[THREAD AGE ALERT: The original post dates back several years. The photos mentioned in the title were lost in the Great Photobucket Catastrophe. I need to rephotograph the gun and get replacement images up. I have one recent photo that I include as a placeholder until I can do the photos correctly.]
I finally had a chance to work on the 1946 Mexican that I mentioned in a thread several days ago. I am starting this new thread in the hopes I can keep it focused on images and facts about this uncommon model. I'm afraid my enthusiasm led me to post a bad picture and some high energy speculation in that other thread when I should have just stayed patient until I could get some better photos. (These still aren't great, but at least they adequately illustrate the distinctions I want to draw.) My apologies and regrets to all for my prior haste.
S814910, shipped April 30, 1946 to Frank Jonas on Wall Street in NYC. Jonas was one of S&W's biggest exporters, and this gun was shipped to him as a single item, suggesting that he had perhaps asked for an inspection unit to see if he could develop a foreign market for it.
The 1946 Target is a long-action revolver that differs from the prewar .38 M&P Target in its larger micro-click rear sight and the necessarily taller front sight. Though S&W moved in the direction of barrel ribs for all its target revolvers after WWII, the Model of 1946 still has an unribbed barrel. In this it resembles the prewar K-22 Second Model (or Model of 1940), the first commercially available revolver with large click-adjustable sights.
When S&W finally set the specs for its postwar K-Masterpiece revolvers, they adopted a grooved, flat-top foot for the rear sight in place of what they had experimented with in the K-22/40 and the Model of 1946. In those models, the rear sight had an ungrooved foot that was contoured to mate with the rounded top of the frame.
The higher notch in the rear sight necessitated a much taller front sight, which in the 1946 sported a Call gold bead.
The rear sight, by the way, is numbered to the gun. Here is a photo of the underside of the sight next to the serial number on the butt.
The S prefix is deserved in the Model of 1946 because the gun is equipped with the new hammer safety block, which became standard in early 1945. Perhaps surprisingly the S prefix does not appear on the secondarily numbered parts of the gun alongside the numerical portion of the number. It is not on the barrel...
and not on the cylinder...
The S prefix is also absent from the yoke surface. I neglected to take a photo of that one when I had the chance.
The 1946 has six-groove backstrap and forestrap, as we might expect on a target model:
As far as I know, the 1946 is found only with a single-line address and the large ejector rod knob. The 1946 and several dozen early K-38 Masterpieces are thus the only postwar target .38s known to share these features at the time of production.
Apart from the sights, the single most typical characteristic of the 1946 is a small single line rollmark MARCA REGISTRADA that is found on the sideplate beneath the trademark.
That mark is there because the company was mindful of a trademark dispute in foreign courts that found the company was not protected with a simple English-language assertion of corporate right in some countries where Spanish was the primary language. Two years later, in 1948, the company would add the plural form of the phrase to its expanded address block.
The rollmark is there at all on this model because the vast majority of them were shipped to Mexico, a fact that leads to the common shorthand designation for this model -- "The Mexican." (This is a different gun from the Model of 1891 .38 SA revolver also known by that nickname.) I used to believe that they were sold on a government contract and were intended to arm the Federal Police (or at least senior officers among the Federales), but evidence suggests they were shipped to a commercial importer for sale to members of the public. Most of what is known about these guns comes from company records, as the guns themselves are almost never seen. In his 1977 book History of Smith & Wesson, Roy Jinks reported that 2091 units were produced with serial numbers scattered through a range running from S812000 to S817000. In later years, specimens turned up with serial numbers in the S832xxx and S833xxx ranges. It is not known if these later specimens were considered at the time the original production tally was made. If not, total production may be closer to 3000 than 2000. In any event, all or almost all went to Mexico, and the very few known to exist in the hands of US collectors necessarily either never went to Mexico in the first place, or were shipped there and then somehow managed to return.
There may be as many as a dozen or so specimens in the hands of American collectors, but only four or five seem to be above the horizon at this time. I am hoping that a discussion here may bring to light solid evidence of other 1946s/Mexicans whose existence is only rumored or considered theoretically possible at the moment.
As time goes by I am going to try to consolidate in this thread the most important points of information that have surfaced in half a dozen other Mexican threads on this forum in the last five years or so. I invite other collectors to do the same. I know there will be a certain amount of repetition involved, but there may be benefit in having it all piled up together in one place. I think this thread has the potential to be that place.
I gave this gun a complete going over with kroil, toothpicks, stiff nylon brushes and cotton swabs. Much of that effort was unnecessary, as the gun had already benefited from teardown cleanings by previous owners. I did manage to take care of a hitch in the single-action release that seems to have been connected with an area of solidified oil on the toe of the hammer. The SA trigger pull is now crisp and delightful at about 2.75 pounds. I can't wait to get to the range and test this gun out. I have no fears of shooting any value off it as it has already been shot quite a bit, as evidenced by the worn surface of the recoil shield and some hard-to-reach carbon deposits here and there. There is minimal endshake and rotational play. There is no push-off problem. I have long enjoyed the combination of postwar sights on prewar long-action revolvers and regard the Transitional .38/44 Outdoorsman as one of the best S&W target revolvers ever produced. I am looking forward to exploring the same set of qualities on this slightly smaller K frame specimen.
This is probably about a 90% gun, or maybe slightly more if the evaluator is in a good mood. There is muzzle and high point wear (necessarily including the top of the front sight
) that indicate holster transport, and there is a pronounced turn ring. The blue is going to patina above the grooved portion of the backstrap, and there is some brown staining (but no pitting or anything I would call corrosion) on the grip frame underneath the stocks. The original stocks are long gone, and the ones on the gun now are numbered to a C or K prefix revolver from the mid or possibly later 1950s. Chambers and barrel are not damaged, with perhaps just a frosty spot or two that may go away with further attention.
