Last week at the range I met some visiting revolver shooters. They shoot revolver disciplines only and had some lovely customer S&W pieces. All were heavy barrel though I'm not sure which model. Earlier that morning I had noticed some guys moving to the safe area to remove their grips and tighten the strain screw. It was noticeable how many were doing this. I had imagined that once the Strain Screw was fixed that was it.
Then......when chatting to the visiting group they showed me their revolvers. All had custom wooden grips but the gunsmith had drilled a hole into the wood to give direct access to the Strain Screw without removing the grips. Smart. My own 686 has standard rubber grips.
Two questions:

1. How often do y,all tighten/check your Strain Screw?
2. Has anyone cut an access channel into their rubber grips to make it easier to tighten same.

My strain screws are all tight and have always been tight. The one's you observed must be "range guns" owned by guys who love to tinker and experiment. I've never met 'em or anyone like 'em.

Ed

Strain screws are not adjustment screws although some use them in such a manner. Disrupts timing and causes light primer hits. Too bad the S&W engineers did not create a design ( like Colt ) that does not allow such foolishness.

Ken158: I couldn't have said it better myself.

Nagantino: For what it's worth, my oldest S&W revolver is a Model 66-2 that I've owned for over 30 years. I bought it used, checked the strain screw once I got it home, and have not touched it since. To this day the piece shoots just fine - load it and it goes "bang" every time you pull the trigger.

Regards,

Dave

After about 5,000 rounds the strain screw on my 22-4 loosened enough to produce misfires. Now I check it every two or three months.

Dumb question;

Is the strain screw that little screw that holds the spring tension in place at the bottom of the (front I think?) of the grip?

Does it increase or decrease the trigger pull? Based on the other responses I'm guessing that it does.

__________________
But then, what do I know?

Yes, that is the strain screw.

It needs to be tight all the time. Loosening it to reduce trigger pull runs the risk of light primer strikes and misfires.

In spite of what some believe adjustments the strain screw has been used by gunsmiths and the worlds best competition shooters for decades to get the best trigger pull for their specific application. It's normally done in combination with changing springs and permanently changing the screw length and torquing it down, but some top shooters still leave a notch in the grip for fine tuning during competition.

Jerry Miculek discusses this very thing in the video below about installing his spring kit. Also not the notch cut in his grip in the video.


The cost of lightening the main spring is increased risk of failure to fire, and that's why Jerry uses Federal primers. I've also found Federal primers will go off when others won't.