..........My Dad bought this S&W from a Calif Highway Patrolman in 1964. Didn't have these grips on it, but some plastic Hubley cap pistol type plastic grips. I don't know if the barrel had been shortend at some pointor if the front sight had been silver solder back on. A solder joint is visible.
At some point (probably before Pop got ahold of it) it had been modified by running a 38 Special reamer into it's chambers. Didn't have any bad effects however.
I have a RCE "Walnut Hill" swage press, and quite a few years back I'd made myself a set of swage dies to apply HB's to cast lead slugs, as below:
Even before that a friend (BruceB) had a Lyman 4 cav 35853 mould which dropped 150gr Wadcutters at .363" which was just the ticket for my (Then) one and only 38 S&W pistol. It changed hands with some shekels discarded in his direction.
It proved to be a decent slug (sized .361") for the above revolver. I forget the order they came but I also acquired a actual unmolested WW2 Victory model Smith in 38 S&W that had gone to Australia. In addition a nice old nickle plated Iver Johnson 5 shot top break came my way.
So I eventually lube-sized some of the 35853's and then proceeded to swage in a HB on a gaggle of them. On a trip to the range I had a box of these "HB'd) wadcutters loaded up.
Fired with blued 4" bbl Victory model S&W. This has had a 38 Special reamer run into it's chambers. The slug was the Lyman 35863 150gr WC cast of pure lead. After lube-sizing it had been swaged with a HB after lube-sizing. The velocity of the 2.8gr of Red Dot was 740 fps. All groups were 10 shots at 25 yards, benched. Looks like a 96-1X to me
.............Buckshot