Revolver Factory Re-Bluing Question

I have a brand new S&W 25-15 Classic. You may have seen it in the other thread.

Anyway, when I bought the gun I noticed a scratch in the bluing on the barrel. At first I thought about declining the purchase, but the odds of me finding another are very slim unless I want to drive a long way in the hopes another would be perfect.

Here are the marks / scratches in the barrel:






The store says these scratches came from the factory, but I doubt that. I say that because if the look the first guy I showed to had on his face when I said “See these scratches? We’re they there when tithe gun arrived here?”
I got nothing but a dumb look.

Here are my questions:
1. Do you think S&W would correct this?

2. Would they have to remove/ replace the barrel to correct this?

If they would remove the barrel I am just going to leave the gun as is or maybe hit the scratch with a Cold Blue pen.
This gun is sighted perfectly for me and is accurate right out of the box. If there’s the chance that accuracy or POA would be affected I will just leave it. I am sure that in time I will bang it up... Especially if it looked perfect. This gun will be holster carried eventually and it will get shot a lot. Love this gun. It will see use.

Thank you

Driftwood Johnson said:

Dumb Question:

Why not call S&W and ask?

Frankly, I have no idea what kind of repair service S&W is offering now. I doubt if they would have to remove the barrel. But perhaps they would want to strip off the original blue and reblue the entire gun. Which you would probably have to pay for.

You can always resight the gun, how hard was that to do in the first place?

If it were mine I would touch up the scratches with cold blue and be done with it. All my revolvers eventually get wear marks on them from being used.

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DR505 said:

I’m with Driftwood...cold blue pen and carry on. Unless I never use a firearm it ends up with scratches and wear marks. Stocks on my rifles get nicked, bluing wears off or gets scratched, stainless gets scratched even easier, etc.

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Thank you both.
I am leaning toward the cold blue pen fix.

I have had lots of experience with S&W’s customer service. Calling and asking a CS rep what the warranty dept. will do usually does not result in a satisfactory or accurate response.

The more I think about it the more I think I should have not bothered posting this and just gone the cold blue route.

Driftwood, you may be right about me having to pay for it. I know S&W has had some pretty lame QC but I doubt scratches like this would have occurred at the factory.

Thank you both very much.

ontarget said:

@Pat Riot I totally feel your pain. I just picked up a RIA 1911 and found a very thin scratch on the slide near the ejection port. It was bothering me at first but then I vowed to put as much honest wear on that gun as possible, thereby causing me to no longer see any scratches.
Maybe you can do the same!
Good luck.

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Most excellent suggestion! I took it to the range shortly after my last post. Love that revolver. I took my Vaquero too.

wcwhitey said:

I don’t mind character on an old gun. To me though new is new, if I pay for new I want it that way. At least till I get to use it.

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Yes, normally I would agree, but I debated on this for a little while before buying the gun. I saw the scratches right away. The way I saw it and still see it is S&W came out with this “Classic” in 2008. They apparently didn’t make this gun again until 2019. According to the guy at the store where I got it they had this one for many months before I showed up.
I was afraid that if I passed for a “perfect” specimen I would have missed out in owning one yet again.


I have decided that I am going to buy some cold blue and dress it up myself.

AZAndy said:

I'd guess somebody at the shop got clumsy with it somehow.

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I agree. They store all guns in safes every night, apparently. At some point someone must have banged it into something.

AZAndy said:

Reminds me of the day I got fumble-fingered and dropped my brand-new, bought-that-very-day, DW Valor V-Bob into the bottom of the gun cabinet, where there's a layer of parts guns.

If you're in the shop you bought it from again soon, just look for the guy who has slap marks on the back of his head. That's who did it.

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I dropped my brand new S&W model 60 Pro the very first time I took it to the range. Dropped it right on the concrete floor. It dented the rear sight blade.

A couple months later I launched the slide of my brand new Remington RM380 right out into the lane of the indoor range I was shooting it for the first time. That was when I discovered that having it turned with the left side down and retracting the slide slowly the takedown pin drops out. I was looking at the barrel ramp when I did this. I never did it again. Haha.

303 hunter said:

View attachment 990048 Buff the scratch with 0004 steel wool, and touch up with cold blue. I’ve got a model 10 smith&wesson that had an imperfection on the cylinder from sitting in a holster for years. Now, it looks like a new revolver made in 1968.

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AZAndy said:

Wait wait wait, you did that with just cold blue? What kind? I have a 10 no dash with the same problem you describe, and I'd really like to try to do what you did. Every time I see that corrosion, it makes me sad. The rest of the gun is just about like-new.

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Yes, I agree. More details please.
I have only used cold blue on a shotgun barrel and it really didn’t come out great. It didn’t look awful but it definitely wasn’t great.

I figured in my case I was going to only apply bluing to the actual scratches themselves with a very fine brush or toothpick after degreasing with acetone. I was concerned about the surrounding bluing.

303 hunter said:

View attachment 990510

I just cleaned the rough area with a very small piece of ultra fine steel wool, and used G96 gun blue cream. The brighter you get the steel, the better the cold blue will blend in. Showed it to a friend who collects K frames, and he didn’t even notice.

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Thank you. It didn’t affect the surrounding existing bluing?