Smith & Wesson missed opportunities

[Navin Johnson]

Revolvers are a dying breed

We have people at gun shops giving advice and selling firearms who’ve never owned a revolver due to their age

Many of the gun shops in my area have very few if ANY revolvers

And most the time it’s several used and J’s/LCR’s. And maybe the cool 66 comp thingy.

Smith and Wesson knows this they are running on the tooling that they’ve had for years so the cost is very low. Scandium model 10 would be really cool but would be north of a $G. How many would they really sell?

They sell 1 million shields that the hard cost with labor is probably under $150 to manufacture they would sell nowhere near that many thousand dollar K frames That would probably have a smaller profit margin


The hope is in my view a company like Taurus starts building stuff that’s quality with innovation and Smith and Wesson won’t want to lose market share so they’ll start building good shit. As a sidenote the problem is Tarus has such a bad reputation I haven’t seen a new one for sale in any shop around me in years.

If Ruger hag built the LCR in a J frame size Smith might have a real run for their money but it’s just a little bit bigger and it’s noticeable in a pocket for the carrier

[Dave T]

Revolvers are a dying breed.

Folks have been trying to kill off the revolver ever since the Austrian plastic came on the scene, maybe even before that. But, the wheely buggers just won't go away.

The previous leader of this forum once said the revolver's manual of arms is much simpler and easier to learn than that of any semi auto (paraphrasing of course). I taught/trained folks for AZ's concealed carry permit program for 10 years and there was never a shortage of revolvers in those 1000+ students. Back then I was still a dedicated 1911 fan and carried some version of one every day. Still I had to recognize, many people were more comfortable with revolvers. YMMV!

Dave

[jtcarm]

Revolvers are a dying breed

We have people at gun shops giving advice and selling firearms who’ve never owned a revolver due to their age

Many of the gun shops in my area have very few if ANY revolvers

And most the time it’s several used and J’s/LCR’s. And maybe the cool 66 comp thingy.

Smith and Wesson knows this they are running on the tooling that they’ve had for years so the cost is very low. Scandium model 10 would be really cool but would be north of a $G. How many would they really sell?

They sell 1 million shields that the hard cost with labor is probably under $150 to manufacture they would sell nowhere near that many thousand dollar K frames That would probably have a smaller profit margin


The hope is in my view a company like Taurus starts building stuff that’s quality with innovation and Smith and Wesson won’t want to lose market share so they’ll start building good shit. As a sidenote the problem is Tarus has such a bad reputation I haven’t seen a new one for sale in any shop around me in years.

If Ruger hag built the LCR in a J frame size Smith might have a real run for their money but it’s just a little bit bigger and it’s noticeable in a pocket for the carrier

^^^^^^
Navin knows his shit from his Shinola.

Best hope might be for CZ to take them over.

[JWintergreen]

Great posts in this thread.

I would like to see Smith focus on practical carry and general purpose revolvers, up their QC, and finally take the leap and ditch the lock.

In a nutshell the specific offerings I would like to see (and that I think could do well)

1) Mountain Guns (especially a new 625 in .45 Colt or a 627 Mountain Gun)
2) Lighter barrel/Half lug .357 L frames (Compare weights between a 620 or 686 Mountain Gun and a current 66-8, you'll be surprised)
3) Three inch 619
4) Three inch, fixed sight J frames
5) Finally offer a D frame sized .38 (to compete with comparable offerings from Kimber, Colt, Taurus, Charter etc..)
6) Stainless "Classic Series" Offerings (I.E. a three inch Model 64 with service stocks)

For my own selfish reasons I would also love to see the Model 67 and Model 624 return.

[schneiderguy]

Based on what I’ve seen people actually carrying in real life, my guess is Smith sells more Airweights (642 and 442) than the entirety of the rest of their revolver catalogue combined.

