Smith & Wesson 41 pistol -- one opinion.

First topic message reminder :

Greetings fellow shooters,

I want to give anyone reading this a heads-up about the Smith and Wesson model 41 pistol. I bought one of them new and for $1200, it does not perform anywhere near what it should. I'm getting stovepipes, failure to extract, and failure to go into battery. I've tried a few different brands of ammo, and it's very fussy about ammo. Only two brands that I have tried so far work at all. It won't even function with some brands. The reliability is very poor.

The sights also came crooked from the factory ( I bought it through gunbroker ), and even though I sent the pistol back to the factory, they simply said "could not duplicate problem" and sent it back.

Guys, I thought I was doing the right thing by buying an American made product, but the engineering is poor and this pistol is not a quality product. I'm hearing other reports of people having the same issues, too. For what it costs, this pistol should be a lot better. It's not even as good as a stock Ruger MKII. Please learn from my mistake, and others' mistakes, and avoid this pistol.

If anyone knows a good gunsmith I can send this to to get it working, please send me a message.

I am so frustrated with this pistol. And I might not buy any more S&W products again. This thing is a disgrace to American made products. European engineering must be better, because I don't hear about people having this type of trouble with Pardinis and Hammerlis. I used to always "buy American," but items like this one make me reconsider.

NukeMMC wrote:Just ran my 41 fresh back from KC.  It's a mid-90s UAK serial that had seen PLENTY of use.
He relined the barrel, did his slidestop/ejector mod and a trigger job.  Pistol ran 50rds each of Eley Target, Eley Bullseye Pistol X and CCI SV without a hitch. Bullseye was most accurate, filled closely by CCI. Pistol easily held inside the Slow Fire 10 ring at 50ft with all 3.  Quite a different shooting Pistol than my Victors, but now equally accurate.

Nuke, am I out of line asking how much that type of work costs?

My USAR issue 41 never had one single problem. In 1994 at Camp Perry a Marine gunsmith put a chamber reamer into it, before I could stop him. He said it was only taking lead out of the chamber. It started having FTE problems right away.

My guess: since it was an Army gun, it probably had a million rounds through it and every micro pore was completely filled with lead. Maybe the removed lead had been acting as a lubricant.