Potential

So I have this Performance Center 646, the .40 S&W revolver with the titanium cylinder.  I took it out to the range a while back with Tam to shoot it, and wasn’t exactly impressed with the gun, as the trigger pull was long and heavy and I had stick extraction issues with certain brass.  Initially, I thought about selling the gun, but imposed a waiting period on myself to make sure it wasn’t just a silly emotional reaction.

That got me thinking about what to do with an L-frame gun firing a moderately powered cartridge.  So I created a pros and cons list for the gun:

Pros

  • Extremely mechanically accurate (the gun is scary accurate in single action mode)
  • Very light, swings naturally in transition
  • Seems to really like cheap Federal American Eagle brass

Cons

  • The factory wood grips are lame
  • Recoil is sharp, but manageable
  • Ridiculously heavy DA trigger
  • Sticky extraction

With the exception of the sticky brass extraction, all of the “cons” with the gun are fixable in one way or another.  For example, the heavy DA trigger can be mitigated by sending it off for a professional action job, the wood grips can be replaced with a set of Pachmayr stocks, and even the recoil can be mitigated by having the barrel ported.

It was that final idea that really sank home what I could do with this revolver, and that was send it off to Pinnacle Guns and have Mark turn it into a lean, mean, steel eating machine.  The gun is already light, and it points quite well, so throwing some ports in the gun and adding a C-More shouldn’t throw the balance off.

I haven’t committed myself to this idea, but it certainly beats selling a perfectly good gun that has potential, just hasn’t had it realized yet.

1 Comment

  1. When I tested that gun back when it came out I first thought it would be a really cool gun…….that is until I shot the damn thing. To my knowledge, all of ’em had those terrible d.a. trigger pulls and I’m not sure it’s all that easy to correct. An engineer at S&W explained it to me once, but I’ve long since forgot. I think we were at dinner and there were adult beverages present……..Well, you know…….

    All The Best,
    Frank W. James

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