I have told this story and it is important! I was gifted a S&W 22 lr with a 4" bbl and I loved the gun. The man that gave me the gun was a shooter and told me I would love it when I made my move to PA and I could now hunt Grey SQ with it. I was working with a master gunsmith at the time and I asked him to do a fine tune foe me. He did. it was awesome But the accuracy was never what I expected. I did kill grey sq with it but I could not depend on it. Later in life when the man that gave me the gun had failing hand strength asked for it back. I gave it to him with the remains of the most accurate ammo I had that worked in it. He said this gun is a tack driver??He took possession and shot it and knew something was wrong!. I told him I had it worked and he ordered new spring kit and replaced all of them! the gun shot like a target rifle. He had me out to shoot it and I told him if it shot that good when I owned it I would have shot 20.0000 more rds through it. Well due to bad things for loved ones I own it again. When I get over the loss I again will be shooting it and I think my second attempt at ownership will be much different. I hope the next owner squeezes more from it than I do. J.Michael

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.

after all this went down I remembered reading an article about this and I never believed it till this happened.

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.