I am not one of those guys who runs to online forums to complain about a manufacturer or a vendor whenever I have a less-than-stellar experience, particularly when the issue could be resolved with a phone call.

Furthermore, some of the complaints I see strain credulity.

Nevertheless, I had an experience today that I felt should be shared. I popped into a local firearms emporium this morning trolling for vintage revolvers (they had none), when what should I see in the display case but a 432UC *and* a 632UC. They were priced at ~$650, so I thought I’d have a look.

Good news: I really liked the sights (which I was sure I would), and I really liked the grips (which I didn’t think I would).

I immediately decided I was going to buy one or the other, but…

Bad news: the tritium vial on the 632’s XS sight must have been cracked during installation, because it was all but dead. The 432’s sight was good-to-go, so I asked for permission to dry-fire it. The trigger was excellent, but during my second trip around the cylinder the trigger locked up in the rearmost position and would not reset. Looking from the side the firing pin was still protruding, so the hammer was fully down. No amount of cylinder-jiggling or playing with the cylinder release accomplished anything, so I handed it back to the sales clerk. He took it to their gunsmith, who was able to get the hammer to rebound and the trigger to reset by gently whacking the rear of the grips against his bench.

I assume a bit of internal debris was to blame, blocking the rebound slide (or something else), and I feel confident the problem could be resolved with disassembly and thorough cleaning, but I was unwilling to take the risk, and the clerk stated they were going to ship it back to S&W anyway.

Color me disappointed. Nobody’s perfect, and we’re talking about an exceedingly small sample size of two, but still.

I am not one of those “they don’t build them like they used to” guys, but this experience didn’t bolster my position.

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Mark Lathem