627-5 5" changes

[hkcavalier]

I'm pretty close to picking up a 627-5 5" locally. It is coming with a fairly large black nylon pistol case with the Performance Center logo stitched in with gold thread. It also comes with both Hogue rubber and Ahrends wood grips. Everything seems to be factory. Not that it means much with the IL guns, but I think this is a pretty early one. I don't have the S/N.

When did S&W move away from this configuration to the current Altamont textured grips + hard case?

It's kind of a weird coincidence as I'm about to own a 629-8 Mountain Gun with both rubber and Ahrends grips from the factory...but it came in a hard case.

[hkcavalier]

Well, no one replied, so I guess I'll make this about a different kind of "changes."

I picked this 627PC up this week. Pictures tell the tale that it wasn't very loved during its life. Even some small spots of rust (the Hogue stirrup and the bolt assembly, non-stainless parts). Gun was bone dry inside. It looked like the previous owner had shot a lot of .38 Specials through it and never cleaned it.

Came with both Ahrends round butt wood and Hogues. This was the theme of the week as I also picked up an early 2000s Mountain Gun with 2 factory grips.

Since this is not a collectible gun, I gave myself permission to tinker with it. I polished the barrel flats and the cylinder flutes with Mother's and a Dremel wheel, then filled the text with black paint. Then a spare set of Ahrends round-to-square Cordias.

Now I need a good moon clip tool so I can dirty this gun up again!









Post cleaning/polishing:

[dozer]

Good work,cleaned up nice.

[BillBro]

Looks familiar. Nice. I e been posting about mine alot lately and I recently reworked my crown and a few others posted about their crowns as well, how bad all of ours was. Looking at yours, it looks cut wildly different. How early do you think it is?
Nice polish. I debated polishing the flutes or adding and polishing a turn line on mine. The polished flutes look really nice.

[hkcavalier]

It's a BCFxxxx serial gun, I'm to understand those were pretty early in the 627-5 run that started in 2002.

What do the newer crowns look like?