You can't polish MIM parts

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Well said, rwartsell. It seems that in this age of the common man, all too often experience is trumped by belief.

"If THIS gun performed perfectly for ME, then THIS gun is the best gun ever made and if THAT gun didn't...it's junk."

And no amount of reasoning will convince "him" otherwise.

As for MIM, of course it can be polished. It's metal. Any metal can be polished...even lead. The question is: "To what end?"

And good MIM can be very good, while bad MIM is worse than junk. The problem is that one can't usually tell the difference between good MIM and bad MIM by visual inspection. On the upside...if it's bad...it generally shows up pretty quickly. If an MIM part lasts for 500 cycles, it'll probably last for 50,000.

As many have noted, the widespread use of MIM is about cost of production and keeping prices low enough to sell more guns...not about making a better gun. If experience has taught us nothing else, it's that making a part or a whole gun cheaper rarely results in a superior product...and "good enough" doesn't mean that it's optimum.

It just means that it's been made more affordable to the common man who drives a common van, whose dog doesn't have a pedigree.

The GOOD thing about MIM is that as long as the process is strictly followed...and the material is consistent...every part that pops out of the mold is dimensionally and functionally the same from the first one to the last.

Finally, not every part of a gun is suited for MIM or investment casting. This is why we don't see MIM or cast barrels and cylinders, among other parts. If the engineers could have found a way to successfully make these things using the MIM or investment cast process, you can bet the farm that they would have by now.
 
Well said, rwartsell. It seems that in this age of the common man, all too often experience is trumped by belief.

"If THIS gun performed perfectly for ME, then THIS gun is the best gun ever made and if THAT gun didn't...it's junk."

And no amount of reasoning will convince "him" otherwise.

Irony is ironic.

I'll have to beg to differ. I've handled and examined a lot of Smith & Wesson revolvers over the last 40 years...old, new, and in-between...and don't get me wrong. I love my 686s and 581s and especially my Model 58s and Model 10s...but there's really no comparison in the quality and workmanship. And, if we take arranged matches and split times out of the equation, I'd much prefer the silky long action of the older Smiths hands down, whether shooting for giggles or for blood. If only I could get replacement parts...but that's another story.
 
The old Smiths and Colts were masterpieces of American craftsmanship in a revolver. It was a time when labor was cheap, money was scarce, and everyone was trying to make a better, longer lasting product, whether it was guns or appliances.

These days we have gone the other route, where everyone is trying to make things as cheaply as possible to outsell the other guy, money is plentiful (I'll buy a new "one" if this one craps out), but labor is expensive (MIM).

I truly love the older guns, and wish I could afford a truckload of them, but I also have a 696-1 with a MIM hammer and trigger (At least), and it is a wonderful gun with a superb DA that makes it easy to shoot well. I love it.

Times have changed, and things are different. We may never see the glory days of the American revolver again, but that doesn't mean the new guns are crap, they are not, just different. They lack that aura of quality and craftsmanship the old guns have. :)
 
Obviously Bubba613 thinks the current generation of S&W revolvers are the best ever, and his faith is unshaken.

Tuner, myself and others disagree, and we aren't going to change our minds either.

What all this means is that different folks see things from different perspectives. But so what!!!

Bubba can buy anything he wants from the company's current offerings, and others with different views can shop around for whatever they like.

Those following the thread can decide which of us (or none of us) have the best background, knowledge and experience. Then go forward to get whatever they think is best for them. None of us can enforce our judgments on others, and shouldn't be able to.

Meanwhile Smith & Wesson as well as other manufacturers are going to keep making (and hopefully selling) guns, and our opinions are unlikely to change the directions they are going. But this doesn't mean that all of us (unlike Bubba) have to follow along.

So what we have here is a tempest in a teapot.

Which is not to say that I don't enjoy what's going on. Part of the fun is taking the Bubba's of the world on, and from the other side I suspect he feels the same way.
 
Irony is ironic.

Either you missed the point...or you think this signifies a victory somehow...or you just like to argue.

It was all about perspective. Like music. My generation says that today's music blows. When we were young, our parents said the same thing.

As to the new guns "outperforming" the old ones...that depends a lot on what the gun is used for. Without exception, everyone in my sphere of influence who I've offered a back to back comparison has been a little amazed at the difference in the double action triggers...and they made no mention of lock times or split times or speed shooting. They were simply caught off guard by the difference, having been accustomed to the newer short actions, and it takes a skilled revolver smith's attentions to match the old ones...and that's just the simple truth.

Can the same smith get the same results with newer sintered parts? I don't know. I haven't tried, other than installing a Wolff spring kit in a new design Smith 686 for a guy about 6 years ago...and all that did was lighten it up some. Being that it was pretty smooth as it was...and that Smith's lockwork tends to improve with use...I did no other work on the gun, so I can't really say.

I have done some pretty good action work on short-action Smiths, and they still never quite matched the pre-war .44 Hand Ejector that I held onto for years after my uncle killed himself with it. His son eventually asked me for the gun, and I reluctantly gave it up.
 
