You are a lucky Man. Sorry you lost your good friend, How about a picture of the S&W .22 ?Thanks for posting you story.

Sorry for your loss. Hope you get to really enjoy the revolver this time around

THEY OFTEN GIVE INCONSISTENT IGNITION WHICH AFFECTS ACCURACY.

I cliped spring coils, ground the springs thin, shortened strain screws and when softer replacement springs came out I used them as well, all to "slick up" the gun.

After about 20 years of this, I woke up one day and realized this was not a good idea for either reliability or accuracy and quit doing it cold turkey. One of the best decisions I have made.

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As with most things, people (myself included), figure if a little is good, more is better. I found a six and a half inch S & W model seventeen on a table at a gun show one time. The butt had been rounded like a factory gun. The person doing the work did such a good job the neckid eye could not tell it was not factory. The give away was factory round butt grips would not fit right.
I had read a Skeeter Skelton article about home trigger jobs, so, I opened it up and polished the trigger return spring housing inside and out, along with the frame under it. I cut a couple of coils off the return spring and reinstalled the spring and housing. Next I took a protractor and scribed a line on each side of the mainspring from bottom to top the width Skeeter had suggested. Then proceeded to narrowed the spring to the scribed line. The thickness was left alone. I later took a set of smooth factory target grips and cut them to fit the frame and refinished them with true oil. It is still my main small game gun. It shoots like a lazar and is reliable. I did not deviate from Skeeter's description of the work. It was a lot harder to narrow the width of the mainspring than you might think, even with good files. It took some patience and careful filing to accomplish. I haven't done that since I read Jerry Kuhnhausen's book on S & Ws.