poor finish on a 627 PC

[calcifer]

Hello to everybody,
I'm going to post here some pictures of a 627 Performance center wheelgun that an Italian collector has recently purchased (obviously in NIB conditions) directly from the official italian importer of the S&W brand.

Well, the pictures speak by themselves..... fusion burrs on the trigger, tooling stripes on the ejector rod seater, completely different color grips.

Needless to say that the buyer has refused the purchase and has sent back the gun to the importer for a refund or a replacement.

Well, it's known that the excellence grade of the past productions cannot be pretended on the recently produced models, but.... I think that you will agree that it is a little bit too much, for a gun that is sold for a price of abt. 1900 $... but even if it would have been sold for half of that price !!!

Have you got an explanation for this..?? How can the quality service of a big and modern company as s&w let a gun like this to be placed on the market ??
A gun that should have been checked and tuned by the performance center !!

The gun has been purchased on 05/15/2013 and the serial no. is CTK9***

 

[texmex]

Must have been a Monday morning gun. They were hung over. Or a Friday gun. They were in a hurry to go home. Either way, it looks pretty crappy for a $1000 gun. The trigger doesn't look to bad to me. The tool marks on the barrel shroud should have been polished out. The grips must have been fitted by Stevie Wonder. I'm going to go home and look at mine. The grips that came with mine matched each other pretty well but they did not fit the gun very well. They did not follow the contour of the frame at the prawl which kind of lets the frame dig into your hand when fired. I was going to replace the grips anyway but you would think Smith & Wesson would know how to fit a set of grips to a revolver by now.

 

[Nframecollector]

It looks crappy for a 300.00 gun! I wouldn't accept shipment either.

 

[calcifer]

@texmex : seems more to be a "saturday gun" , made by the cleaning staff......

@nframecollector : you're right, could be acceptable for a china made gun valued 250$
For sure not for a US made gun that, I repeat, here in Europe is sold for abt. 1500 Eur (1900 $)
How can a performance center tune the trigger action and let a so badly finished trigger leave the center ???

Anyway, did you generally note a so deep decay in the quality standards on the recent s&w production ??

This is for sure a very bad "business card" for the US weapon production....

 

[s&wchad]

To be fair to S&W, your photos do show the gun enlarged about 500%. Looking at a gun under a microscope has a way of exaggerating the flaws. When I scale it down to actual size, it looks pretty good to me. The Performance Center switched to MIM triggers and hammers several years ago and the seam on the side of the trigger is typical of MIM. The grips appear mismatched from the back, but grips are not a big deal to get replaced. Does the front side look as mismatched as the back?

While it may cost $2000 in Italy, PC 627's typically sell for less than half of that here in the USA. I'm not saying the attention to detail couldn't be better, but it was never intended to go head to head finish wise with a $7000 Korth.

 

[gtmtnbiker98]

This is almost funny, sorry. To complain about a crease on a trigger and the other area(s) that I can't even find are extreme. I will give you the color mismatch on the grips, but that's an easy fix. Was the firearm purchased to shoot, or to critique and later photograph?

 

[jaykellogg]

I would send that gun back in a heartbeat. I recently examined a Colt 1911 that was factory engraved and I would have turned it down or sent it back. I don't know what is happening to the quality standards these days. I am sure Colt and S&W have unions, but that doesn't explain it either.

 

[amazingflapjack]

Gun should have exceeded expectations, in my view. Unless buyers insist on the quality the S&W brand is supposed to historically represent, buyers will just enable them to continue to send stuff like this out.

 

[calcifer]

@s&wchad & biker98 : just to clarify.... I love the brand, and I'm the proud owner of a 29-2 , a 28-2 and a 586.
My s&w's have an excellent finish... nothing to do with the defects shown in the above pictures.

You can say that they're acceptable defects.... ok, it's your opinion.
But in MY opinion this is a very bad marketing strategy and my opinion would have been the same if the defects would have been found on an Italian product, such as a Beretta.
A high level gun such as the 627 PC cannot leave the factory with those defects.

 

[nsl]

I've been wanting one of these, but the only one I've seen in person had a canted barrel, so the search continues.

 

[Stainz]

The mold line on the MIM trigger is just an artifact of it's manufacture, while the ejector area tool marks really shouldn't be there. The Eagle boot grips are a chance anyway you look at them. Both of my PC627 UDRs, which I bought new 4/10 & 10/10, came with 'old stock' Eagle boot grips, made to match a different radii of curvature, evidenced by their not pulling up tight high up front. I traded grips with S&W - on their dime for s/h - until I got a 'good' grip - then decided I needed a larger grip, settling on the PC Shop grips below.

It's hard to find fault with my pair of UDRs. No, they aren't Korths... I know that because I bought mine locally, both - with s/t and a couple of lunches - might add up to the OP's $1,900 price. Still, the extremely poor fit of those grips was too obvious. Functionally, they were perfect, save the first one's front sight being all the way to one side of the dovetail - easily remedied. I loved it so much, I bought a second one six months later. It's my only exact duplicate, too.

I love Italian products, having bought a new 1973 Alfa Romeo 2000 Berlina and a new 1976 Fiat 131, as well as eight other used Alfa Romeo's and founding the local chapter of the Alfa car club. Last year at the BLADE 2012 show, I bought an Italian made work of art Lion Steel SR-1 knife from the man himself at the show, spending what would have bought a perfectly made CRK large Sebenza on it. My knife was a work of art - which was difficult to open and close. That was a galled pivot screw, which they eventually shipped me from Italy. I replaced it and now I have a perfect knife. Man is fallible.

Stainz

 

[Felipe1960]

hello everyone, I'm the buyer of the revolver and with pleasure I inform you that I have been replaced with a perfect as I expected from a product performance center

 

[Alnamvet68]

I wonder if this passes muster....