Did any S&W revolvers ever suffer from galling?

[aterry33]

My understanding is that the answer is no, but is this true even among the earliest stainless steel models?

 

[chief4guns]

Stainless galling

Yes, the first 686 6" that came out I just had to have one. I traded a fine 29 and $100 bucks for the piece of crap. It galled so badley, that before I had run 50 rounds through it, I could not pull the trigger through. It had heavy galling between the crane and cylinder. I called S&W, they agreed to repair and return it free. I had my local gunsmith (read a personal friend, free) polish the components and grease same. I never had any more problems, but it was never as smooth as my blue guns. I've never owned a stainless since. Probably one of those that was actually built too tight! I havent heard of the problem but a couple of times in almost 20 years. If I wanted one now I would certainly buy it!!! Chief

 

[ken158]

Always heard the first model 60's with real stainless hammer and trigger would gall and why they replaced with flash chrome parts.

 

[Bruce51]

My 686 galled on the recoil shield where the ratchet makes contact. It raised enough metal to lock up the gun. This was after the recall and modification. I stoned the area down smooth and have never had a problem since. That was over twenty years ago. I still check that area everytime I shoot the gun. I would hate for that to happen again if I really needed the gun to work.

Bruce

 

[RightWinger]

By "galling" what exactly do you mean?

 

[Bruce51]

By "galling" what exactly do you mean?

Galling is: "a form of surface damage arising between sliding solids, distinguished by microscopic, usually localized, roughening and creation of protrusions (i.e., lumps) above the original surface". In other words galling is material transfer from one metallic surface to another caused by movement and plastic deformation.

This is from wikipedia and is a decent explanation of galling.

Bruce

 

[aterry33]

This is probably a pretty poor definition, but galling is when two metal surfaces rub together and metal bits or particles are left on the other surface. It is kind of like "metal smearing."

 

[Scrapper]

By "galling" what exactly do you mean?

Galling is when 2 soft metals create enough friction between them to have metal transfer and render the sliding surfaces to seize or stick together causing them to no longer slide smoothly.

Hard metals are less likely to gall but aren't immune. Which explains why they flash chromed some parts.

 

[bassoneer]

My first experience with galling was not on a gun, but an aluminum platform we were constructing up on a roof at work. One of our engineers designed the platform with stainless steel bolts because nothing else on the platform was going to be painted. The ironworkers came into my office and slammed a bag of broken and sheared off stainless steel bolts and nuts (3/4" diameter structural bolts) on my desk. He didn't know what was going on (he used some pretty strong words - ha). We had not used stainless bolts before and didn't know about galling. We did some research and found that we had to put a little grease on the bolts prior to installation. Then everything was fine. The ironworkers couldn't even get the nuts all the way on the bolts to pull them tight without the grease...they would seize up (gall) and wouldn't move. The galling was so tight that they would put spud wrenches on each half of the bolt and it would shear into two pieces! Now that is a bond. The next time I thought about galling was when somebody was talking about why you should use grease on stainless to stainless 1911 rails (to avoid galling). Now I understand how strong that galling bond can be. Later, B

 

[RightWinger]

Thanks everyone for the wide assortment of answers, I have a much better knowledge of galling now! So the question is, what did S&W do to correct this problem on their later stainless guns? Did they make looser tolerances, improve the hardness of the metal..etc?