I found a S & W 18-4 on Gunbroker recently. It arrived today and I am very happy with the revolver. Pictures attached.S & W 18-4.1.jpg

S & W 18-4.2.jpg

Looks perfect. It should be a great shooter.

Very, very nice!! Great find!

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Richard Gillespie
FBINA 102

I hope you don't have extraction problems as some here do. I cured mine, not with a reamer, but with a bore brush on a slow drill and a patch with some fine lapping compound from Wheeler Engineering.

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"Don't Give Up the Ship"

I took the new revolver to the range today. Three or four cylinders of Federal ammo without any extraction problems. Ran out of Federal so I switched to Winchester. After three cylinders extraction became extremely difficult. I will clean the cylinder thoroughly and try again with CCI and see how it goes.

Well... I thoroughly cleaned the cylinder and fired some CCI with extraction problems at the first cylinder full. I will clean it again and try the Federal again and see if it is better. I guess I am going to have to work on the cylinder. I will try polishing first and if that does not work I guess a gunsmith for reaming.

A friend of mine just purchased a 18-3 a couple of weeks ago and is having the same issues with his. I am guessing S & W reamed the cylinders and the small size is the norm. I guess they didn't expect us to shoot them.

I think the run the reamers past their actual life span.

My friend just bought a brand new 617, same issue of hard extraction, I told him send it back.

The difficult extraction issue has been a semi regular topic since I've been a member, there have been some good step by step threads with pics as well of exactly how to ream them safely.

Congratulations, the 18's are fine guns and great shooters. Cases sticking and hard extraction after more than a dozen rounds is common. Others have already mentioned reaming the cylinder which solves the problem. If you don't wish to ream the cylinder buy a 525 round Federal Value Pack. They're cheap, accurate and eliminate the sticking and ejection problems.

Enjoy your new 18,

Al

Your model 18 deserves to be finished as the original designer intended, with a cylinder that is reamed to SAAMI specifications. It really isn't that difficult of a job, and well worth it from a standpoint of enjoying every trip to the range. I've done a number of revolvers with one reamer that I purchased from Brownells.

.22 chamber reaming report

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NRA Certified Instructor & RSO

Reamer ordered today from Brownells.

Anybody tried "finish" reaming aluminum cylinders? Any thoughts, comments welcome.

Paul

One of my .22's is a 317, which I finish reamed along with all my other .22 revolvers. As you might expect, the cutting went a little faster since the cylinder is aluminum, but there wasn't any problem. I don't recall how much material was removed, it's been a couple of years now.


As I went through my modest .22 revolver collection and reamed all the cylinders to SAMMI specs, it was interesting that some required very little material removal, while others required quite a bit. It just goes to show you the wide range of manufacturing variability in S&W's machining that occurred over the years.

Lou

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NRA Certified Instructor & RSO

There are a variety of 22 chambers specs all of the variations being minor.

But, I believe that S&W runs their reamers past their ACTUAL life span. Some guns of the same era and dash are fine others stick, When reaming with a fresh reamer one will end up getting more metal removed than another

Thanks for the reply!

My 1 7/8" M317 is fun to shoot except for the sticky extraction. I have one of the Brownell finish reamers and some cutting oil - may give it a try on the 317 (sort of a practice run).

I have/had 3 M17s/K22s. Even the pre M17 guns had to be "burnished" and work just fine now. Have a more current production M17-8 and a M617 neither of which have extraction problems.

Have a 4" M18-3 that extracts easily but is hard to fully seat cartridges (short or varying depth transition from chamber to throat maybe?)

Have a 4" L Frame (M34?), a 3" and a 1 7/8" M317s all of which exhibit sticky extraction.

Paul

They have made I,J and K frame 22s. I do not believe they made any L frames. The model 34 22s are J frames

You are right of course -- it's a J frame. We get to the point where we are thinking one thing and typing something else LOL.

The saga continues.

The Brownells reamer arrived on Tuesday. I got everything organized so on Wednesday I reamed the cylinder. It took about ten minutes for all six chambers. No substantial amount of metal removed. A few bumps like rough spots was all.

On Friday I fired 70 rounds of CCI mini mag rounds without any extraction problems. I am going to mildly polish the chambers and see how many rounds I can fire before I encounter extraction issues.

Life may be good!

Use some 2000 sand paper on your swap and go stright in and out. Going around will cause rings for hold up of extraction.

I have also had great success using a chamber reamer on numerous 22LR revolvers.

FWIW, the tight cylinders and difficult extraction problem isn't unique to S&W. I've had to ream the cylinders of Rossi, S&W, Taurus, Heritage, and High Standard revolvers to cure sticky-extraction issues.

I've had to do it on both steel and aluminum cylinders, In fact, I have a recently purchased a SA Chiappa revolver that needs to have the cylinder reamed. For whatever reason it just seems to be a common issue across the board for 22LR revolvers - regardless of who manufactured them.

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