I love 3" Smith Revolvers

[Dagga Boy]

Yes sir, will do.

The best part is that through a series of trades I ended up swapping a Windham Weaponry MPC AR-15 for the 3" Smith AND a Gen4 Glock 33.
I had $390 in the WW MPC.

Nice! If we do some business, you'll come out ahead........and not have a piece of crap WW.

[Eli]

........and not have a piece of crap WW.

lol.

[LSP972]

People would try it anyway trying to reduce the distance the bullet had to jump between the case and the forcing cone hoping for an increase in accuracy.

A secondary reason was to make speedloaders more efficient (longer overall cartridge length), along with more efficient extraction (i.e., lessened opportunity to get a shorter .38 case stuck under the extractor star), and last but not least, easier clean-up. The triple-damned "wadcutter ring", which was a build-up of lead in the tenth of an inch between the mouth of a .38 Special case and the chamber step in a .357 revolver, was a collossal PITA to get out if you didn't religiously scrub it out frequently. The Lewis tool helped, but I spent many minutes with a .45 bore brush, on a cut-off S&W cleaning rod chucked into an electric drill, getting that ring out of my first Eversull PPC bull gun… which I foolishly had him build out of a nice 4" M-19.

I never made THAT mistake again…

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[Malamute]

We never had any crack, but they "shot loose" (Wheeler described one of the reasons) almost as quickly as a K frame when fed a lot of "magnums". I got pretty good at stretching yoke barrels and fitting new hands.

This, of course, was AFTER we had to go through the first two batches (120 M-686s) and clean up that execrable floating hand. Gawd, what an abortion that was…


.

Thanks for commenting on that, I was hoping you'd see it.

[jh9]

We never had any crack, but they "shot loose" (Wheeler described one of the reasons) almost as quickly as a K frame when fed a lot of "magnums". I got pretty good at stretching yoke barrels and fitting new hands.

This, of course, was AFTER we had to go through the first two batches (120 M-686s) and clean up that execrable floating hand. Gawd, what an abortion that was…


.

Interesting. Thanks for the perspective. I've only had to retime one of the three...but three is a much smaller sample size than 100+.

[LSP972]

Recently picked this Smith M&P up off of Armslist. At some point in time it was nickled and the barrel was cut down to 3". I have some wood grips coming in the mail....will post up a new pic when they get here.

A beautiful five-screw, Eli. I really like those old knob-end ejector rods. That one looks pristine, too. Whoever nickled it apparently knew what they were doing. If I ran across something like that, I would be hard-pressed to pass it up.

Nice score.

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[Dagga Boy]

A beautiful five-screw, Eli. I really like those old knob-end ejector rods. That one looks pristine, too. Whoever nickled it apparently knew what they were doing. If I ran across something like that, I would be hard-pressed to pass it up.

Nice score.

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Dude, stop, it has a home waiting in "the safe". How about a little help here pal.

[LSP972]

Dude, stop, it has a home waiting in "the safe". How about a little help here pal.

Worried about me cock-blocking you, bud?

You're getting greedy, and that never ends well…

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[rsa-otc]

Nice gun Eli.

I truly miss the old time Smiths. I always felt the best of the breed so to speak were the ones that did away with the top screw by the hammer but retained the cylinder lock spring retaining screw up in front of the trigger guard. My father's old K-38 was like that and sweet action to boot. Won a couple of PPC state class titles working my way up to master class with that gun.

Smith & Wesson please take note, firing pins should be located on the hammer and there should be no lock in the action. And while I know the newer sleeved barrels are supposed to be better it's just wrong.

[Jeep]

I had someone I use to shoot with loose a nice K-38 to Bullseye under a wadcutter. Like LSP972 described to much space in the case with it's resulting issues. The use of the longer .357 case only makes it more likely to happen. People would try it anyway trying to reduce the distance the bullet had to jump between the case and the forcing cone hoping for an increase in accuracy.

I figured there would be folks here who would know the answer. I had always assumed that we were dealing with handloads in which someone forgot to put the powder in, resulting in a bullet just slightly down the barrel and a second bullet contacting it. However, I had not realized that people were loading target wadcutters in .357 mag cases. (Now, I did know a lot of people who loaded hollow based wadcutters backwards in a .357 mag case, but they always loaded to a pretty maximum charge. The leading was phenomenal, as was their effect on groundhogs, but I doubt they penetrated too far).