I picked up my new PPK-S last week. It is a blued model and looks very nice. That is as far as nice goes. This is not the fine piece I had expected. Whatever happened to quality control. Has S&W gone the way of their compitition. Let the customer decide if the pistol is worth keeping or get rid of it.

Well, mine goes back to S&W next Monday to see if they can get it right.

My first shooting session went fairly well. The pistol cycled fine with both magazines and accuracy was much like I was getting with my SMC 380 made in Hungary. Some ammo is good and some is not.

I was troubled with a long single action pull with three distintic catches before let-off. As if this wasn't bad enough, additional shooting today resulted in several split cases and darn poor groups. I looked at ammo I had fired a couple of days earlier and found some more split cases.

A close inspection of all the brass fired in the PPK-S shows a sizable bulge of the brass. It is present on each and every round I fired and involves factory ammo from Federal American Eagle, PMC and Winchester. This bulged brass measures.382" to .384 at the bulge.

I then fired the same ammo in my SMC Hungarian 380 and there is no bulge and the brass measures .373" to .375", a full .009" less than ammo fired in the PPK-S. That shouts loudly of a bad chamber.