Anyone know if any of the custom pistolsmith's are doing custom barrel work on the newer 2 piece barrel/shroud combination? Longer barrel/shorter barrel, re-contouring shrouds, ejector rod housings, etc.? I checked with Hamilton Bowen, but he's not doing them.

Used to be so easy to have what you wanted made.

The wrench has just recently become available to the public. Brownell's now sells them, before that S&W was the only way to tighten/replace the barrel. It's probably just a matter of time.

I hope you're right. It's frustrating not to be able to make what I want, when S&W doesn't.

I suspect that once some gunsmiths start offering these option some shooters will be balking at the cost of a new barrel shroud if that's what is needed to achieve what is wanted. BTW, I would love to have a 6 inch 620 with a tensioned barrel, so I've done a bit of thought experimenting on what would be involved. Quite simply, the barrel shroud would run into a pretty good chunk of change if you want it to look "factory". Lots of seperate profiling operations and fixtures to take a raw bar of steel and make a shroud that looks correct. Then there is the matter of finding a 6 inch barrel, that length would require a custom barrel. In total I suspect that the cost would probably run to about double what a brand new 6 inch 686 would cost.

Going shorter on the other hand would be relatively simple. All you have to do is cut the shroud back, square off an prep the muzzle end, then cut the barrel and re-thread it to fit. So, at some point we may see 3 inch 620's being created, however I don't think that a 6 inch 620 will happen unless S&W decides to do it.

Mainly, I just want to be able to swap barrels around that already exist.