More interwebs. I don’t really want to have to gunsmith a brand new gun, but I decide to buy a Cylinder and Slide extended firing pin. I am a long time subscriber to American Handgunner and C&S has a storied reputation for making awesome guns. For $15 it’s a cheap fix, right?

Replace firing pin. Range trip. I get through exactly 12 rounds before my cool new upgraded firing pin sticks in a primer and locks up the gun completely. Good thing that steel plate isn’t a pissed off elk trying to stomp on me! I try everything I can think of at the range but I can not free up the gun. Throw it in the bag and come home.

Creative use of a decapping pin and an oak dowel rod got the firing pin freed up. Amazingly, the primer was not pierced. Somehow it had managed to just grab the firing pin and hold onto it.

C&S firing pin removed. Stock firing pin put back in place.

Since I have the gun all taken apart anyway, and I have no other good ideas, I wonder if one of the locking mechanisms might be somehow slowing down the hammer. I remove the Hillary lock and the hammer blocking slide. I know that this modification is not UL approved but I am looking for anything here!! Throw me a bone.

Revisit the range. Same result. This happened last Friday. Thankfully I had a few days to cool down before S&W customer service re-opened or else I would have just lit-up the poor customer service person at the other end of the phone.

I called S&W customer service this past Monday morning. Gave them an abbreviated version of this story. They told me that their customer service center is currently closed and not accepting any incoming shipments. I asked for a refund on my purchase and then told me that they do not provide refunds. If I want a refund then I need to go back to the place where the gun was purchased.

We all know that’s a BS answer because every store now exempts ammo and guns from returns.

Later that day I made this account. My username “1&done” is a summary of my experience as a S&W customer. Pretty sure I will never buy from them again.

I consider trading the gun in to a local store. On a whim I reached out to the store that I bought the gun from and got lucky that the guy on the other end of the phone was a nice guy. He of course made it clear that they do not accept returns of firearms. He did agree to send the gun back to S&W on my behalf to see if they could get a better outcome.

So now my brand new useless gun has been handed over to them to return to S&W to try for the second time to fixed it. At this point I am out ~$1100, not counting ammo and a bunch of range trips, and don’t have a working trail gun.

I will post an update once I hear back from S&W.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Even if no one is still reading at this point, I still feel better.