S&W 41, new barrel will not fit

I ask this on rimfire central with no answer so I will try here. I bough a new 7" barrel for my 41 and it will not seat in the frame, it just rocks back and forth. It seems to be real close to fitting but not quite. I have a new 41 and a 1984 pistol and it does the same in both guns, anyone have any ideas of a I may need to do to get it to fit.

I heard back from a person who described having to fit the barrel notch, I did  google search and it is talked about on the web. So after I hear back from the seller I will see what i need to do to make it fit.

The only time I had a barrel fit problem with a 41 it was the grips not letting my trigger guard open all the way. I had a different problem one time when I tried putting it back together with the empty magazine inserted but that was 100% on me.

Len

Greetings,

Looks like a telephone call to S&W is in order.

Most likely, they will offer to fix what is ailing.

Cheers,

Dave

Dear 7 tcu:


I have fitted a number of barrels and have two 41 frames that I interchange 8 different barrels on depending on sighting optics, Irons, barrel length, etc.  

First off, you will probably have to take some material off the barrel notch and you need to figure out where.  

Does the barrel fully seat down into the recess for the barrel notch?  You can determine this from the side if the side of the barrel is in full contact with the frame.  Probably have to file off some material off the bottom of the barrel notch.  If the barrel is too far forward or rearward in the notch then take the appropriate material off front or back of the notch. 

I have only seen one barrel that needed some touch up on the side of the notch but this could be a issue.  might be a small burr jamming things up so look for that.  

I also had one barrel sit too far back in the frame such that the slide did not fully go into battery and required some material taken off the breach.  Check things twice  or a dozen times to see if the material needs to be taken off the front of the notch or the breach before you proceed with this procedure. 

Next, the barrel might not seat deep enough for the trigger guard to lock it into the frame.  take a sharpie and coat the barrel locking lug or notch on all sides and see where it it hanging up. Indicating ink can be used as can paint or nail polish remover.  I prefer ink or a sharpie (after it has dried) but this should give you a good indication where it is hanging up and the appropriate action can be determined from there.  If it is a new pistol it might need a bit of breaking in but it probably needs some stone work or file work.  Take your time with the stone and file work, check frequently, and do not worry you really got to take a bunch off to screw it up so no problem, you can get this done. 

Regards, 
Crankster

if your problem is that the trigger guard will not fully close on the barrel then filling  at the edge pointed to in this photo is what is needed.. you need a safe side file to do this and file a small amount at a time checking often

I had a similar  problem with a new model 41 barrel on my older model 41 frame, jglen has some good info. If you can measure all of the dimensions of the lug under the barrel and see if any of the dimensions are off when you compare it to the barrel that fits.  I did not remove much material, maybe a .001 at the most.  If you are at all worried about doing this you might send the whole thing to somebody like KC custom.  Good luck,

Thanks for all the info,

There is also info on the S&W forum about model 41 barrel fitting issues as well.  It is really pretty amazing that most of the barrels fit without any work considering S&W has been making this pistol for over 60 years.

I ended up sending it to S&W to fit the barrel for me, thanks again

Well here it is March 20, 2020 and I got my model 41 back today. Since I sent it to S&W back on Jan 8, it took a while. They told me that thy work on warranty work first so mine had to wait. $63.00 to fit the barrel and $45.00 to test fire the pistol. Not griping just making a report. Will try it out tomorrow if this crazy country does not close everything. Things are going crazy around here, hope it better for all of you out there.