Dan Wesson firearms had periods where they were distinctly cash poor and as a result the quality suffered at times. The revolvers produced in Monson Mass are considered the best but late in the Monson period the production equipement was getting rather worn and delipidated.
IMO it's best to look for a Dan Wesson that has been shot a fair amount, that is an indication that if it needed any gun smithing when new that was done at purchase. The simple truth is that there were a lot of revolvers that left the factory with problems. However, the accuracy potential of a properly set up Dan Wesson revolver was so good that many precision and silohuette shooters would purchase these guns and spend the money with a local smith to get them timed correctly just to have the "edge" of that tensioned barrel and forward cylinder lock.
If the gun hasn't seen much use I would stongly recomend a very close look at the timing and cylinder alignment. Going on hearsay it's my impression the major faults with the lemons were poor timing, cylinder notches off location, and cylinder faces that were off square. Poor timing and off sqaure cylinders are an easy fix, so these aren't huge faults. However stop notches out of position means a new cylinder, so you'll want to check the alignment with some range rods and pass if you find a problem here.
Now for a final note. I am under the impression that the barrels and shrouds for the 15-2 will fit the new release of the 715. If so, and if the price is right, I'd look into purchasing that pistol pak simply for the barrels and shrouds. A bit of good news is that the shooting public tends to avoid the Dan Wesson's due to the reputation for quality issues, as a result they usually sell at bargain basement prices. More good news is that when they were in production they were normally purchased by competetive shooters, as a result one that's seen a fair bit of use has already had any factory goofs corrected. Bottomline, if it's been shot enough to leave some wear on the recoil shield I would snap it up, provided the price was under 800 bucks for the complete pistol pak.
Final note on the accuracy. These revolvers were intended to be the most accurate handgun ever made and by all reports this goal was achieved. Recently Smith & Wesson has produced some models with tensioned barrels and my personel experience with my model 620 leads me to believe that it's capable of grouping 1 inch or less at 100 yards. Unfortunately I'm not a good enough shooter to do that routinely however I have had some 1/2 inch cloverleafs at 50 yards with it when I'm shooting well. I've seen reports and been told that a well set up Dan Wesson revolver is capable of shooting to 1/2 inch at 100 yards and I believe it. However having spent 2 full months shooting twice a week to get to the point where I could shoot to an inch at 50 yards with some 1/2 inch cloverleafs thrown in I can tell you that shooting to this level is a lot of work and rather expensive if you don't reload.
