Hello, I just joined and recently purchased a 9mm Shield. I can't wait to shoot it! Not knew to S&W though. I've had a model 29 for almost 40 years and it's a great gun. I haven't shot the Shield yet but took it apart to clean and noticed the feed ramp is scratched up more than I expected. I don't know if this is usual or not. I'm sure polishing it would help. Any thoughts?

I've had my Shield 9mm for a few weeks and fired over 700 rounds through her . First 250 were with the ramp still with melonite on it and had some scratches . No problems at all , ate a box of S&B dirty rounds and 200 WWB's . The rest were fired after polishing feed ramp , Lapping the slide and doing a trigger job . Again no problem's , just smoother action and an even sweeter trigger pull .

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Shoot it and if it has feeding problems send it to S&W and they'll do the necessary work to it.

Usually a couple hundred rounds of hardball will smooth the ramp up just fine. As a bonus you get to have fun "polishing it by shooting it" If it does have feed problems which it shouldn't send it to S&W and let a pro polish it...

I always tell owners of new or even used weapons to first take them home and break them down and inspect and clean them, however I did not take my own advice with my Shield 40, I did in fact take it down and give it a regular cleaning and lubrication as I always do and then reassembled it and then straight to the range!

I was in such a hurry that I did not carefully examine my feed ramp and take the necessary time to remove excess melonite on the feed ramp.

At the range after the first shot through the 7 round magazine I had a failure to feed due to a nosediving cartridge which I cleared and continued to shoot the weapon with no more problems with that magazine, I then put in the six round magazine and all shots went well and no problems, but I loaded the 7 rounder again and once again with it after the first shot the second round took a nose dive, it could have been the WWB ammunition or it might have been the feed ramp.

To make a long story short after the range visit I broke the weapon down and took a brass brush as well as a bore brush and gave the ramp and insides of my new barrel a great cleaning and polishing, and have had no more problems with my little 40 Shield since and it now has over 350 problem free rounds and is as accurate as I am!

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59,M&P9,40,40C,357,(2)45,G26

You'll love this little gun. I put another 50 through this afternoon. Stacking them on the target.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll do the same!

Probably not scratches, most likely brass from the casings from the test firing before shipping out. All of my mags were *dirty* too, including the extra that I ordered from S&W because they are in short supply at this time.