One of the facts in that article that is not a fact is that Smith and Wesson adopted a "new" method of installing the barrels in the early 1980's called "Crush Fitting". In fact, that was actually PR in action. All one piece barrels are crush fit whether they are pinned or not. When Smith eliminated the "pinned " barrel, this story was spread in order to assure customers. The fact is that pinned barrels have their threads timed so that the barrel is hand tight (can no longer be turned by hand without tools) when the barrel is 60 to 90 degrees before reaching top dead center. At that point, the barrel is tightened the rest of the way with a special frame wrench, etc. until it comes up on top dead center and then the pin is installed. If you thought that the barrel just spun into the frame and the pin was then inserted to keep the barrel from backing out-guess again. In reality, a crush fit barrel just doesn't have the flat on the barrel shank, the hole in the frame and the pin. Nothing else changed although it is true that after Smith's quality continued to erode after the pin was deleted, some barrel were over-torqued and THAT did cause issues. Anyway, if you use magnum loads with bullets between 140 and 170 grains, you shouldn't have any issues with crack or eroded forcing cones or frame cracks. Timing and end shake issues, that's a different story.
I cannot speak to what Smith advises for the re-issued guns because the have the wonderful 2-piece barrel system, I do believe. That said, Smith and Wesson advised against using the 110 and 125 grain magnum loads in the original K-frame .357's for a reason. In response to this, the L-frame guns were developed. If you happen to think they did this because there actually was no real problem and the just needed to find work for their engineeering dept. you are in denial big time. At the time, Smith absolutely dominated the LE market and the K-Frame .357's were the dominant guns. The 1970's were the time of ammo companies such as Super-Vel also. The big companies rushed to catch up with their own ultra high velocity, low bullet weight ammo as well. Many depts. starting issuing the 110 grain and especially the 125 grain ammo instead of previously "standard" 158 grain stuff and, when this happened, Smith began hearing about and seeing large numbers of damaged guns. As a matter of fact, it is not unusual to find a K-Frame .357 with an eroded or cracked barrel or frame to this day. Was the problem overstated-not hardly.
The K-Frame .357's, especially the Model 19's and Model 66's are wonderful guns to carry and shoot as I understand it. However, they were designed with the LE market in mind where practice was done with .38 Specials and use with full power ammo would supposedly be limited to qualifying and on duty shoots. That after all was what Bill Jordan was looking for when he pitched his ideas to Smith & Wesson. These guns in a way were the precursor's of today's scandium guns in that they are great to carry but for lots of shooting with full power ammo-not so much.
Bruce
