#369 S&W Model of 1905 1st Change

Before 1922 S&W products did not carry a a stamp or rollmark indicating their country of origin...After that date they were stamped "MADE IN USA" on the forward part of the right side of the frame...In 1948 this was changed to a 4 line address with a line indicating the registered trademark in Spanish...This was meant to deter the Spanish copies of S&W revolvers beginning to proliferate the market...

At some point in the 1970's Roy Jinks discovered that revolvers returning to the S&W Service Department for refinishing that were manufactured before 1922 without the "MADE IN USA" marking, were being rollstamped with the 4 line address before being returned to the customer...He put an immediate stop to the practice as he knew this could impair the historical value for some collectors...

What it actually caused was a new, yet small niche in collector society as we realized that very few S&W revolvers were exposed to this treatment...My latest revolver here is one of those...It bears the service code 2.76 on the left toe of the grip frame indicating it was refinished by the factory service department in February 1976...It also bears the 4 line address even though it was shipped nearly 70 years earlier on 5/14/1907...There is also an S and a diamond shape stamped on the back of the cylinder as well as the barrel flat...

Therefore it barely missed rescue by Dr. Jinks, and will wear the brand for all its days...To its credit it received the high quality rebluing that was offered before EPA rules forced S&W to resort to a rebluing process of somewhat lesser quality...It came to me with all metal parts bearing matching numbers, but it was wearing a horrendous pair of handmade wooden stocks that looked like they had been whittled from a discarded picket fence slat...

I sourced two pair of the correct hard rubber stocks from that early 20th Century era, and installed the pair that fit the best...The number scratched on the inside of the right panel is not very far off the gun's serial number which indicates they were manufactured on dates not far from each other...

This gun is chambered in .32 Winchester (later known as .32-20) with a 6 1/2" barrel...The fouling cup, which was once a necessity in the days of black powder shooting, is present above the gap between cylinder and barrel...