Colt-speak, indeed. No worries, its a common thing; like when folks refer to the yoke (S&W terminology) as a crane (Colt-speak).Originally Posted by farscott
As I stated earlier, S&W broke new ground with these revolvers. Not only do they not have all the answers regarding them, I don't think they even know all of the questions.
Example… My 360PD, and an identical example, were purchased in the fall of 2002 by myself and a colleague. Fifteen rounds of full-patch .357s were enough to convince me that I wanted nothing further to do with "magnums" in this little beast. My colleague, OTOH, has always been somewhat of a masochist, and insisted on shooting the full 50 round qual course using our issue 158gr HydraShok duty .357 rounds. By the midway point, his hand was a bloody mess, but he kept on. As he was loading his final five cartridges, the cylinder/yoke assembly fell out of the gun.
A moment here to explain something… the yoke on S&W revolvers appears to be a one-piece part, but actually it is comprised of two pieces; the yoke and yoke barrel, which the cylinder rides and swings out on, and the yoke stud, which is the part that goes into the revolver's frame and is secured in the gun by the yoke screw. This stud has a machined end, called the "button", which the end of the yoke screw fits into and retains the part in the frame. The whole stud is a press fit into the lower part of the yoke/yoke barrel. They use this monster hydraulic press, under TONS of pressure, to do it. The front of the part is then finish-machined and polished. If the polisher dude was in a hurry on a particular yoke assembly, sometimes you can see the faint outline of the end of the stud, as a smaller diameter circle. The point here is, this is a critical part and the immense pressure used means it just doesn't fail. Theoretically, anyway…
Back to the bloody 360PD. My pal picked up the now-separate yoke/cylinder assembly and handed it to me. The yoke stud was protruding about 3mm from the front of the yoke itself. What had apparently occurred was the stud "broke free" of the yoke, moved forward under recoil, the button "jumped" the yoke screw, and was no longer held by same. Gravity did the rest.
I was, like, triple WTF??? In 15 years (at that time) of wrenching on hundreds of these things, that was one malady I had never seen… or even heard of. But there it was, in front of my face.
So I called S&W, and who do I get on the phone but one of my original armorer school instructors, a man who had been with the company since Christ was a corporal and finally moved into a customer service slot to get off the road. He was a master fitter before taking the instructor job, and at that time was undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable guys, on the inner workings of revolvers, at the plant. He remembered me, we chatted a bit, then I hit him with the problem. He promptly informed me that he was having a bad day and was in no mood for jokes.
We talked a bit more, then he realized I was serious… and got real quiet.
Sorry for this novella, but there's a point to it. Once that 360PD was back in their hands, they sent my pal a new one, post-haste, no questions asked, no paperwork, period. That's always a clue. It took a while, but I finally spoke with another old plant guy who was straight up with me. This is what he told me:
They tested these guns to hell and back before starting production, but this was one issue that had not cropped up- had NEVER cropped up in ANY S&W revolver, as far as he knew. He said that the Ti-Scan guns were guaranteed to digest 5K worth of full power magnums. And here's the kicker… he said that these beasts had a few idiosyncrasies peculiar to the titanium cylinder, the Scandium frame, and the horrendous recoil they generated. He would not get more specific, but admitted that my pal's 360PD had added a new page to the book.
Here's the point… what SS is seeing may indeed not have manifested itself during the pre-production test regimen. We are all familiar with "tolerance stacking" in polymer pistols. Well, the same thing, of a sort, can occur with machined metal.
Another possibility is that S&W management knows that most of their customers will never put a serious strain on their products. So if a certain product has a limited life-span, and their market analysis shows that the average purchaser is not likely to exceed that threshhold, just sell the product as-is and repair/replace on the back end if that becomes necessary. Not saying that is the case here, but we know it is an established fact, in everything from vehicles to clothes pins.
Again (and aside from the anecdote I related), this is mostly conjecture on my part. I applaud SS for the analytical way he has approached his problem; well done, sir.
And you are correct, farscott; once that protective clear-coat on the titanium cylinders is breached, the cylinder integrity is not long for this world if you continue to shoot it. I didn't notice any distinct burn rings (left by the juncture of the charge hole and back end of the barrel during firing) on the cylinder face, SS. Did you, by chance, scrub them off with a metal-bristled brush?
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