Bob has it right.
Despite all the assurances from the experts here and elsewhere, it does happen and it is apparently not so rare. At least a couple of us on this forum have had it happen, before removing the lock. That's not "I heard it on the Internet" info, at least for me personally.
I'll repeat this in a bit more detail, although posted before: A couple months ago, after buying my brand new 649, it solidly locked up on the range at least twice during the first ten shots. That's twice, not once. I couldn't cock it with my thumb, and I could not get the trigger to move very far for DA. After fiddling with it, and opening the cylinder and closing it, and trying to move the hammer and trigger, it started to function again both times. I had the lock out by the end of that evening.
Was I using .357s? Nope. For my first test shooting, I was a bit leery of the recoil, so I was using standard .38 Spl. service loads, not even hot ones. I think the problem was mechanical, not related to recoil.
I had heard about this problem, but never expected to have it happen with my own brand new gun.
In any event, with the main lock piece gone and my blank button filling the hole, the problem is history. The modified gun is wonderful. And the parts can be reinstalled if ever I sell it and have to comply with some new rule requiring such guns to be restored to original defective condition before sale.
When I opened the gun to remove the lock, I checked to make sure the malfunction could not have been caused by a burr of metal, manufacturing debris, or something missed during final inspection. There were no other problems. Had there been, I think I would have caught it. I've worked on, and rebuilt, a lot of Smiths over the years.
So with the lock removed, all you folks don't need to wonder whether the odds of such a malfunction are 1 out of 2, or 1 out of 20,000,000. The odds become zero.
And that's nice to know at 2 A.M., when a big hairy illiterate named Buster, just out of the slammer and drug rehab, is shining a flashlight in your wife's sleepy eyes in the bedroom.
