Smith & Wesson Forum - View Single Post

Twoeyes · 03-15-2009, 02:01 PM

Hey all,
Just joined and one of the reasons is the gun in the picture..Looks like a "K"? I have one that looks like it except my front sight is pretty much like a long half moon. Smooth when viewed from the side. When looking from the front, it looks like it was just cut thinner on both sides and is an integral part of the barrel. its got a serial # of S 813882 on the butt. Looks just like the one in your pic other than that. Barrel is stamped patented feb 6.00, sept 14:09, dec 23:14
right side stamped 38 S ck (?or cl or & my eyes aren't the best now) W.special CTG and barrel measures 4 1/4 from front to frame.
Any help on what it is?
Thanks all
Tddo

Quote:

Originally posted by merlindrb:
It's not often (these days

) that I disagree with my esteemed friend Dick Burg. However, until recently I also believed that these boxes were post-war. Then I bought a couple of guns that went to Western in 1936/7 and began to take more interest in the company. As part of this interest I "acquired" a few pre-war Westerm ammo catalogs from Ebay and, lo & behold, there were these 357 boxes exactly as pictured above. The rest of the Western boxes in the shown in the catalog picture are clearly the pre-war target style - as per the style of the .32 S&W Long Western box at the bottom of the pic below. In the catalog, only the .357 Magnum appears to be in the Super-X packaging.

Re the small primer, I agree that Winchester and Remington used large primer initially, as did Peters. However, I've come across some Western test ammo that supposedly dates from 1938 and is clearly small primer (see pics below). Now, we might speculate (and you know how I love to do that

) that perhaps Western were the people that developed small primer magnum ammo and did so in the late 30's... That might also explain their need to purchase test guns in 1937 (factory letters clearly state "for testing purposes").

Thoughts anyone??

Butch - to answer your original question. I paid $100 for a box in Tulsa and thought I'd done well. Hope it helps.