Yep. From the 2020 ATF firearms manufacturing report, S&W made the following number of revolvers per caliber:

.22: 13,943
.38: 153,865
.357: 60,162
.44 (includes .40cal as well): 19,460
.50 (includes .45cal as well): 20,038
Total: 267,468

The .38 number would include the Model 10/64 as well, but I highly doubt they make many of those anymore. So I think it's safe to say that well over 50% of S&W revolver production is .38 Airweight J-frames.

As a point of comparison, they make more .380 autos (346,465) than the entirety of their revolver production.

[Willard]

A new 3" King Cobra isn't an old D-Frame.

I'm reading this as you believe the newer production guns will hold up well? I have no experience with them, and have seen scattered info. Haven't dug into it, but curious. Any info you can share? Thanks.

[jtcarm]

That, mind you, was one gun. (The second had a jammed sight, they fixed it.) I've got over 500 rounds through the new one, including about 100 rounds of .357. @03RN put a hell of a lot of rounds through his.

As for N-frame guns, P-F seems to frequently have posters talking about carrying N-frames, especially in the woods.

Several years ago I really wanted to get into USPSA revolver. After talking to a lot of shooters who kept telling me 8-rounds is a must to be competitive, I said screw it, I’m not dropping $2,000 on a gun and the accessories to shoot maybe once a month and is good for almost nothing else.

I did drop $800 on a new 625 PC a couple years ago. It’s a fun gun for woods carry and the rare-for-me IDPA match nowadays.

[Stephanie B]

Several years ago I really wanted to get into USPSA revolver. After talking to a lot of shooters who kept telling me 8-rounds is a must to be competitive, I said screw it, I’m not dropping $2,000 on a gun and the accessories to shoot maybe once a month and is good for almost nothing else.

I did drop $800 on a new 625 PC a couple years ago. It’s a fun gun for woods carry and the rare-for-me IDPA match nowadays.

I see people at matches with mid-four figure raceguns. My feeling is "fine, whatever floats yer boat." I shoot those matches to work on my own skills.

[jtcarm]

I think they will keep doing what they are doing until they are established in Tennessee. For the moment, revolver production will stay in MA.

If the Tennessee experiment fails, my guess is that Smith will have to undergo some kind of restructuring and all the pieces will be up in the air. If it succeeds, I would imagine that there will be an impetus to move out of MA completely. Then they will have to take a hard look at the question “what do we do about revolvers?”

I think the three scenarios in order of likelihood are:

1) Exactly what you describe above. Smith revolvers become a limited production collector/cognoscenti item.

2) They get out of revolvers entirely.

3) They come out with an entirely new revolver platform that is more amenable to modern manufacturing realities.


Factors that could sway the decision:

1) legislation. 6 rounds is still a hard sell vs. 10 rounds, but I have seen ideas floated that limit magazine suze even more.

2) If there is concerted effort among gun influencers to Make Revolvers Cool Again. Gun companies survive by selling more guns to people who already have guns, and I think it us getting harder to generate excitement about a new plastic people popper. The .30 Super Carry was an attempt to sell people the same guns in a new chambering and it failed miserably. We haven’t quite tapped out the wave of trading your iron sighted guns for RDS guns, but that won’t last forever. I think pushing hammer fired autoloaders is more likely, but revolvers could be the new cool as well.

I think you’re wrong on all three counts.

Kimber & Colt didn’t get into the DA revolver market because there’s no money to be made.

Now Kimber, Colt & Taurus all offer 6-shot .38/.357s that are between J & K-frame sizes. That leaves the two biggest revolver manufacturers, S&W and Ruger, with no competing product.

Whether Smith is smart enough to come up with a6-shot J-frame & 1/2, well, no one here’s accused them of being smart. That would be about the only scenario where #3 would come partially true.

I think we’ll sooner see a “Super SP101” from Ruger.

[Lester Polfus]

I see people at matches with mid-four figure raceguns. My feeling is "fine, whatever floats yer boat." I shoot those matches to work on my own skills.

Right?

During my brief fling with competitive shooting, the question for me was "is my score better than when I did this last month?" was more important than "where did I rank among the other competitors."

I quit because of the amount of sixty year old man-boy drama I witnessed not because of the gear requirements.