On the revolvers , what year did smith go to the mim parts ?

I know this has been covered a number of times but bear with an old man who is behind most of the time


Thanks , Kirk

Oh and to add , I'm not all that opposed to mim if no work is needed to make things work (stoning of the sear surfaces)

1997 seems to me.

I remember the days when all we had to complain about was non pinned barrels ��

Yes. Late 1990's. 1997-1998 was the change to MIM parts.

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Scoundrel & Ne'er-Do-Well

Its not what you asked about, but I know angled thumb piece was the first visible part that was MIM and you start to see it on some J-frames as early as 1992. Then sporadically on N, L, and K-frames all thru the early to mid 90's. By 1997 the angled thumb piece was nearly universal.

I suspect, or would not be surprised to learn, that other MIM parts were being used internally at the same time. Things like the rebound slide and the bolt. Those are two little complicated parts that I bet are a pain to machine and fab conventionally. They scream for MIM.

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

I would agree about the bolt and rebound slide . And parts of that nature would be a great candidate for MIM and in fact may be more accurate than conventional fab.

The only concern that I have is for the sear surfaces , if work is to be done things do not stay as they are due to the hardness issue . If MIM parts are only hard a few thou. thick you get down into soft metal that wears quickly . At least that has been my experience with 1911 parts . Now I also realize that most all smith revolvers do not need any tuning , or at least the ones from 30-50 years ago.

So all this may in fact be a moot point . Now the external lock is another matter, I simply cannot live with that .

Kirk

Myth, absolute myth. I still recall a guy's grandfathers /great grandfathers model 10, with original box (tan with blue lettering). Bluing of a depth you could fall into.....and no forcing cone. Yes, the action needed work to remove toolmarks & burrs. BTW, the case hardened hammers & triggers have only surface hardness several thousandths deep. Cut through the case and you have soft steel or at least softer steel. Somewhere along the line they may have gone to through hardened alloys.

Nothing in an action polishing requires going through any surface hardening. All you should be doing is deburring and maybe removing some tool marks.

OTOH, the S&W MIM triggers I put over travel screws in were harder than the hinges of heck and that hardness went deep. Like everything else, there are good examples and bad.

A mim trigger/hammers should be hard all the way through, which is not at all true about the older case hardened hammer/triggers. But, in any case the need to take off enough to get through any surface hardening is 0 unless sears were some how damaged, either by some how slamming hammer while cocked or a heavy handed idiot working on them. Wearing out a sear would take some serious shooting and then the amount to set it right should be really tiny.

I picked up this model 10 just a while back :

model 10 restore

Now the sear looked and felt terrible . It had a round approach as it came to a point . That one took a little work to get it to feel right . Now I was told that the gun (or read that the gun was Canadian police and it did have import marks so maybe so) and I was assuming that the sear had been tuned by a dept. armorer.

My point is that if others work on the sear surfaces sometimes a man has to deal with their work .That model 10 was dated at around 94 . It still shoots well and the trigger feels great although I have not put that many through the gun.
I'm sure that I went more than a couple thou. deep on the correct angle so we'll see how it does as time goes on .

thanks for the input ,

Kirk

I've seen this mans custom work on the forum and if says it you can write it in stone uhh ahh well you can write it in steel well I can't but you can believe he can write it in steel . Just kidding steelslaver as always your input is appreciated as I have been wondering about the MIM parts myself so thanks for weighing in .

I know this statement will piss off some but MIM parts are junk. Do they work sure until they don’t....oh yea and there ugly too.

I might be one of the some>

Explain please.
Is it because they all fit precisely without hand fitting?

Because they are hard all the away through unlike older parts that were only hard skin deep via case hardening?

Because YOU can somehow prove they have a higher failure rate than forged parts?

Or is it that you just hate something you don't really understand and have a fear or distrust of any change?

Guys like you cursed those new newfangled radial tires when they started coming out. They blew up, came apart, ran you off the road, etc etc. While running 3 or more times farther than bias ply. Cursed new fangled technology anyway.

Computer controlled cars. Bad Manard bad. Despite the fact they don't need the points adjusted, spark plugs last forever, and get way better gas mileage with those computers and that stupid fuel injection instead of carbs that needed adjustment. Worse yet they contain some MIM parts. Why they only run 2-300,000 miles with only basic care when those terrific old manufacture cars made it 100,000 miles with a tune and grease job every 10,000 miles, usually!

Heck an 1969 Road Runner with a 426 Hemi could blown up way faster than a new one and be left way behind doing it.

While I will be the first to admit that S&W may have some manufacturing problems, MIM PARTS AREN'T WHY.

It is the lines of the J, K, and L frames with the lock that is a eyesore for me. Is it the lock or the frame mounted firing pin needing that contour?

