Was on the Wolff gunsprings site the other day and noticed their "Power Rib" mainspring for S&Ws. The advertising says they improve the smoothness and consistency of the trigger pull. Does anyone have any experience with these? They are not expensive so I might give one a try, but I thought I'd ask first.

I just replaced all the springs in my Mod 10 with Wolff springs. I had an unrelated problem with the gun, which turned out to have nothing to do with the springs. But, anyway, the bit about "improved smoothness, etc" is basically just advertising hyperbole. The Wolff springs CAN make an improvement in the feel of the gun, IF you use the "reduced power" springs. Wolff sells standard weight springs and reduced power springs for most models....the "reduced power" springs are just that - softer than the originals. So, with a reduced power mainspring, you can reduce the effort required to cock the hammer....and trigger effort, as well.

However, there CAN be a downside. In some guns, a lighter mainspring will reduce reliability. By that I mean, there will be light primer strikes, thus a failure to ignite the cartridges (commonly referred to as "failure to fire"...or "ftf"). Whether this will be a problem with your particular gun is a matter almost requiring experimentation - some guns will experience ftf's with lighter springs, some others of the SAME model will not, with the SAME springs.

If you are intending to reduce trigger effort in your gun - if that is your primary goal here, then I'd recommend that you switch to a softer trigger REBOUND spring, before a lighter mainspring. In that case, you have a better chance of not introducing reliability problems with the gun. Or, you can simply TRY one or both - maybe your gun won't give problems with lighter springs. As you said, the Wolff springs are not expensive. They ARE of good quality, by the way.

But, to emphasize a detail of your original question....any improvement in "smoothness and consistency" comes from reduced effort (with the lighter springs), nothing else. A spring is a spring.

"PowerRib" sells a lot of products other than Mainsprings.

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The Power rib springs have a little less "stacking" when fully compressed. The difference between them and a factory spring is not huge. I used a lot of them on trigger jobs but I also used a lot of factory springs and very lightly bent them to achieve the same effect. Installing one and changing to a slightly lighter rebound spring will give you a better pull. The real difference in a "tuned" S&W trigger and simply replacing the springs is in the deburring and polishing of the internals. That's what you're paying the smith for. Lightening the springs too much upsets the balance of the mechanism and will cause a slow trigger reset and give you a mushy slow trigger. You want that trigger to snap back quickly for fast DA shooting. The old guys that taught me would laugh if you showed them a "Power rib" mainspring because they never had things like that when they tuned S&Ws. They just bent the factory one so that when it is screwed down all the way it was a little lighter. Just a little.