S&W 29-10 failure part2

Back in the 1980's shooting steel silhouette, I put a lot of hand loaded rounds through a 8 3/8 barrel model 29. Never had a problem with that particular gun. I would not say it was a particularly robust revolver and was probably better suited to lighter loads and occasional use.

As the shooting sport evolved most of us went to Ruger Super Blackhawk 10.5 barrel 44 mag and then to the Dan Wesson in 357 super mag.
 
It was a great sport. It was absolutely huge in the US with quite a few Canadian ranges hosting events also.

I shot at a little place called Endako in BC, Spruce Grove, Sherwood Park F&G, Lethbridge F&G in Alberta, North Battleford, Saskatchewan as well as Whitefish, Havre, and the Internationals at Idaho Falls, Idaho. Those days were great, never an issue crossing the border with appropriate authorizations.

Unfortunately Calgary never had a club
 
dirtybarry said:
Email I sent to S&W this morning:

Gentlemen,

I am writing to express my disappointment with the model 29-10 (serial # redacted) that I purchased in January of this year as well as my dissatisfaction with your advertised "lifetime service policy".

This gun suffered a catastrophic failure of the forcing cone which in turn blew off a piece of the frame. Subsequent examination has also revealed an additional crack in the frame on the opposite side near the rear of the cylinder.

It was my understanding before I purchased this gun that they were well made and had even been improved with the "endurance package" and that Smith and Wesson had enough faith in their products to offer lifetime service.

Based on my experiences to date, I can say neither of these things are true.

Your firm claims that it's products are capable of firing any SAAMI approved load but the part that is left out is that if those loads are handloaded, Smith and Wesson denies any and all responsibility.

I have fired over 5500 rounds through this gun consisting of approximately 1800 rounds of new factory or factory reloaded and 3700 rounds that I personally reloaded ranging from less than starting loads to near maximum. All of these reloads used data published by Hodgdon Power (who has confirmed that all of their loads are within SAAMI specifications) and were worked up using established methods.

Consequently, the warranty centre that was contacted about this failure has flatly denied any warranty service, without even having had examined this gun, based on the use of reloaded ammunition.

If it is the de facto policy of Smith and Wesson to categorically deny any warranty service because of the use of reloaded ammunition, then why is this not made abundantly clear?

Further, if your products are simply not designed for nor capable of firing upper range loads, would it not be prudent to down rate them appropriately so that the powder manufacturers could publish load data more suitable to their more delicate nature?

While many, if not most, of this particular model are purchased simply for their aesthetic qualities, mine was purchased to be used. Unfortunately, it would appear that it was not made to be used as hard as I had intended.

It has been an informative process though as I have learned that despite your claims, based on the response of the warranty centre as well as your "customer service" response
(ticket # redacted) that any warranty for your products simply does not apply if they have been used to fire live ammunition of any kind. And that if they are used as actual guns instead of ornaments, they will break.

This expensive lesson has not been lost on me as it will most definitely influence my future purchases and recommendations.

Yours truly,
redacted

Their response:

Good day,
Smith & Wesson will not cover any firearms that fail when reloaded ammunition is used. The failure you describe was probably the fault of the ammo and not the firearm.
I don’t know how to resolve this issue, perhaps we could replace the revolver at cost? I will contact the warranty center to review and discuss our options.
FYI, Mario has been retired for 6 months.
Regards,
Jeff

Jeffrey A. Croze
International Sales Manager
Smith & Wesson Corp/Thompson Center Arms

So there you have it, if you use reloaded ammunition in a Smith and Wesson product, you are on your own.
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This is what happens when lawyers and policy bs happens. They should exchange it so they can look at the damaged one and determine what could have been done better to prevent it from happening and to create a quality product. Too much arse covering and passing the buck which equals nobody actually cares about their product or customer.
My .02
 
wbaad said:
This is what happens when lawyers and policy bs happens. They should exchange it so they can look at the damaged one and determine what could have been done better to prevent it from happening and to create a quality product. Too much arse covering and passing the buck which equals nobody actually cares about their product or customer.
My .02
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So what happened to buyer beware and voting with your money?? Don't buy anymore S&W products and spread the word.

TW25B
 
In the 3rd photo the thin (bottom) side of the threaded frame are which broke off seems to be dark. This tells me that it happened some time before total failure of the frame.
The cracking of the frame plate is another indicator that the firearm was failing because that simply does not happen in one round. If it was a grossly overloaded round, it would show signs of rending or stretching, not jagged cracking. A piece of metal that does this has been failing for a long time.
I submit that the revolver would also have accuracy issues for a number of rounds prior to the total failure on the frame as well.
In nearly 30 years of aircraft maintenance and engineering, I have seen this sort of thing (cracking and fracture propagation) many times. Having said that, I ALWAYS hand-load my ammo much lighter than max to help prevent this sort of thing from happening. If you run a piece of machinery at 80 percent capacity, you can do it much longer than if you run it at 100 percent.
Ie; just because you can, does not alsways mean that you should...
Cheerz,