Is ALL MIM Junk?

How did you come to that conclusion?

Forged is prettier than MIM

MIM has been around for several decades now. MIM is used in many fields.

I would much prefer to have a well made MIM part than a poorly made and fitted Forged part any day of the week. Smith and Wesson's MIM parts are nice quality

I'm glad Smith & Wesson uses MIM and has made other changes necessary to stay profitable and to keep thousands of hard working blue collar Americans employed. I'm glad they didn't follow the advice of the MIM trolls who would rather see S&W go bankrupt like so many others gun companies destroying the jobs and lives of thousands of American workers and their families.

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

My memory of the 1990s, which is not good enough to recall specific years, is that cylinder release thumb pieces were the first externally visible part to be phased in. Next came MIM triggers which are interchangeable with forged triggers. Last came MIM hammers along with frames that have firing pins separate from the MIM hammers.

MIM trolls, lol, I like that.

I have worked in manufacturing since Jesus was in swaddling clothes, and have machined tens of thousands of mim parts for use in high temperature harsh environments. I can assure you they are every bit as good and reliable for this application as a forged part.

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Robert
SWCA #2906, SWHF #760

I think some of the folk here equate mim with sintered steel parts. The sintered steel parts (like Colt used in some of their revolvers) would quickly wear if you did any amount of stoning and wore off the hardened surface layer. I believe steelslaver when he says mim is hard all the way through and not just surface hardened.

Let me be the first to say....

"Don't feed the MIM trolls."

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

LOVE IT! Today we have 2 liter turbo engined cars that can savage 5.7L Corvettes of not that long ago, HP/cu" that pure race engines a decade ago probably couldn't match, all that with great driveability, mileage and tiny emissions.

Gosh, those old 1960 Chevy's had tough fenders. Right. Not long ago, one government agency tested a car w/o modern crash safety features against a new car. Big surprise, not, occupants in the old car would have died, the ones in the new car walked with minor scratches.

As steelslayer and others have said, MIM parts from quality vendors are excellent and in guns, significantly reduce the amount of expensive hand fitting needed to make the gun sales worthy.

These times are the golden years of cars and guns and it seems to be getting better still. Don

Would it be correct to say that the angled thumb-piece was introduced because of MIM technology ?

Only if they thought more people wanted those than the conventional type thumb piece. With MIM they could easily make most any shaped pice the wanted and once parent mold was made make thousands of the all of them totally identical.

Once the molds are made about all they have to do is fill them with the compound, super heat them to the correct temp for the correct time in a digitally controlled oven, quench and they are done. No cutters to wear out of tolerance, no machine bearings or spindles, to work out of tolerances, no need to set machine to new cutters to spec.

Everything new isn't bad. I guarantee you that airplanes have all kinds of MIM and various powder metal technology parts.

Some of the best blade steels money can buy are made using powdered metal technology. The CPM steels are way ahead of anything else. Metal is melted in a inert atmosphere iduction oven, then sprayed into an inert atmosphere to form fine beads of completely uniform steel. These are then pressed together and super headed under pressure to form billets of totally homogeneous steel. Impossible with a poured and roll forged steel.

Yes. Go back in this thread and read my first post. The angled thumb-piece (I like to call it the Nike latch because it looks like the Nike' shoe logo) was the first visible MIM part, and began sporadic use around 1992.

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

I much prefer the original full sized latch. The angled ones have frequently caused my thumb to slip off during reloading drills at work. Just like a ramp it pushes the force away from the latch. Just my experience.

It's even worse for lefties like myself. I use my left forefinger to work the cylinder release and with that angled junk it is harder for my forefinger to get a secure push on it. I replaced that angled release with a regular old style release on my 627 Pro.

S&W went to the Nike latch for reasons of speed loader clearance. I think just about everybody prefers the feel and look of the traditional style latch (which is now made MIM, of course).

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

I never had trouble with either Safariland nor HKS speedloaders with the traditional style latch. MIM doesn't bother me.

If the traditional latch is preferred by most people why not use them on the new guns?

The "Nike latch" mimicked the slope of huge after market competition thumb pieces. When "Nike latches" came out they appeared racy. It was common to replace old thumb pieces in the hope of faster reloads. Some friends did that but I never got around to it. I've used HKS and Safariland speed loaders a lot and I've never before heard anyone complain that the older latches interfere with speed loaders.

By the way, a local gun store has two new Performance Center 686s for sale that have enormous "Nike latches" that any fool can see prevent the use of speed loaders. Maybe full moon clipped .38 Short Colt Cartridges would fit between those latches and the cylinder but their cylinders were not cut for moon clips. I expect they will sit in the store display for a very long time.