A few days ago I bought a new Smith .22 revolver with the 3" barel. When looking it over, I noticed the barrel-cylinder gap looked rather wide, I would guess about .020".
When I commented on the wide gap, the rather knowledgeable guy behind the counter told me that Smith & Wesson now considers barrel-cylinder gaps up to .030" (!) to be within acceptable specs. I have always preferred a .003" to .006" gap.

I was under the impression that one of the reasons ( besides cost savings ) that Smith has gone the barrel shroud route was to make it easier for production workers/machinery to be speeded up while making adjusting the gap easier.

Anyone know anything about this?