Quote:
Originally Posted by Muley Gil
"As a customer, it'd totally anger me to find an unmarked gun and have to guess at the ammo."
Why? A look at the chamber of a .44-40 revolver and the chamber of a .45 Colt revolver shows the difference pretty easily. When these two cartridges were introduced, and through their early history, they were the only big bore of that basic size around. The .44 Russian and Special cartridges are very loose in those chambers and the .38-40 bullet is smaller than either.
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Muley-
Do you really feel that a buyer ought to have to do that trial & error fit and hope to find a round that fits right?
Then factor in the jerks that might fire the wrong ammo.
I'm not saying that an enthusiast who really wanted the gun couldn't do detective work like you suggest and guess the right caliber. I just think it's ridiculous to ask that of most handgun buyers in that day.
My opinion is that it was arrogant and careless of S&W not to mark their guns properly. If somone wants to play devil's advocate for the company, that's your privilege.
Col. Chas. Askins told me that the uppity attitude of S&W sales reps had a lot to do with him buying Colts for the USBP, because the Colt men were more affable, although Askins knew that he'd have to turn the barrels of most of those Colts to get the sights aligned!
Not marking caliber on guns seems to me to be a reflection of that attitude, which I gather made many enemies for S&W over a span of several decades. The guns were good; management attitudes were sometimes elitist.
Perhaps management felt that marking the boxes was enough, but once a gun gets separated from that box... Maybe they didn't want to help the sales of used guns.
