I'd like to see a different barrel and lug on S&W revolvers. Cirillo really liked the Dan Wesson barrels because they are more accurate and the design absorbed recoil better. Mounting a DW barrel on a S&W M29 resulted in a handy gun that ate recoil. (According to Cirillo, the DW 44's were too large and the S&W M29 is too light).

So, I'd like to see some better barrel and lug combinations.

S&W has been switching to the DW arrangement, with differences.

Both my 500 Mag and Model 60-18 5" use separate barrel and shroud designs with the barrel tensioned. Also I believe that vitually all of the Scandium frame guns use a similar arrangement.

The difference is that S&W does not use a separate barrel front nut, thus allowing the customer to interchange barrels and shrouds as well as adjust the cylinder to barrel gap as Dan Wessons do.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rich W,

I was looking through the March American Handgunner magazine today, and finally noticed that in the pictures of the TR325, it does appear that S&W is using a separate barrel nut. Four small cutouts allow a spanner style wrench to be used on the nut, and you can clearly see barrel threads in the cutouts. So S&W is going to a three piece barrel assembly, shroud, barrel and barrel nut instead of their two piece assembly where a special wrench that uses the rifling in the barrel to tighten the barrel itself against the shroud.