Like many of you I've been buying ammo whenever I can find it, especially .22. As a result I've picked up cases of various 22LR ammo that was untested in my guns only to find that it just plain won't run in several of my semis. So one day at the range after several malfunctions in a row with the first 50 rounds of a 5000 round case I decided I needed a quality .22LR revolver to help gobble it up. Well after a lot of research it seemed the S&W 617 met all of my needs and was the gun for me.
So after tracking it down online, I finally got to take my new 4in 617 to the range last weekend and had an absolute blast.
I haven't done any trigger work yet but I can see that with a little smoothing and lightening this thing is going to be ridiculous. Even with the factory trigger decent groups were possible in double action at 25 yards.
The DS-10 speed loaders are a must have for this gun and almost make it too easy to burn through ammo while speed shooting on steel.
I did some informal ammo testing to get a baseline for what the gun was capable of and which ammo it preferred. I used an old technique I used to get rid of flinch from a .44 mag and loaded five random snap caps in the cylinder. I've found when shooting groups this helps detect any deficiencies in technique with the intermittent dry fire and is a great way to get to know the trigger of a new gun.
I fired one group with each ammo type at 25 yards from a seated rest with my hands resting on a rolled up towel. Down the road I'll do a more thorough test with a scope mounted and a better rest.
The results were interesting, the gun certainly has some great accuracy potential(better than I can hold) and it seems you get what you pay for when it comes to premium ammo. I follow the philosophy that if you look at the best three shots out of a five shot group you have a fairly good representation of the mechanical accuracy of a handgun...
I was pleasantly surprised to find the short sight radius really wasn't a disadvantage as I could hit soda can size targets at 50 yards with ease. The one thing I would change is that it seems there isn't enough daylight visible (to my liking) when lining up the front and rear sights so I'm having a Weigand Rear sight installed which will match the Bomar sight picture on the rest of my competition guns:
http://www.jackweigand.com/smith_wesson_rear_blade.html Other than that, I'm having some trigger work done by AT Custom and will start the hunt for for a wonderful leather holster to round out all of my kydex.
This is one great revolver. Its solid, well balanced, accurate, beautiful, and reliable with all ammo. I'll use it for steel matches, bullseye, and for a whole bunch of plinking. I may even throw a red dot on and have it replace my buckmark for Ruger Rimfire matches. Now if only Tactical Solutions would make a barrel for it....
Its a wonderful addition to the collection and can gobble any ammo I can find. I highly recomend it;)
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