One of the (very) small pins positioning the exctractor star in the cylinder of my much used mod.28 dropped out & was lost somewhere on the shooting range.
A local gunsmith replaced it with a factory part.... which promptly dropped out & got lost during my next shooting session.
Finally the same gunsmith made & fitted an oversized pin which has stayed put so far.

Last week -horror of horrors- my favorite S&W (a super slick 4" mod 15) ejected BOTH extractor pins with my last reload. Fortunately I recovered them.

Getting a bit fed up with this, I wondered : are those pins really necessary ? Can't one fire those guns without them ? Would that be unsafe or would it cause damage beyond repair ?

It won't break anything immediately if you shoot a revolver without the locator pins in place, and it is fairly common to see guns with one missing, but they do serve a purpose and should be replaced. I doubt you can find a ready-made tool for it, but I have (or had...have not looked for it in years now) a staking tool that was given to me by an FBI gunsmith years back.

They made their own, and as part of a 'blueprint' done to all Bureau issued and personally approved S&W revolvers, the pins were staked in at Quantico. It's just a small tool steel rod with a hole drilled to the right depth and sharpened on the tapered contact edge. Insert pin. place tool on top of it, smack with small hammer...no more lost pins. Someone should make some up...they'd sell I reckon.

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Run Fast, Bite Hard!

Yes.

Clean the pins and pin holes. Use acetone as the last cleaning step. Install the pins with red loctite or the green stud and bearing mount.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Of course...most of us know the pins are there to take the torsional stress off the extractor rod. Not sure about the model in question, but my square-cut ones have a groove cut in the rod that matches the cylinder. Sometimes on some models...they just have a flat machined on the rod to match the opening in the cylinder. I don't see why it would be much of an issue since the star pushes against the round in rotation as well. But....they put them there for a reason.

I particularly like the way they will decide to put the pins in different places so it makes it a bit harder to cross-breed cylinders.. I just completed a cylinder replacement on a 640 ND and the cylinder assembly I ordered had the pins in different locations and I had to cut the new ratchet as opposed to just dropping-in my old extractor.

I too am in need of a set of 'extractor pins' for my Mod.27
as it was minus those parts when I acquired it some time ago..
The '27' has always been a good shooter with no apparent
problems but I would like to have a pair of the pins to install
or be installed if in matter of fact it is 'tricky'..
Need the best guess as to a source for the pins as my search
so far has been fruitless.. Thank You
oromil

I bought a Model 57 a few months ago and 1 was missing. I called Smith and they sent me 2 at no charge. They have to be blued, though.

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jj