One observation; after handling 686 7-shooter I wouldn't be surprised if this revolver is even stronger gun than standard 6-shot one. This might sound absurd but the weakest point on any modern 6-bore revolver is cylinder, to be more specific; bolt notch area. All blown up revolvers (pictures) I had seen clearly indicate that split went through bolt notch. Some folks mentioned that all splits actually started in bolt notch. Ruger made them bit offset to make cylinder stronger, but if you check 6-bore S&W you will see that bolt notch is right above/bellow chamber where the cylinder wall is the thinnest. By going with 7-bore cylinder, bolt notch is now positioned between chambers so outer cylinder wall is not weakened. In that respect, even with 7-bore cylinder and reduced thickness between chambers, overall strength might be up. S&W made big mistake (IMHO) not making N-frame 27 7-bore and long enough to accept 357 case when loaded with Lyman 357429 crimped in crimp groove.