Quote History Originally Posted By DuneShoot:
"Incredibly high failure rate"?
Where have you been seeing this type of info?
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@DuneShoot
To be clear, what I said was "incredibly high defect rate", not "failure rate". There is a huge difference between the two. A gun can have significant defects but still technically be functional.
I attend many gun shows and visit many different gun shops, so I have the opportunity to handle many new S&W revolvers every year.
With the exception of the small J-frame models, most new S&W revolvers that I handle have visible defects. Many are just cosmetic, poor finishing, excessive tooling marks, etc., although many have functional issues too -- canted barrels, poorly cut barrel crowns, excessive or uneven barrel to cylinder gap, timing issues, chewed up cylinder stop notches, etc. The canted barrel issue is by far the most common, usually causing the front sight to lean slightly to the right.
Just as an example, I've wanted a S&W 627 for many years and look at each new one I find. Please see the thread I started last summer about several that I found and inspected, as well as the issues I noticed.
https://www.ar15.com/forums/handguns/Recent-SandW-627-Pro-experiences---/33-210619/
In summary, S&W quality control is very poor these days and many revolvers make it out of their factory that shouldn't. Sometimes you can find a really nice one, but you often have to inspect many poor examples to find it. This is why I have had a policy in place for myself to only buy S&W revolvers that I can inspect in person before purchasing.