I finally had a chance to work on the 1946 Mexican that I mentioned in a thread several days ago. I am starting this new thread in the hopes I can keep it focused on images and facts about this uncommon model. I'm afraid my enthusiasm led me to post a bad picture and some high energy speculation in that other thread when I should have just stayed patient until I could get some better photos. (These still aren't great, but at least they adequately illustrate the distinctions I want to draw.) My apologies and regrets to all for my prior haste.
S814910, shipped April 30, 1946 to Frank Jonas on Wall Street in NYC. Jonas was one of S&W's biggest exporters, and this gun was shipped to him as a single item, suggesting that he had perhaps asked for an inspection unit to see if he could develop a foreign market for it.
The 1946 Target is a long-action revolver that differs from the prewar .38 M&P Target in its larger micro-click rear sight and the necessarily taller front sight. Though S&W moved in the direction of barrel ribs for all its target revolvers after WWII, the Model of 1946 still has an unribbed barrel. In this it resembles the prewar K-22 Second Model (or Model of 1940), the first commercially available revolver with large click-adjustable sights.
When S&W finally set the specs for its postwar K-Masterpiece revolvers, they adopted a grooved, flat-top foot for the rear sight in place of what they had experimented with in the K-22/40 and the Model of 1946. In those models, the rear sight had an ungrooved foot that was contoured to mate with the rounded top of the frame.
The higher notch in the rear sight necessitated a much taller front sight, which in the 1946 sported a Call gold bead.
The rear sight, by the way, is numbered to the gun. Here is a photo of the underside of the sight next to the serial number on the butt.
The S prefix is deserved in the Model of 1946 because the gun is equipped with the new hammer safety block, which became standard in early 1945. Perhaps surprisingly the S prefix does not appear on the secondarily numbered parts of the gun alongside the numerical portion of the number. It is not on the barrel...
and not on the cylinder...
The S prefix is also absent from the yoke surface. I neglected to take a photo of that one when I had the chance.
The 1946 has six-groove backstrap and forestrap, as we might expect on a target model:
As far as I know, the 1946 is found only with a single-line address and the large ejector rod knob. The 1946 and several dozen early K-38 Masterpieces are thus the only postwar target .38s known to share these features at the time of production.
Apart from the sights, the single most typical characteristic of the 1946 is a small single line rollmark MARCA REGISTRADA that is found on the sideplate beneath the trademark.
That mark is there because the company was mindful of a trademark dispute in foreign courts that found the company was not protected with a simple English-language assertion of corporate right in some countries where Spanish was the primary language. Two years later, in 1948, the company would add the plural form of the phrase to its expanded address block.
The rollmark is there at all on this model because the vast majority of them were shipped to Mexico, a fact that leads to the common shorthand designation for this model -- "The Mexican." (This is a different gun from the Model of 1891 .38 SA revolver also known by that nickname.) I used to believe that they were sold on a government contract and were intended to arm the Federal Police (or at least senior officers among the Federales), but evidence suggests they were shipped to a commercial importer for sale to members of the public. Most of what is known about these guns comes from company records, as the guns themselves are almost never seen. In his 1977 book History of Smith & Wesson, Roy Jinks reported that 2091 units were produced with serial numbers scattered through a range running from S812000 to S817000. In later years, specimens turned up with serial numbers in the S832xxx and S833xxx ranges. It is not known if these later specimens were considered at the time the original production tally was made. If not, total production may be closer to 3000 than 2000. In any event, all or almost all went to Mexico, and the very few known to exist in the hands of US collectors necessarily either never went to Mexico in the first place, or were shipped there and then somehow managed to return.
There may be as many as a dozen or so specimens in the hands of American collectors, but only four or five seem to be above the horizon at this time. I am hoping that a discussion here may bring to light solid evidence of other 1946s/Mexicans whose existence is only rumored or considered theoretically possible at the moment.
As time goes by I am going to try to consolidate in this thread the most important points of information that have surfaced in half a dozen other Mexican threads on this forum in the last five years or so. I invite other collectors to do the same. I know there will be a certain amount of repetition involved, but there may be benefit in having it all piled up together in one place. I think this thread has the potential to be that place.
I gave this gun a complete going over with kroil, toothpicks, stiff nylon brushes and cotton swabs. Much of that effort was unnecessary, as the gun had already benefited from teardown cleanings by previous owners. I did manage to take care of a hitch in the single-action release that seems to have been connected with an area of solidified oil on the toe of the hammer. The SA trigger pull is now crisp and delightful at about 2.75 pounds. I can't wait to get to the range and test this gun out. I have no fears of shooting any value off it as it has already been shot quite a bit, as evidenced by the worn surface of the recoil shield and some hard-to-reach carbon deposits here and there. There is minimal endshake and rotational play. There is no push-off problem. I have long enjoyed the combination of postwar sights on prewar long-action revolvers and regard the Transitional .38/44 Outdoorsman as one of the best S&W target revolvers ever produced. I am looking forward to exploring the same set of qualities on this slightly smaller K frame specimen.
This is probably about a 90% gun, or maybe slightly more if the evaluator is in a good mood. There is muzzle and high point wear (necessarily including the top of the front sight
) that indicate holster transport, and there is a pronounced turn ring. The blue is going to patina above the grooved portion of the backstrap, and there is some brown staining (but no pitting or anything I would call corrosion) on the grip frame underneath the stocks. The original stocks are long gone, and the ones on the gun now are numbered to a C or K prefix revolver from the mid or possibly later 1950s. Chambers and barrel are not damaged, with perhaps just a frosty spot or two that may go away with further attention.
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