What's happening to this ratchet?

That looks pretty rough. I would definitely monitor it to make sure it isn't getting worse. If the hand doesn't look bad I'm not sure what else on the gun could cause that.
If it was mine I would probably clean up the burrs with a stone and watch for it to return.
What model is your gun?

Dykem.

I would contact the factory and get them to make it right.

Varminterror said:

Dykem.

Click to expand...

Or at least a sharpie marker.

Dykem is designed to wear (or cut, or scratch) away, with little force, so it's the best application. A Sharpie is designed to endure.

Doesn't look good. If S&W did that, shame on them. If the hand did it, heat treat on the cylinder must be off. I would contact the mothership, not worth further damage, and tell them you want a loaner gun while yours is in the shop (it'll probably work)

I've seen that on a few Taurus guns before, but not a Smith. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen though. I'd contact the factory.

Is this a competition gun?

It looks like burrs left by the machining. The cuts on the ratchet look fine otherwise, your revolver would be out of time. You could send it back to smith and have them stone away the burrs if you don’t mind being without your gun for several months. You could take it to a local smith, do it yourself, or live with it. It shouldn’t do any harm or impair the revolver’s function.

Take a look at the hand. Is it chipped? Open the cylinder and cock the hammer.It's the part that moves the cylinder. (see Pic) If not, you may have a slow timing issue.

If that was a Taurus there would be a whole lot of product bashing going on. That looks like crap , and to me is unacceptable on a S&W revolver. Cause ? damn poor workmanship or machining at the least ,and it needs to be sent back to S&W with a nasty note. Yes, you can carefully clean up the burrs and roughness yourself if you want to, but you sure shouldn't have to, and doing so may cause warranty issues, as well as perhaps not fixing all the unknown issues such as a poorly heat treated ratchet for example.

Maybe it's just my eyes but it looks like half of the spokes (arms) on the star ejector are missing and there are deep gouges on it as well. If so the the ejector needs to be replaced.

That's not the kind of damage that's caused by normal wear. There does not look to be damage to the cylinder itself so that could only happen with the ejector removed from the gun and beaten on or something catastrophic.

Am I not seeing that right?

I would send the photo to S&W and see what they say. My 686 does not look like this.

Definitely poor quality of cleanup after machining. Those burrs are exactly what a machined part looks like when a slot is machined into a solid soft part which is what happened to create the notches. Those burrs should have been cleaned up while it was still at the machinists work station because a machinist has to look at it and verify that the job is done. Cleanup is part of the job. The ejector assembly should be fine because it does NOT hold firing forces.

If you choose to clean it up yourself, use a stone, not a file. If there are burrs inside of the cuts that need to be removed or polished out then you can do that with lapping compound and a drill with a piece of wooden dowell in the chuck.

Looking at the pic again I see I was wrong, the arms on the extractor are still there. The shadow is just confusing.

But notice the chamfer on the inside edge of each arm of the extractor and around the chambers. It looks like someone decided to chamfer the charge holes on the cylinder, this to make loading a bit smoother, far as I know S&W does not offer this and it's done after market or by sending the gun back to S&W. It's possible the damage took place then.

Like I said before this is not normal wear and the gun did not come like this from the factory originally. These are not small burrs cast up by normal wear either.

How long do you have this gun? Also did you buy it new? knowing a little of the history might help to figure out why the gun has been thru.
Respectfully, as I understand it a high rate of fire can also cause this as well. Not saying you did this.

> Cut and paste from the revolver checkout link, elsewhere on this forum.<

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Fh3F6hufhDMWZiNjBkMWItZDhkNS00MTlhLWE4YzMtOTdmN2YwNmY4NzM2/view

"Weird thing about the vintage six-shot large-frame 38s and 357s (N-frame model
27, 28, or the old Heavy Duty 38s): when they get shot at high rates of fire with light
ammo, thats basically their kryptonite. The cylinders star, the pawl, the bolt that
stops the cylinder in the right place (rising up from the bottom to meet those notches in
the cylinder) all get beat to hell. The cylinder is massive starting and stopping it
quickly eats the gun alive. Shoot it at a slower pace with strong ammo and itll live
forever. Go figure. Look carefully at those areas on these guns."