I've heard of the hammer nose breaking off but never have had it happen to anything I own. I have 5 (soon to be 6) model 27's from -2 to -5 models and none have given me problems. My oldest, a 5" barrel gun I bought new in 1974 has had easily 30k-40k rounds through it and the only thing I had to change out was the trigger as it started messing up when firing single action and that was with quite a few rounds down the pipe. The other 4 are newer to me but have had quite a few rounds down the pipe with no mechanical breakdowns. I also own a 627 Pro, a 629-3 Classic and my wife has a 3" barrel model 60-15 and none of those have given me problems either. All of these span shipping dates of 1974-2016. So I guess my luck is good or you just happen to have gotten a couple of guns that had problems. BTW, I wouldn't worry about carrying that Ladysmith. S&W fixed the hand issue and that is very unlikely to be a problem in the future.