Hi everyone: l purchased a set of round butt combat grips, that l thought would fit my model 66. Turns out they are N frame (verified at a gun shop). I was told that they were Lew Horton grips, because only ths left grip has a cutout. Is this the only way to tell them apart from factory S&W grips? I looked online at a gun auction site, and l seen grips that were advertised as LH, but had cutouts in both grips. The numbers on the grips are 1043, 629, Sep 23, 1985 and a stamped circle about the size of a dime with what looks to be a (W, C10, 23) inside the circle. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Well, back when the round butt N-Frames were the exception, and the Lew Horton N-Frames (like the 3" barrel M24-3) were the only ones with them, it was an easy identification.

But S&W soon started making round butt N-Frames as a cataloged production gun, such as the 3" barrel M657. The wood round butt combat grips that was once a Lew Horton exclusive, became a regular S&W item.

The cutout does not identify them as being soley "LH" grips... all of the factory made N-Frame S&W target and combat grips have a cutout on the left grip and none on the right.

The ones with a cutout on the right grip were called "presentation" grips, and the cutout on the right grip was to provide an un-obscured view of some special embellishment on the side plate that "commemorative" or engraved presentation guns have... and was something that was not exclusive to Lew Horton.

The first 2 pics are a 657 with factory round butt combat grips, the 3rd pic is the presentation style right grip with the cutout to show the special engraving on the side plate of a Model 544 commemorative gun.

On the newer guns after S&W stopped making their own grips and outsourced that to Altamount... the factory grip style underwent a change, and we also start to see grips variation in designs that were specific to the "special edition" gun being commissioned and sold by the large distributions, such as TALO, and not otherwise seen or available on regular factory gun. The lines between "factory" and "special edition" have become a lot more blurred than when S&W was still making their own grips.

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Conrad
SWCA #1830 SWHF #222

All round N-frame combat stocks feature that cutout, not only those that came on Lew Horton guns. In fact, there is no way to distinguish the combat stocks that came on Horton guns from any other regular production factory stocks.

Edit: Gunhacker beat me to it.

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SWHF #448