Smooth action
My Grandfather carried this .38 special (6" barrel) often while hunting, and he passed it on to my Dad. My Dad carried when hunting. By the time I inherited it, it was covered in a brown patina. I don't know that I would restore it even if I had the money to have Doug Turnbull do the work. The action is smoother than any other revolver I own.
I was a firearm's instructor for the Sheriff's Department that I worked for. I worked there from 1983 to 1999. The last ten of those years I instructed firearms' proficiency, pursuit driving and empty handed control of violent subjects.
I friend of mine had a more than passing fancy in the category of handgun assembly and disassembly. He knew how to safely stone a revolver down to 3 lb. Due to his added steps, each one improving the "feel" of the trigger, he could make you swear your trigger was too dangerous to shoot; IOW, it was too light, but, each trigger broke the sear at 3 lb.
He married a woman that he taught in the academy. He started working on her 686 when the academy started. He finished in time for her to use the 4" barreled S&W 686 to qualify in the firearms' proficiency portion of the academy.
Long story short, she ditched his rear and he sold me the 686. The Lord only knows how many man-hours he had sunk into that revolver, but he sold it to me for a used (98% Blue Book) price, which was a steal! I still marvel over how smooth that entire action operates. He polished every internal surface he could polish without compromising the function of the revolver. All moving parts were polished as well as the internal walls of the action. He was big-time in love with that woman.
The old .38 Spcl that was originally my Grandfather's, then my Dad's, and now mine, has an action as smooth as that 686. My Grandfather shot his guns; he had no safe-queens. My Dad kind of fell in the middle. He had some that he would throw himself in the ground under the weapon so it would land on him, not the ground. I have his favorite revolver which I've described in another thread. I guess tens of thousands of round would begin to break a revolver action in...