Freedomintheskies
 
freedomintheskies said:
In the 3rd photo the thin (bottom) side of the threaded frame are which broke off seems to be dark. This tells me that it happened some time before total failure of the frame.
The cracking of the frame plate is another indicator that the firearm was failing because that simply does not happen in one round. If it was a grossly overloaded round, it would show signs of rending or stretching, not jagged cracking. A piece of metal that does this has been failing for a long time.
I submit that the revolver would also have accuracy issues for a number of rounds prior to the total failure on the frame as well.
In nearly 30 years of aircraft maintenance and engineering, I have seen this sort of thing (cracking and fracture propagation) many times. Having said that, I ALWAYS hand-load my ammo much lighter than max to help prevent this sort of thing from happening. If you run a piece of machinery at 80 percent capacity, you can do it much longer than if you run it at 100 percent.
Ie; just because you can, does not alsways mean that you should...
Cheerz,

Freedomintheskies
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Surprisingly the accuracy seemed pretty good right up until things went bad. I definitely beat on it though, no argument there.
It just would have been nice to know up front that this pretty gun was made for poseurs. Considering the potential consequences I would have thought that S&W would be all over the disclaimers.
Starngely the 629 that was built in June 2015 does have a lot more weaselspeak in the owners manual. I'll scan them both and post them up for comparison.
We'll see if the new 629 lasts any longer.
 
TW25B said:
So what happened to buyer beware and voting with your money?? Don't buy anymore S&W products and spread the word.

TW25B
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Too late. I blame Geoff the Bad Man. Damn accommodating he is. Thanks a heap Geoff, I'm buying a ###y new stove now. :bigHug:
And just 'cause I'm like that, I've decided to document the slow and painful death of my new S&W 629 Classic as it gets fed nothing but reloaded ammo.
I hope Ruger enjoys all the free advertising.
 
plinker 777 said:
^:popCorn: Interesting, post pics if you can. And oh, I almost forgot...don't forget your ATT. :)
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Alas, the job fell through so no x-ray for now. I might take it all apart and do some dye penetrate inspection just for laughs.
If Alberta survives long enough, I'll get this thing x-rayed and will make sure that everything is all legal and stuff.
 
Problem is S&W 100% equates to Ruger 80% whilst advertising max capability.
Fact is S&W is the pretty light load gun.
For max load shooting get the Ruger.
freedomintheskies said:
...Having said that, I ALWAYS hand-load my ammo much lighter than max to help prevent this sort of thing from happening. If you run a piece of machinery at 80 percent capacity, you can do it much longer than if you run it at 100 percent.
Ie; just because you can, does not alsways mean that you should...
Cheerz,

Freedomintheskies
Click to expand...
 
dirtybarry said:
Alas, the job fell through so no x-ray for now. I might take it all apart and do some dye penetrate inspection just for laughs.
If Alberta survives long enough, I'll get this thing x-rayed and will make sure that everything is all legal and stuff.
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I was kidding about the ATT (arguably it isn't even a gun anymore anyhow.:(), an X Ray would have been very interesting. Here's hoping for Alberta from Ontario most sincerely. Those oil companies employ a metric tonne of Canadians with good paying jobs (a lot of them from ON as well). A very rare thing these days, Starting rates at General Motors is $17 hr!? And you have to know someone to get in for the privilege of being exploited! Has the price of a car gone down?...nope. Their profits go up. It seems as though we're competing against one another for sh1tty jobs with sh1tty pay at a sh1tty company...it has to turn around.
 
plinker 777 said:
I was kidding about the ATT (arguably it isn't even a gun anymore anyhow.:(), an X Ray would have been very interesting. Here's hoping for Alberta from Ontario most sincerely. Those oil companies employ a metric tonne of Canadians with good paying jobs (a lot of them from ON as well). A very rare thing these days, Starting rates at General Motors is $17 hr!? And you have to know someone to get in for the privilege of being exploited! Has the price of a car gone down?...nope. Their profits go up. It seems as though we're competing against one another for sh1tty jobs with sh1tty pay at a sh1tty company...it has to turn around.
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Near as I can determine, until such time as it ceases to be a restricted firearm by declaring it toast, all laws still apply. Even if the only danger is from dropping it on my foot. Just like a stripped AR lower. Is a weapon? Well, sure it is. After all someone could get clocked in the head with it. There might be a couple of things in the laws that really don't make a lot of sense.

Economy-wise, things are going very badly out here now. Big layoffs, companies shutting down, equipment parked everywhere. And it's different than 2008-2009, back then we knew that it was outside forces, now it's like we're dying from the inside out. The ripple effect of no new money is making itself felt everywhere now. House prices dropping, vacancy rates climbing, stuff for sale, even traffic is way lighter. It's going to be a lot meaner nastier world for a while I'm afraid. The greenies and the socialists are crowing about how they killed the O&G industry, we'll see how they like it when the free money stops.
 
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