Quote:
Originally Posted by beagleye
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I thought "transitional" was specifically attached to the post war guns, N or K frame, which were produced with any of these three pre war characteristics, being long action, single line address, and lerk.
Is that false? That will be a hard habit to break. It always seemed like a very good and useful term......
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When it comes to collector terminology, using words like "false" (or "correct") doesn't really capture the spirit of the discussion. It's all about the most useful application of the term.
Your definition is certainly used by quite a few people. Personally, while I have no interest in N frames and can't speak to those, for M&P's I find it a bit too broad to be very helpful; I prefer to limit the label "transitional" to "fish with legs" like the OP's gun that truly have features and parts from two consecutive iterations of a model.
One can have endless fun nit-picking terminology. Take the long action and single line address. People keep calling them "pre-war" features. Why? They're not. They are pre-1948 features. The war has nothing to do with them. If you call them the latter, much of the "transitional" rationale for the S-series goes away.
But as Hondo said above, there is no S&W police, and if the term works for you, it is certainly not false.