough that the gun won't fire. So at least you have a heads up what you did was really, really stupid. But if not, congratulations. You've got an awesome trigger that will probably not even light off crush fit Federals. Hopefully you're not carrying that gun in pubic with the notion of using it for anything important. Also, live fire after changes in the future so you can at least verify it works.

If you combine an OEM spring with the long square butt screw. Well. You'll probably notice. The trigger weight is now somewhere in the neighborhood of forty pounds and if you made the mistake of trying the action with the sideplate removed the hammer stud probably didn't go far. So it won't be too difficult to find all the parts when you box it up and send it back to the factory telling them "I don't know what happened. It just broke." The upside...well...there isn't one. Don't do this.

If you combine the OEM spring with the short square butt screw, you either tried one of the above and it didn't work, you didn't like it, or you work for S&W. In which case, great. Your lunch break is over. AOBC stock is down again, so we'll need you to pump up those numbers. Try not to use the wrong strain screws when you're churning out 90 guns per hour. Even the people don't actually shoot their guns notice when you do that, and we have to pay UPS so our social media presence isn't complete shit.

The above applies to the guns I've tried in IDPA/USPSA manufactured from 1999-2012 in matches from roughly 2000-2016 to the tune of 14k rounds of various primers, springs, firing pins and custom work. Firing pins are another rat's nest. Just buy Apex if you have to do aftermarket.