Right now, I simply dont know if there is something wrong with the gun or not. I gave it a good cleaning yestarday, along with my other 357s. Only a small amount of lead in the other guns, near the forcing cone. I plan on shooting the gun fairly extensively in order to narrow down what is wrong.

A local bullet caster used to make an extremely hard synthetic lube bullet that would not lead for 500 rounds+. He ended up with severe lead poisioning and I have been unable to get his bullets since. Never had any problem with his bullets.

I have recently purchased bullets recently from Missouri Bullet Co., with a Brll Hardness of 18 and Bullseye Bullet Co. I have encountered no problem with either bullet in my 357s, with the same load that had a problem in the 642, 3.2 grains of Bullseye and a 158 grains hard cast bullet, 358 diameter. I have noticed that the 357 chambers tend to have a residue ring where 38 cases have been used, a bit more than before , requiring more scrubbing.

One poster mentioned that the hammer pivot pin on his gun was broken, requiring replacement of the frame. If I were only so lucky, I would specifiy replacement with a NO LOCK 642-1. S&W mentioned that failure of the hammer pivot pin was far more likely than IL failure. If these guns are prone to breakage of such a crucial part, that opens another whole can of worms.

I prematurely jumped onto the IL feature as the probable cause of malfunction. I am wondering if there arent additional problems with this model that have not come to the forefront, that the IL is masking these problems and catching the blame? Moreover, the IL is just one more thing to go wrong.

I have to agree that I feel more comfortable with a pre-lock model for CCW.