Loose barrel on a S&W 10

[Alstep]

A few months ago I bought a few used and much abused guns from a retired police officer. One gun, a S&W model 10 was such a boat anchor that it was thrown into the deal as a freebie. Took off the grips & threw it into a bucket of kerosene and let it soak for a week. After much elbow grease, it actually cleaned up somewhat nicely. The bore & cylinder are in excellent condition, as well as the insides. So this gun was shot little but lived a horrible life. Went to shoot it and impact was way off. Front sight leaned way to the left. So by chance I grabbed the barrel and gave it a hard twist, and lo & behold, it turned. I made a washer out of some brass shimstock to go between the barrel & frame. Tightened it in very small increments & shot it, and repeated that until it zeroed to point of impact. Cylinder gap increased to .008, still acceptable. Turns out this old revolver is one hell of a good shooter! And I don't have to worry about scratching it. Good field gun.

[Speedo66]

Pretty hard to completely mess up a K frame Smith. I recently bought a couple of stainless police turn ins, really enjoying them. First a 64 in .38Spl., followed by a 65 .357, both great, accurate guns. Will probably put the 64 up for sale here soon.

[9.3X62AL]

Very nice outcome. The majority of the M&P-series/Model 10s (pre-1980) were equipped with "pinned" barrels. Has your revolver's pin become dislodged? Most of these revolvers were sighted for 158 grain standard-pressure RN loads.

[Alstep]

This revolver is a 10-8. No pin. However, there was a flat on the threaded shank where a pin would have crossed. Maybe an older left over barrel when this gun was assembled??? Or maybe somebody in it's past life messed with it. Have no idea when it was made. SN is 9D38xxx.

[Wayne Dobbs]

All 10-8s had a pinned barrel. I'd get that barrel properly pinned in lieu of the "Irish Engineering" that is currently on the gun.

[Alstep]

No sign of a pin hole on this revolver.

[376Steyr]

I suspect your revolver got re-barreled at some point, with a take-off barrel from an older Model 10. Lots of room for speculating on the events that led up to that.

[kir_kenix]

All 10-8s had a pinned barrel. I'd get that barrel properly pinned in lieu of the "Irish Engineering" that is currently on the gun.

I think there are a good number (maybe the majority of examples) 10-8 that will not be pinned. S&w did not offer a - (dash) change for dropping the pin. Which is weird, because they had previously done so for much smaller engineering changes.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a 10-7 I've seen that wasn't pinned...even though they ran concurrently with 10-8s. Never really looked for one specifically though.

Barrels with threads milled for a pin seem to run far into the unpinned era. There was a long running thread on the s&w forum about this topic. I think there were 10-9's (which started in '89 I think) that have the milled slot. Though there was some conjecture that these might have been replacement barrels used for warranty work.

Bottom line is...s&w is weird. Lots of transitional models. Lots of exceptions. Lotd of special orders. Makes it fun though.

[Outpost75]

I expect that this was was rebarrelled somewhere other than at the factory. The shim, done correctly, makes a serviceable repair if the barrel is not over-torqued so as to induce a thread choke. If the barrel comes loose again, recommend light application of 242 Locktite to the thread when reassembled.