Who were the companies that produced copies of the Smith & Wesson .38 S & W break open revolvers. I know of Iver Johnson, and US revolver (branch off of Iver), but who else made these guns?

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Vaya con Dios

Just how close a copy are you asking about?
The two you mentioned have unique features that are different then the S&W's they resemble. Most other US made DA's are the same, some closer than others. Just a few that come immediately to mind are Hopkins & Allen, Forehand & Wadsworth, Marlin, Harrington & Richardson, etc. If I hit the books I'm sure I could come up with at least a dozen others. I've always considered that a collection of these "look-a-likes" would be an interesting undertaking,

I would guess that the closest copies probably came out of Spain. Some of these even say "Smith & Wesson" on them.

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Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

I'm not sure any of the US companies were actually making copies of the S&W. They each had unique design features.

I agree. Iver Johnson's "Hammer the Hammer" design was years ahead of its time.

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OFT/NRA LIFE MEMBER

Ludwig Lowe & Co. of Germany made excellent copies of the S&W Russian .44's. Many S&W break-top copies were also made in Spain. Some in .455 were bought by the British in WW I.

T-STar

One of my local gun stores has an M&P made in Spain. What kind of quality guns were these? Any inherent problems with them as far as metallurgy etc? It's a tight lock up and the finish isn't all that bad.

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Rough waters ahead.

Some of the Spanish M&P clones are fairly good, but most have "soft" steel in them and loosen up pretty quickly. You takes your chances with them.
They can be interesting but I wouldn't tie much money up in one, regardless of how good it looks.

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Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

There are a few foreign copies that were made in Spain and Germany, that are equal to S&W's quality. Doug Wesson visited the Spanish gun makers in Eibar before WW2 and was shown a copy of the Triple Lock that he said was ever bit as good as the S&W made T-Locks. Germany's Ludwig Loewe made excellent copies of the S&W Russian models. In the US, the only "copy" I've seen that you could not tell the difference from a S&W DA, if you didn't look at the barrel rib stamping, was the .38 DA & .32 revolvers made by Marlin. Many years ago I bought a small collection of high end engraved S&W .38 DAs. I had them several weeks before I notice that one of them said "Marlin Firearms Co." on the barrel rib! It was a Nimschke engraved, gold plated gun with pearl grips, or I would have noticed the difference in the logo on the S&W & Marlin hard rubber grips. The man that I bought the collection from had never looked at the barrel stamping he said! Later on, when looking thru some old correspondence at the S&W Archives ( before CVHM) I found some correspondence that indicated in the 1880s Marlin had bought rough forged frames from S&W for the DAs, so that would explain the very close dimensions of the two companies frames for their .38DAs.

Local gun store has a S&W top-break hammerless .38 S&W safety revolver and a H&R top-break .38 S&W. Except for the S&W having a grip safety, they look almost identical. I often wondered which one came first, and if one imitated the other.

I've toyed with the idea of buying the 'Smith, but it has a busted firing pin and a bit of play in the cylinder. Otherwise it is great shape, finish-wise.

I have a Spanish CH revolver which is a copy of the S&W M&P model 10

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You are asking about 38 top-break double action revolvers - right? Most were visual copies of the S&W, being designed to look like a 38 S&W DA. There are hundreds of brand names out there that were made by only a handful of companies. An example is the US Revolver you refer to, that was not a manufacturer, but rather a brand name of Iver Johnson.

Major US Manufacturers of S&W look-alikes include Hopkins Allen, Forehand Wadsworth, Harrington Richardson, Meridan Firearms, Crescent Firearms, Forehand Arms, Marlin, etc. As stated above, European and Spanish gun makers also copied the top-break design of S&W, plus there were private manufacturers that made guns for Sears, Wards, etc. retail companies.

There is some controversy about who came first? S&Ws first 38 DA was manufactured in 1880, while IJ Safety revolver did not start until 1894. H&R 38 DAs started around 1887. Forehand started in 1898; Marlin in 1887; and Meriden started in 1895. My thoughts are that S&W was the first US company to produce the 38 top-break, so all others are copies in one form or another.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

I realize this isn't exactly what the OP wants to discuss, but it is at least related.

In WWI, the Brits were very short on handguns. Well we know that they had contracts with S&W and Colt to supply large frame revolvers chambered for the .455 Webley cartridge.

They also had contracts with consortiums in Spain to produce a clone of the S&W top break double action revolver, chambered of course for the .455. This isn't really surprising since their standard military issue revolver of the time was a top break double action revolver.

I've never seen one for sale locally. The ones I see on-line have surprisingly high asking prices.

Obviously the photo below is staged, possibly from a movie. Certainly not circa WWI. But it does show one of these DA Eibar Specials.

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You're shy a few manners.

An H&R or IJ "copy" of a S&W top break DA is sort of like a Ford being a copy of a Chevrolet or a Toyota in that they all have an engine, a windshield, and four wheels. There are similarities and there are differences.

...I was looking through a reprint of the 1908 Sears catalog...the revolver section featured the A.J. Aubrey model made by Meriden...

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A Country Boy Can Survive