Mod 547

gotta have one if you like Smith and Wessons.

547004.jpg
 
That's a Nice looking 3"er Neon8..
That's exactly what I'm looking for as my 3" 547, One that has some honest wear but isn't worn out..

And I don't think you'll ever find anyone with a 547-M as SmithNut told me that Roy Jinks said they were never produced.. I would like to know what happened to the 4000 extra 547 RB Frames??
Gary/Hk
 
547

I have a model 547 square butt 4" BBl. it has a set of finger grooved Pachmayers on it. What was the original proper stocks? Square Butt magnas? Thanks for any assistance. I sure would like to locate a set of proper stocks for the revolver.
 
Here's a pic of my 4" M547 with the factory Magna stocks, Note there rounded at the bottoms as some are more square in this area..
Gary/Hk
4" Model 547
54711uu4.jpg
 
Here's a shot of these factory 4" M547 grips as they live today in storage..
Thought maybe seeing them both might help you aquire a set like them.. They have silver washers BTW..
Gary/Hk
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This thread is why I love this forum. Lots of GOOD info, very little BS being bandied about as fact as on some other forums. I'm sitting here, being the oldest guy on the job, my CD BHP is in my holster and one of my 940s is in my left pocket. I have been toying with the idea of replacing it for work with one of the new plastic 9mms that are really light weight and hold a couple more rounds. Then I re-thought the idea. I can do one thing well with my BHP and my 940-I can hit with them both(should be able to after lugging them around for 20 years or so). I am supposed to be packing a SIG in .357, but as I can clean the quals with either of my weapons(with either hand), the boss kind of looks the other way.
When I started being a cop I carried a 6 shot revolver and 6 extra rounds in a pouch. I have 3 times as much ammo in my BHP (18) plus 2 extra mags, 5 in the 940 and 2 extra moon clips (they carry nicely in an old speedloader pouch one atop the other), and if I need to I can reload the 940 from a BHP mag-hell getting the empties out though.
Just to get some of the kids on the job looking I carried my 547 4" a few times, it really got their attention, one of them asked me if I used to be a cowboy!
Just the info and interest in a fairly obscure revolver as on this thread is indicative of the quality of the folks here.
Thanks for being around guys (and gals if you are here-I am getting very PC in my old age).
 
I bought my 3 inch M-547 NIB in April, 1983. A local sporting goods store had them on sale and I paid $284.45 for mine, including about a 6.5% sales tax.

I shot it a fair amount at first. I got some HKS speed loaders for it but never used it for anything but plinking. It shot well with everything I tried in it. I had briefly, before this, owned a 9mm Ruger Speed-Six (I think it was) that used a stretched coil spring around the ejector star to extract cases, but the last one or two rounds were hard to insert and they didn't always empty after shooting them, either. The S&W arrangement was a far superior if somewhat more complex system to shoot the 'rimless' autopistol cartridges.

A fellow I used to run into at a local range saw mine the first time I shot it and ran down to the same store and bought their last 4 incher. The guy was a huge 9mm fan and brought 9mm reloads and milsurp ammo to the range by the bucket-full. I ran into him a few times a year for quite a while, and he always had the M-547 and a very pretty, engraved Browning High Power with him. It was common for him to fire 500 rounds or more in an afternoon. We kept waiting for the ejector mechanism of the revolver to fail, but it never did. He had fired thousands of rounds through the S&W by the last time I saw him.

One day he had some imported, high pressure 9mm mil surplus ammo he said had been sold as suited for blow-back operated submachineguns, not handguns. He shot some in an old Star B, and it kicked quite hard. He then shot 6 rounds in the M-547. He said it kicked as hard as a Model 19 loaded with Magnum ammo, if not harder. Then he tried to eject the brass. It wouldn't. He tried pushing the ejector rod against the bench top. Nada. He finally borrowed a hard plastic mallet from another shooter and began to beat the rod back! The fingers of the ejector tore through the brass cartridge case rims without moving them! The primers were as flat as any I had ever seen in a handgun. Those cases were stuck!

He told me that he later took the cylinder out of the revolver at home and soaked it in penetrating oil, then drilled a hole in a block of hardwood and used a brass punch and hammer to drive each spent case from each chamber, using the block as a sort of anvil.

That ejector system is pretty rugged!

S&W had discontinued the Model 25-2 1955 Target in .45 ACP by then. When I saw the new Model 547, with the unique ejector and extra "limit pin" (what the second 'firing pin' is called), and how well it worked, I thought, and hoped, that S&W might use this new system for their next series of .45 ACP revolvers, instead of moon clips. I was slightly disappointed when the Model 625-2 was introduced with a conventional moon clip-based ammo extraction system.

I bet that the Model 547 was one batch of handguns that S&W made no money on. The development of the system and the extra manufacturing steps needed over the same gun in a conventional revolver round must have been expensive.

Dick Metcalf was a writer for SHOOTING TIMES magazine in the 1970's and 1980's. He wrote the evaluation article for the then-new Model 547 and was very complementary about the new sixgun. He was impressed with the accuracy he got from his sample and wrote about perhaps adding a S&W click-adjustable "Target" rear sight assembly to his, to wring a bit more precision from his. I don't remember reading if he ever did.

Undoubtedly, the Model 547 9mm M&P is one of the most interesting revolver variations that Smith & Wesson has ever manufactured.
 
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I sent the manual to steve who hosts gun manuals online.
Now the 547 manual is available online.
It's a 2.29MB pdf file.
Here's is the direct link to the 5 page 547 Manual.
http://stevespages.com/pdf/s&w_547.pdf
Anyone who doesn't have Adobe Acrobat Reader can get it FREE
Also I still have this manual in a 5 page jpg format as well.
Email me if you want it..
[email protected]
Gary/Hk
 
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