Traded for a S&W 57-4...

[sixshot]

blackmamba, I'd say that old 6" model 57 shows a lot of character!

Dick

[Encore64]

Believe it's an 8 3/8". The only 8 3/8" N-Frame I've ever held was a 44 Magnum. But, I'd say you definitely have one worth hanging on to.

[blackmamba]

Thanks, fellas, it's a keeper for sure.

[messybear]

I love those blued smiths

[pattontime]

The grips on this Model 57-4 were made by Altamont and are very nice grips, but they were mostly aftermarket grips, although S&W did use them on very late 90's or into the 2000's Performance Center S&W guns and were definitely used by S&W on some other Models into the 2000s but would not have come standard on an early 90's guns like the Model 57-4.
My Standard Catalog of S&W book shows that this gun came out in 1993 and that the Model 57 was also discontinued the same year, so it must be a rare Model.
I have several pairs of these Altamont N-Frame grips as I find they fit my hands well, and as you said, what difference does it make if they were original other than for collectors?

[bradshaw]

Oct 22, 2022 13:41:59 GMT -5 messybear said:

I love those blued smiths

*****

I, too, love “those blued Smiths.” I have one, a 6-1/2” M-29 bought in college. Paid 118 skins, 5 dollars over wholesale. At that time the Model 29 retailed $140, the S&W Model 27, Colt Python and Peacemaker retailed $125. Bill Ruger’s Super Blackhawk $116, and his Blackhawk $87.50. The S&W Highway Patrolman----M-28----retailed for 85 skins. Years later, after meeting Bill Ruger, he would tell me, “Smith & Wesson’s Highway Patrolman is a bargain, a whole lot of gun for the money.”

My “S” series M-29 6-1/2” has seen more holster time than about any gun I’ve carried, yet its incredible blue holds fast. Vast majority of its holstered life spent in a scabbard water-molded from English saddle leather----“stuffed” with wax, I learned the term on this forum. Had to soak the cut shape a couple of hours before beginning to rub it around the revolver (periodically wiped with RIG gun grease). A couple of tours through the Smith & Wesson shop on Roosevelt Avenue in Springfield, much of it dark as an old New England machine shop, cutting chips, oil-stained wood, old milling machines, meticulous fixtures, barreled frames with yokes layered in barrels of charcoal for bluing. How the little parts were blued I didn’t see, or don’t recall. Most of the small parts were drop forged, then machined, then blued.

S&W bluing went downhill, my guess somewhere around 1970. Excellent polishing, but the bluing looked blacker, and sooner showed its life in leather. By the late-1970’s, S&W bluing took on dull flavors----flat blue, plumb, grayish-blue. Chamber-to-bore alignment could be off, with spitting like you’d never seen. The trigger of hammer pin might break, the yoke pin might pull out on recoil. Cylinder float plagued the M-29, and might in .41 Mag with heavy bullets. To name a few breakdowns un her Bangor-Punta....

For a recent generation which seems to believe chamber-to-bore alignment is only precise when the cylinder is line-bored, tell that to old time revolver makers, emphatically Smith & Wesson. Old timers did not argue with a tight specification package, they just did it. With a swing-out cylinder there is more to align than, and more that can go wrong, than on a Colt-style single action. When S&W replaced the cylinder on a Model 19 .357, runout max reads .002-inch, which realistically cannot be proved better than dead dead nuts @ 100 yards; leastwise not proved by this shooter. You can bet the farm those chambers weren’t and are not line-bored.

My late shooting partner Ed Verge did about everything except bathe and make love wearing his M-57 8-3/8” .41 Mag. We rode each other like mules on the firing line and neither ever proclaimed the M-57 .41 more accurate than the M-29 .44, or vice versa. I didn’t mess with the .41 because the .44 was already in my bones when we met and I didn’t want to pollute my mind with another trajectory, my impression being the .41 shoots a bit flatter. Even there it’s best to declare specific loads and to not generalize.

Some while later, Ed and I drove down to the factory, where S&W swapped his M-57 to .44 Mag, with 6-1/2” barrel, just like mine. Chamber-to-bore alignment was as perfect as perfect gets. I saw no difference is his marksmanship; it was the same dead-smooth offhand shooting I knew all along.

These old drop forged barrels were gun drilled and honed in crosshatch pattern akin to cylinder walls, after which the barrel is half-submerged in cutting fluid and a rifling broach pulled through. The crosshatch is very shallow and eventually wears away, while accuracy continues.
David Bradshaw