Denis,

Not wanting to be contrary but in regard to some of the points you raise:

1) Canted sights are not new to Smith & Wesson; in fact, for decades, one of the “repair” techniques for “fixing” a gun that wasn’t shooting to an acceptable point of aim was to place the gun in a simple fixture (or sometime just rest it on the bench top) and wrap it smartly with a lead bar. I think that one can find S&W revolvers from well into the past where the sights weren’t “straight”.

2) Internal bore restrictions: the mismatching of “out of tolerance barrels” (oversize) to “out of tolerance frames” (undersize) was not unheard decades ago. This kind of thing can lead to undersized internal diameters in the barrel and cracks in the frame (usually involving alloy frames). While this kind of thing affected other manufacturers to perhaps greater degrees, it is not unknown at Smith (especially the frame cracking). Also very common problem was the overly aggressive roll stamping of the markings on tapered and pencil barrels to the point where bulges could be detected inside the tube.

3) Rifling that doesn’t like lead? How about rifling that in “the old days” was not concentric to the bore (because it and the bore were on different centerlines) so that when observed, the lands and grooves were deep on one “side” and shallow (or worse) on the other?

4) Engraved drag lines? Something else that is not new to Smith & Wesson. Older guns that were shot a lot (remember that the bulk of the guns that have been sold over the years have not been shot a lot) are routinely seen with everything from no to light traces in the bluing to what almost amounts to grooves in the metal. Furthermore, the bolt notches (which could vary a lot from notch to notch in a single cylinder let alone from gun to gun) can also be seen, at certain times in the past, to have been misshapen with use; often with a large burr raised along one wall. This was common in the larger “S” & “N” Frames (as were broken stops) in .38 and .357 calibers where it was believed to have been caused by the spinning mass of the heavier cylinder being slammed to halt by the bolt in fast double action firing. It was further believed that the bigger a mismatch between the bolt and the notch to start with, along with a myriad of possible timing issues (common because of the amount of hand-fitting required in those days), could make this worse on this and other frame sizes.

5) Stiffer trigger pulls? By the 70’s, action jobs on new guns were being done not to slick things up but, in many cases, to just to make them tolerable. Much of that was due to burrs and the parts required by the design. But what about the way the guns could drastically vary in this respect from one to the next? Back then, you had “X” number of fitters who all had their own (personally held) idea of what a finished gun should “feel” like. They reported to “Y” number of inspectors who then had their own ideas of what this should be. As such, the results of such handworking were all over the place. To be honest, it wasn’t until the advent of electromechanical trigger pull monitors that the guns could be checked against a truly fixed standard over the entire length of their travel.

6) Shorter firing pins? What about broken firing pins? Ruger moved to frame mounted pins right from the get-go because they knew that Smith. Colt and certainly the lesser companies who used hammer-mounted pins always experienced some degree of breakage. It was a true Achilles Heel in the design for when it broke, the gun became inoperable.

7) Poorly fitted grips? What about butt ugly (sorry, I couldn’t resist) grips? When Goncalo was finally dropped in the 90’s (now twenty years ago), it was because the figuring had become so poor that some grips were almost a solid and not very pleasant color.

8) Out of spec forcing cone? Internal angle variances, angles that didn’t always relate well to the bullets being used, surface finishes that got to the point thirty and forty years ago that many people routinely had them cleaned up after purchase, throat diameters that weren’t as accommodating of the chambers they lined up with, and rear facing surfaces (those that created the B/C gaps from gun to gun) often resulted in B/C gaps that were not at all what they should have been, were all very common issues across the line. And then there is the singular matter of the K-Frame cones where from the 50’s onward, they saw all kinds of problems in the magnum versions of these guns.

9) And when it comes to “Magnums” in general, as I said before, the factory couldn’t even entertain .357 J-Frames until recent years and .44 magnums that were shot a lot (this was generally not a phenomenon until the 70’s and 80’s) it became very well known that these guns (whose design as a .44 Magnum reaches back into the 50’s and in other calibers much, much further) did not hold up.

While single examples of some guns (like the .357 Magnum you mention in another post) can be beautiful works of art, Smith made relatively component-heavy machines that because of the way the parts were made, required (in many cases) the hand-fitting you admire not because it was a neat thing to do but because it was often the only way to make them work! A perfect example of that is from the pistol side of the line where as late as the 1980’s there were three different 9mm extractor options plus a semi-finished one that could be made into anything else that was needed to make the gun work.

Yes, the pre-war and some of the post-war guns are beautiful but the amount of work they required to be that way was immense. And as the day of paying people little to fit parts perfectly (often resulting in physical harm to themselves – another issue entirely) went away, those guns changed. Or, sadly, corners were cut. And by the 70’s things were on a dangerous downward spiral. Attempting to continue in that direction is why Colt no longer makes revolvers (and was almost “no longer” themelves) for things like that OP you like so much is an even more complex gun than the Smith. Bill Ruger saw this situation in the old line houses and he designed his D/A guns in the 60’s to take him on another path from the start.

S&W finally realized this themselves in the 1990’s and starting then and continuing on into the first decade of this century, they began to apply some of the same finally updated manufacturing techniques they were using on their pistols to their revolvers. And whether or not you like the way they “look” or are constructed, technically, these guns are often far beyond what preceded them and they don’t require an army of skilled and expensive employees to make them that way. It was the right choice for it kept them alive as a company and it kept them in sync with the times. And in many cases, it also resulted in guns of not only equivalent quality but of better performance than seen in the past.

To paraphrase a related Hollywood character:

"A company ought'a do what it thinks is best."

I think that they did.

/c