Any widget can be hand built using only the best materials, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the widget will, in the end, be a better widget. If that weren't true, S&W could've/would've hired monkeys to do the hand fitting.

Nah, Century Arms already had the primate job pool cornered for firearms assembly! :D

Sorry. Couldn't help it. I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
 
I was not going to post in this thread. Then I read 1911 Tuners excellent post.

I have no use for MIM. I just wanted to note that evidently S&W HAS been able to produce a MIM gun barrel.

The so-called "bodyguard", a 380 semi auto mouse gun, now comes with a MIM barrel. The ugly seam clearly visible on the top. Leave it to S&W.

The good news I guess, is that you can probably polish off the ugly seam. ;)

I wonder what the frag pattern is from a failed MIM barrel? :what: :)
 
The problem is, if you are shooting a long action Smith with milled parts, selectively assembled by an experienced employee, you are using an antique. Bill Jordan said he kept another long action gun as a parts donor for his smooth shooting old gun.

The only long action S&W I ever had was a First Model Hand Ejector .455 rather roughly converted to .45 Colt. My main recollection is not its traditional smoothness, but its heavy action due to the stout mainspring meant to fire in adverse conditions and its hard recoil with the narrow service stocks that the collectors so admire now.

Look at the competition.
S&W modernized, like it or not, Colt didn't. And now where are the Colts?
About the time S&W quit making the long action, but were still turning out the revolvers my generation considers the market standard, Chic Gaylord was praising the Colt Official Police for its quality and strength and recommending the Police Positive Special over the dinky Smith five-shooters.
But Colt couldn't make the turn in 1969 and went downhill until out of the business.
 
Can't rely on military issue Smiths as representative, Jim. The gawdawful heavy mainsprings were installed in 1917 Smiths and Colts to compensate for the springiness of the half-moon clips. If yours was a lend lease revolver, it probably had the standard spring.
 
Don't need no stinkin moon clips for .455 Webley.
Maybe the Brits used hard primers, a friend's Webley-Green is as well made as any Smith or Colt but has a very stout mainspring, too.

I'm going to talk to FLG about putting sights on a police trade in Smith M&P. If I can capture his interest for an unusual project, he will do it at experimental rates and not run the cost up to where I had just as well get a Combat Masterpiece.
 
rswartsell said:
'45 Auto,

Please examine this carefully.

1. Does this look like current Smith production?
2. Which parts in the picture are MIM?
3. What production method would deliver this pattern in specs on a consistent basis?




If cost was truly "no object" you could use such a thing (perhaps modified to the same standards) as a "race gun" replacing any worn part at will.

4. Who has such resources without sponsorship from a more "commercial" brand?

1) No, internals are all wrong.

2) No way to tell from your picture.

3) Most revolver parts are milling operations, and your pic looks pretty typical. Can be done by anyone with a mill if drawing tolerances are held tightly enough. Unfortunately, close tolerances = high cost. It's generally cheaper for items with low production quantities to make the parts slightly oversize, then have someone hand-fit them together and hope they get it right. Get a good person having a good day, and you can produce something equal to machine-made with tight tolerances. Get a not-so-good person or a good person having a not-so-good day, and you get a bad assembly. Hand-built means HUGE quality variations.

Really cracks me up when people point out how a Korth has to be hand-fitted to install the ball bearings. How do you think those ball bearings were made? Every single one of them has MUCH closer tolerances than any gun part. You really think some guy at the ball bearing factory sits there with a file and a stone working the balls and races until they meet roundness and concentricity standards? The same machine processes that produce ball bearings to high tolerances that no human can achieve (ABEC 1 inner ring concentricity is .000295", ABEC 9 is .000047") could produce the rest of the parts for handguns to the same standards if there were any market for it.

4) You've obviously never competed at higher levels of any type of competition. Material costs are a minimal consideration. If a $10,000 revolver would help someone win a national competition, they would be shooting it in a heartbeat. Golf clubs, tennis rackets, bicycles, guns, cars, boats, airplanes, whatever, if people compete with it then someone is going to buy the championship if possible.

We build literally hundreds of these every day, with tolerances and material specs that make your Korth look like something made by a caveman (people don't like to fall out of the air).

BR71501_zpsfa699be1.jpg

If anyone was serious about building the "best" revolver, they would be using modern super-alloys and construction methods. However, when "good enough" is indistinguishable from "best", there is no point in doing it any "better".
 
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No, but if it was the same revolver rechambered for .455 they may not have bothered changing mainsprings.

Almost the reverse. The British contracts were mostly in 1915 - For them it was the '14-'17 War, they were fighting a lot longer than we were. The half moon clip was a 1917 design rushed into production very quickly when we were engaged and needed more handguns. Very handy in a trench, you know.

And this particular gun was a First Model Hand Ejector, otherwise known in song and story as the Triple Lock, the acme of American revolver manufacture.

