Please bear with me. This is a subject which seems to come up far too frequently in the short time I have been following this forum. I know some of you think it is much ado about nothing, but I strongly disagree.
I get worked up each time I hear one of these crooked barrel tails. It's not a "canted" barrel, or a laterally challenged barrel, or a displaced point of impact seeking barrel, or a barrel in search of hope and change. It's a crooked S&W barrel. For shame. I hope most of the rest of you are unhappy with them, also.
Front Sight 357, the way you should deal with S&W vis a vis the warranty program is fairly and firmly, as you are doing. You paid a relatively high price for a good looking, well engineered, and correctly manufactured revolver. You apparently received one with visible and unacceptable manufacturing flaws. No, it's not "just another silly gun". I am put off by some of the well meaning proxy apologies in this thread, to the effect that a crooked barrel is O.K., if the bullets go approximately where the visibly crooked barrel points, and that there are all sorts of technical reasons why this sometimes happens in the normal and acceptable course of manufacturing, and in certain instances it is "supposed to be that way". Hog wash.
You are doing exactly what you should, sending the gun back. And if necessary, keep sending it back until they get it right, as you define it. That is the only way S&W management will conclude that it is more cost effective to do it right the first time.
We need to be sympathetic and diplomatic in dealing with the S&W warranty people. They do a good job of sorting it out, in my experience. We might get ulcers going to work every day, knowing that our job was cleaning up after assemblers who don't always do theirs.
Yes, I know, nobody's perfect and everybody makes honest mistakes, and the clock is always running. That's what an inspection staff is for.
And the inspectors DO know what "right" is, and how to use gauges and jigs. Require them to do that, not explain why a crooked barrel is good for you.
Please, the rest of you guys. Stop making excuses for quality control failures. No group knows handgun quality better than that work force. Require them to deliver it, when standards start to slip, or lose money on the transaction. My threshold of patience is low, because I've had my share of new Smiths that were not right. And I have been spoiled by dozens of new and old Smiths that are really, really, really right. That's why we are here on this forum of admirers of something special. Some of the flawed ones I've sent back, some I've fixed myself, and some I angrily ignore, if it's minor.
Maybe the old days are gone, and maybe we will not see pre-war S&W quality again, but somebody has to draw a few lines someplace, or that trademark we all love will come to mean little, except stamped on classic collectibles. We can each make a worthwhile mini-contribution by helping to keep Smith straight, when your luck of the draw gets you a less than stellar Smith.
According to some of the implied thinking I've read in this thread, all S&W needs to do is steadily rewrite their specifications so that previously unacceptable product flaws are redefined as being "within specifications", new ones arbitrarily written to fit declining standards of management's own making. What a sad state of affairs; sounds sort of like what somebody is trying to do with our Constitution, doesn't it?
I recently bought a new 649 with a .009" cylinder gap. Specification used to be around .004". Now it's .010", I am told. Performance sacrificing defect? Why no, it's "within specifications"...just new ones. Don't worry, just be happy.
Please, people. Don't let these things pass. Don't wonder what to do. I understand that some of you younger fellows have grown up in this Age of Mediocrity and passivity. You don't always feel the contrast so accutely. But try to help keep S&W an exception, an icon. Forget the whales. Save S&W. Insisting that a new faulty gun be fixed is not being picky or cranky. Call it tough love. If somebody at S&W is not willing to stay on top of quality control, they need encouragement. From you. Over and over and over, until something changes or people are replaced.
I want S&W, the real one, to survive for many more decades, building the best handguns in the world, with or without lawyer locks. The company has been through some difficult times, and was saved in recent years by guys who really put their reputations and resources on the line. Being an overly passive customer is not the way to help keep this business on track.
To see how well silence and passivity works, have a look at "your" government in Washington...trying to rewrite our national spec sheet, that pesky old Constitution, as long as nobody stops them.
And lets not forget, keep buying more S&Ws, so you can continuously monitor their quality control program. I try to do my fair share.
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