Well, some really good responses here. I have returned from the local sportsman's warehouse where the gun staff were kind enough to let me examine all the guns I desired and I spent an hour looking at just about everything they had. I can report that the only real issue of concern here is the lack of attention to detail that the manufactures are giving to final fit and finish of the guns they are letting out the door. Without exception, every J-frame I inspected (19 of them) exhibited the same type of deformation at the muzzle. I also looked at most all the other handguns and found that most of the revolvers had some degree of the same thing, but the Rugers seemed better overall than the others. None of the autoloaders I inspected had any deformation at all. While all this was going on a nice little crowd of folks started to assemble at the gun counter as all the gun clerks, the store manager, and I had just about every handgun in the place lined up on the counter and we are all staring down the barrel of these guns. After it was explained what we were doing and why we started to get help and opinions from the 10 or 12 people assembled at the counter. The opinions were very similar to the range of responses we have here. Then one of the older gentlemen (80-90?) in the assembled group offered this:
What you are seeing is an optical illusion, in the old days all guns were hand finished before they were shipped and the barrels were "crowned", nowadays they just send out any old thing that that looks like a gun. Stick a bullet in there and you will see, he says. So they break out a .38 FMJ and stick it in the end of the barrel and the distortion disappears. What you see are the little lines of the grooves around the FMJ and the bore is indeed round. Everyone is impressed and the older gentleman says
the last good gun they made and the last one I bought was back before the war. I want to ask what war, but he turns and walks away, smiling and shaking his head.
What I really learned from all of this is that the old guy was right. I knew it was true to some degree to begin with but as I inspected all those guns I saw a lot of fit and finish problems. One had the front of the cylinder so tight it was scarred all the way around from rubbing on the forcing cone. A few others guns had the lettering at an angle and one was locked up and we could not move the cylinder latch at all. None of these should have left the factory.
I do think the photos of the OP being out of focus really exaggerated the appearance of his bore and he states that his looks more or less like the photo I posted in my first response. Based on that I don't think his is any different than the rest and is probably ok. I am not an expert however and would recommended to you
mquaack that you physical look at a few other 642's and compare for yourself (it can be quite interesting). Good luck and you are invited to join us over at the 642 club!
...the only one that will get a good look at would be a BG.
LOL! - This line alone makes this whole thread worth the effort.
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