buck460XVR
Member
....have owned them for many years and have continued to buy them. Yesterday I stopped at a LGS in a neighboring town and noticed they had a 3'' 686 in the case with a "On Sale" price of $899. When the salesman came over and asked if I wanted to see anything, I asked him what was so special about the revolver that they were asking $70 over MSRP for it. His reply was they don't make 'em anymore and that quality firearms like it were hard to get. I explained that it was still shown to be current production and then asked him if it was a P.C. model or a "plus", thus maybe justifying the extreme price a little. He then told me that all 686s were .357 and could shoot "plus" ammo. When I told him the difference between a standard 686 and a 686 plus he told me he had never heard of a 7 shot 686. When he asked about the P.C. question, I told him that the cylinder looked to be highly polished as opposed to the rest of the gun....almost two-toned. He claimed it was cause someone must have wiped down the cylinder and not the rest of the gun. He then took the gun out of the case and tried to rub it down with a cloth and I told him it would take something more than a shop rag to polish the rest of the gun to the same shine. After wipin' on it for a few moments he agreed. He then opened the cylinder and handed it to me and I quickly showed him that yes....S&W does make 7 shot 686's. He then stated he better change the sign in the case and then asked ME if there was a price difference between the two. When I pointed out the severely canted barrel, he took the gun back said OMG and tried to turn the barrel by hand. I then asked if the manager was around and he told me HE was the manager. I asked him if he was gonna send the gun back to S&W to have the barrel fixed and he said "no, we'll let the new owner do that" and put it back into the case. Talkin' to him more about it he claimed that he had been unable to get any S&W revolvers for several months and all of a sudden outta the blue his distributor called him and asked if he wanted this one. I wonder how many other shops had it before this one......
Fact is, after all of the many posts about poor quality control from S&W I have read but never seen much proof other than one or two lightly canted barrels, this gun was the other extreme. One did not have to even look down the barrel to see how misaligned the barrel/sights were. The difference in polishing was so bad between the cylinder and frame that I almost wonder if the cylinder had been damaged somewhere and some goober had tried to clean it up. I had a bad taste in my mouth not only for the LGS itself, but for the firearm company that let a mess like that out the door. Stopping at my LGS in town on the way home, I looked closely at the few Smiths they had in stock and could find nothin' wrong with their inventory. Talkin' to the owner of that store, who's also a friend of mine, he told me that new Smiths were like buyin' fruit at the grocery store. You need to look real close before you put them in your cart. After what I saw yesterday.....I hafta agree.
Fact is, after all of the many posts about poor quality control from S&W I have read but never seen much proof other than one or two lightly canted barrels, this gun was the other extreme. One did not have to even look down the barrel to see how misaligned the barrel/sights were. The difference in polishing was so bad between the cylinder and frame that I almost wonder if the cylinder had been damaged somewhere and some goober had tried to clean it up. I had a bad taste in my mouth not only for the LGS itself, but for the firearm company that let a mess like that out the door. Stopping at my LGS in town on the way home, I looked closely at the few Smiths they had in stock and could find nothin' wrong with their inventory. Talkin' to the owner of that store, who's also a friend of mine, he told me that new Smiths were like buyin' fruit at the grocery store. You need to look real close before you put them in your cart. After what I saw yesterday.....I hafta agree.
