Just bought a 686-1 6" with a 4 position adjustable front sight on Gunbroker. Well got it yesterday and what a mess. The pictures did their best to mask the real cosmetic condition of the revolver. I have never seen one this bad. And it has mechanical issues as well. It will lock up, cylinder won't move nothing. Fiddle with it a little bit and it will work. But it locks up tight and accuracy is outstanding when you can get it to work. It needs to have some hand prep of the finish and I think a bead blast. Of course the mechanical needs to be fixed. I do want to salvage this revolver as I like the 4 position front sight. Any recommendation on a gunsmith who can work on this would be appreciated.
When you say it "locks up" do you mean when shooting, or when dry firing? There was a factory recall on the early L-frames (no dash, and dash 1) because they could lock up when firing magnum ammunition. Primers would crater and estrude into the hole in the hammer nose bushing. Not all of them did this, but enough did that Smith & Wesson recalled them and replaced some parts.
If yours has had the factory modification done, there will be the letter "M" stamped near the model number in the yoke cut in the frame.
S&w has given me superb, fast, reasonably-priced service on several revolvers, two of which were 50 year-old N-frames. And they can do the 686-1 recall work if it hasn't already been done.
As Icepick stated, S&W 686-1's were subject to a recall for the very issue you're having... cylinder binding.
Call S&W, tell them the serial number of your gun and they'll either tell you when the recall work was performed on your gun ($20 says it wasn't) or they'll send you a call tag to ship the gun back to them for warranty recall work.
I just called Smith about the L frame recall. The guy I talked to said if I could send it on my dime but the recall was over and the work would not need to be done on a well used revolver. Going to send it in anyway to get everything else fixed.
The cylinder binds either loaded or empty when closing the cylinder about 20% of the time. Open it and close it a couple times then it will rotate again.
The first thing to check before shipping it anywhere is if the ejector rod is working loose. The symptoms of that are just as you described. It is reverse threaded, and easy to bung up. So use care and a pad if you need to tighten it with a tool.
+1 on the ejector rod. Mine would lock up. The ejector rod needed to be tightened. Turn it counterclockwise to tighten. Rick
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