S&W Snubbie Quandry

[jaybet]

I've got a real quandry here.
I picked up a little old S&W Model 60 stainless snubbie for my wife. She spent two hours cleaning it up and then we tried to load it and two of the chambers have what look like a collet or a sleeve inside. We can only load three of five chambers. I will call the place where I bought the gun. They have a good rep and I wouldn't think they would pass something off on someone, but this is really interesting and besides, she LOVES this gun.
The other odd thing is that on the hammer side of the cylinder it has something stamped on the rim of the cylinder. It looks like the letter "E" or maybe a "3" but the edges are square...my guess is "E".

On the non-opening side it says " .38 S&W 38 SPL.
Down near the trigger guard it saysm," Made in USA
                                                      Marcas Registradas
                                                      Smith & Wesson
                                                      Springfield, Mass.
When you open the cylinder and look at the frame (sorry, don't know the name of the part) it says "M 60 -7"

On the inside of the crane there is an "E" marked and then someone used an engraver and marked, "1-122"

It has wood grips with a metal S&W logo  on them but they don't look like any of the grips on S&W website.

Oh....S/N is BNF1724 on the heel of the grip frame.

Can anyone shed any light on this and why two cylinders might be blocked with sleeves? Is this something I could maybe correct with a .38 sized punch?
Anyone know a smith that would be able to straighten this out. I'm telling you she LOVEs this gun.
And UNLIKE so many these days, who come hither and talk gunnage and don't bring some Photage.......




And oh....by the way....while I was buying wifey a little 5 round treat I picked up the Taurus PT745...Some serioue pocket F.U. ...


Guns are better when you share them with your woman.

[Mojave Desert]

Revolvers used for force-on-force training with Simunitions .38 revolver rounds had their cylinders fitted with spring steel inserts to preclude them from accepting live ammo.  This could be one possibility if the gun was a trade in from a police agency. 

Another possibility would be torn case heads, leaving just the "cylinder" of the case behind.

Either way try pushing them out with a brass tool, from front to back.

[twyacht]

Either way try pushing them out with a brass tool, from front to back.

I would also add pre-soaking the cylinder in PB Blaster, or Aero-Kroil, to help provide some "lube" in getting the buggers out.

Does your wife like the wood grips better than another material?

Thank you for the Photage,.....

Taurus looks great...

[jaybet]

Thanks for the advice...they DO look like spring type dealies- they're definitely not parts of casings. I had been thinking that the fix would probably be to take a .38 punch and try to push them out. The fact that there are only two makes me think that they might be stuck, but maybe not.
Thanks.
I'm going to run out and try the Taurus this morning.
Wifey likes the gun just as it is. The grips feel pretty nice, but then we haven't fired it yet. She likes the look of it though, and you know how much that can count sometimes. 

[tombogan03884]

Nice porn Jay 

[Sponsor]

[2HOW]

Youll like the Taurus I have the .40 version.  GL

[jaybet]

I just came back from putting 50 rounds through the Taurus- the weather just got too cold and clammy to stay out there, plus I've been having trouble finding ammo that's not priced out of this world, so I'm a lot more stingy with it these days.

50 rounds was not enough to figure out my sight picture, and this is the shortest barrel I've ever owned, so I had a little trouble aiming and hitting- more trouble than I thought I would have. But , then, it's brand new. It's an interesting concept...a little handful of .45 Whoop Ass. I wouldn't go so far as to use MB's awesome phrase and say that it is "Incessantly unpleasant", but it certainly is a handful, and it made a couple of sore spots on my fingers with just the 50 rounds. I also found out that you also have to be very careful with these little guns when you slam the mag home...caught the beef on my palm one REAL good pinch. I don't expect to be able to be as accurate with it as my Sig 1911, but I'm sure I can get a lot better with it.

All 50 rounds of Remington UMC went through without a hitch, and with a 6 round magazine I got to stop and play with it often. At first I was trying to pick up my brass after every 6 rounds but I couldn't find it. So I finally just gave up on that and picked up the brass at the end. There was enough of it laying around that I could find my way to it. This little thing throws brass about a half mile away!

 I also like the little extension on the bottom of the magazines because it's just enough to get all my fingers on there, and you need that with this caliber in this size. At the shop I looked at this thing side by side with the new Kahr polymer 45. The Kahr is a bit thinner, they're both about the same length, and the Kahr was TWICE as much as the Taurus. Now I know that maybe the two are not comparable in overall quality, but considering I was buying another pistol at the same time, it just didn't make sense to me to spend the extra money. Frankly I've been interested in Taurus for  a couple of years and never had one, so BAM! There it is. AND that other $350 can go up in smoke.

I shot at some bowling pins from about 15 feet and had a little trouble hitting them (first time ever with the gun). I was nicking them and missing them, but when I hit them they went flying, so this little bugger does it's job. Once it is broken in and I know the sight picture and the pull tendencies I think it's going to be a great little defensive weapon, or as I like to think of it, "A big pocket full of F.U."

Range Report Complete.

[jaybet]

Does anyone know if the extractor rod is reverse thread or regular?

[Majer]

It should be a reverse thread otherwise it could unscrew while firing.

[CJS3]

Jaybet, word of warning on Taurus. They need to be cleaned  before going to the range. The grease they get packed in down in Brazil makes cosmoline look like machine oil. A can of Gun Scrubber (or similar) sprayed down the firing pin hole and the ejector rod channel can fix a lot of future problems before they happen.

When new, the sight picture on the 745, requires that the front sight dot needs to go directly on the point of impact. After break in the sight picture will become more conventional.