Quote:
Originally Posted by DC7
I would agree--revolvers from the 50's had something that was definitely missing in many later guns. I don't know if it was because of the "soft fit" mentioned above, but most of the Smith revolvers I've owned or handled from that era felt as if they were hand-fitted by a master machinist. And while there was a dip in quality from the late 60's to early 80's (the Bangor Punta years), there seemed to be much improvement by the end of the 80's.
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For many years the S&W factory was divided into distict departments and up to 1957 soft fit was one of them. There all the parts were fit to the frame while it is still in the white. Then the gun was broken down and the internals went to hard fitting(final assembly) in a bin. The parts needing blue or nickel were sent on to polishing, then to blue or nickel, and then on to hard fitting where it was all put together again. That step was eliminated in 1957 and perhaps some attention to detail went with it. It seems to me it probably did but who knows?(shrug)
You are correct about the Bangor Punta years statistically being poor quality. What posters here forget, when they post annecdotally about guns they own, is that they are looking at a tiny, tiny portion of total production that is not statistically significant. Also, the guns being 30 plus years old, they are rarely the original owner and there is no way to see problems corrected before they owned the guns.
Bob