I wonder if there was MIM-style weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth when S&W quit putting reinforcing plates into the cylinder stop notches and left out the chafing bushings in the hammer. Not to mention the horrors of abandoning the third locking point. There have always been economy measures.
 
And this particular gun was a First Model Hand Ejector, otherwise known in song and story as the Triple Lock, the acme of American revolver manufacture.

True that. Hard primers, maybe?

Not to mention the horrors of abandoning the third locking point. There have always been economy measures.

The 3rd locking point was later deemed unnecessary. Any time that a step can be eliminated without compromising the strength, durability, or function...it usually will be eventually.

I've heard rumor...not sure how accurate...that the 3rd locking point on the yoke/crane was eliminated because a piece of lint or dirt in the mechanism could possibly cause the cylinder to fail to fully enter the frame and lock in place.

Maybe Old Fuff can set the record straight.
 
Back to the MIM question...

Nobody claimed that it was outright junk or that it wasn't good enough for the task. It obviously is, or it wouldn't still be with us.

The part that doesn't sit quite right with me is that it's essentially turned what was once a matter of skill and attention to detail in the final fitting into a drop-in assembly process. While that's been the method for building most autoloaders since WW2...for revolvers, it just...I dunno...seems wrong somehow. Maybe I've just got a soft spot for revolvers and they way they used to be built...but it's hard not to appreciate the skilled hand that went into those...and whether or not anybody else can see and feel a difference...I can. I'm willin' to bet that the Old Fuff can, as well.
 
45 auto,

Let me start by saying that as fellow Pelican staters, I'm hoping we become at least "cyber friends". But I'll play, as long as we are mutually respectful and enjoying ourselves while benefiting from the sharing. If you flat out want a "whose is bigger" pissing contest, OK by me but you'll need to find another dance partner.

To clarify what I meant, the reply was to

Exactly which parts do you believe are "hand-built" on a Freedom Arms, Korth, or Manurhin?

To clarify further,

1) No, internals are all wrong.

The intent here was that Smith & Wesson is FULLY capable of drawing up this (or similar) pattern. They are not attempting to because of what they have decided to produce. Price point, production methods and acceptable specs are FAR different.

3) Most revolver parts are milling operations, and your pic looks pretty typical. Can be done by anyone with a mill if drawing tolerances are held tightly enough. Unfortunately, close tolerances = high cost. It's generally cheaper for items with low production quantities to make the parts slightly oversize, then have someone hand-fit them together and hope they get it right. Get a good person having a good day, and you can produce something equal to machine-made with tight tolerances. Get a not-so-good person or a good person having a not-so-good day, and you get a bad assembly. Hand-built means HUGE quality variations.

My point, mostly. I think it dead obvious however that no-one is going to get 4K and north of that for a revolver with HUGE quality variations. If you think that vintage long actions or their contemporary Colts exhibit such, then we are too far out of agreement to hope to reconcile it here. I actually believe the larger quality variations are happening now with the mass production examples.

Really cracks me up when people point out how a Korth has to be hand-fitted to install the ball bearings. How do you think those ball bearings were made?

I'm always glad to provide amusement intentional or not, but what in the name of Mary does ball bearing production (or jet engine for that matter) have to do with the topic at hand?

4) You've obviously never competed at higher levels of any type of competition. Material costs are a minimal consideration. If a $10,000 revolver would help someone win a national competition, they would be shooting it in a heartbeat. Golf clubs, tennis rackets, bicycles, guns, cars, boats, airplanes, whatever, if people compete with it then someone is going to buy the championship if possible.

Well, again my point was to illustrate the problem for people (the vast majority of us, maybe you too?) who DO NOT have sponsorships. Without them the 10 large is just a bit out of reach. Regarding competition? Well, lets see here;
1. Little league baseball, HS baseball, military intra-mural baseball
2. HS wrestling
3. HS marching band (laugh if you want, remember that providing entertainment thing?), and the US Air Force Drum and Bugle Corps.
4. YMCA level boxing and a short stint on the Ft. Rucker Al intra-mural team (got my head handed to me by members of MY team, never competed intra-mural in the military).
5. More to the point approx. 60 "bullseye" matches, military intra-mural and civilian local, no national level at all.
6. and apparently, here today with you.

A quick inventory reveals that you are absolutely correct, no major league baseball, national tournaments or world championships. It also reveals I have burned a bunch of electrons at a guy who has not given his bona-fides when trying to "impeach the witness".

It is I believe sir, your serve.

P.S. Some careful thought puts the bullseye matches at more like high forties (doing poorly in some sure made it seem like sixty). I do have a few trophy's made in a shop behind the local bowling alley stuffed in a box somewhere, does that count?

P.P.S. Damn, guess that high forties includes some bowling pin matches too, that's really not going to trip your trigger in the respect column though is it?

P.P.P.S. Oh Hell! I forgot to add that in the '80s to ealy '90s I was the tri-cities (Hamilton, Fairfield and Ross, Ohio) undefeated Trivial Pursuit Champion (alright! finally on the board!).
 
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