I'd guess that the company will NOT let a gun go out the door with a single-action cockable hammer and without a lock, no matter what you offer to pay 'em. I think that's just their corporate philosophy. (Remember the history - today, S&W is a gun lock company that bought a gun manufacturing company. WE may think of it as a gun company, like it used to be, but the reality is that it's a lock company that makes guns to put their locks in. THAT's the perspective that makes their corporate insistence on locks seem like "common sense.")
Anyway, as I recall from installing a PLUG in a 638 that came with a lock, producing a frame for an external hammer gun without a lock would require them NOT to cut the round hole for the lock itself, the slot next to the hammer where the "Loaded" flag moves, and the internal slot where the flag/lock actuating mechanism fits. I'm sure all of these are cut on CNC machinery. And while it's certainly possible to modify the computer code to keep the machines from making the cuts for a lock, I suspect that the reprogramming would be a nontrivial task, EVEN IF the company were willing to let an external hammer gun go out the door without a lock.
So I'd guess that, even if the company were willing to omit the locks, it would take a lot more than an order for 500 or 1000 guns to make it worth their while to do the reprogramming.
Cautionary note - this is from a retired tax lawyer, who has never seen even one line of actual CNC code, so take it for what it's worth. But are there any CNC programmers out there who can say for sure how much work it is likely to take to make those kinds of changes? Recognizing, of course, that without actual knowledge of the software and coding actually used by the S&W machines, it would just be a guess.
