Splurged and bought a pricey gun I’ve been looking at for a while.
S&W 617 .22lr stainless revolver. 10 round cylinder, same frame as some of their larger revolvers.
It was raining like hell when I got home so I haven’t popped the cherry on it yet.
There are some refried bean cans that going to meet their maker tomorrow (if it stops raining!)
Very nice. Congrats!
(I bet some people here didn’t even know that there’s such a thing as “high-capacity” revolvers.)
Nice.
My ‘high-capacity revolver’ is a Harrington & Richardson 999 Sportsman. I’ve only fired it once, to dispatch a mouse.
I’ve got a 617 I bought 2 years ago. Nice gun. I installed Wolf main spring and rebound spring to improve the DA trigger pull. It sometimes misfires with bulk ammo but it’s not a defense gun so I don’t mind that.
I’ve bought 10 round speed loaders and a pelican box that holds 4 loaders and 100 rounds. Makes it better than fumbing in 10 rounds at a time.
I was aware of the Harrington Richardson name but never saw that pistol before. Cool!
I’m thinking I may want to upgrade the sights. My shooting range is in some heavy woods and I’m shooting down what is almost a tunnel of vegetation. It’s dark and some of the other SWs I looked at had high vis sights. I’ll see how it goes, give it a few hundred rounds before I mess with anything.
And…22 ammo is starting to be more available here lately. I bought 500 rounds of Winchester when I bought the gun.
CCI high velocity is still hard to find but their lead standard velocity is showing up all over. Federal 325 packs are getting common, 23-29 bucks. Lead bullets, higher FPS than the CCI standard velocity.
The place I bought the gun today even had CCI HP shorts, haven’t seen those since the .22 shortage started.
P.S. Apologies to those of you in drought afflicted areas. I appreciate what a dire situation that is.
It is a freaking rain forest here. Way above average rainfall since May. Rain. rain, rain. When I go over to where I normally shoot I am swarmed with clouds of mosquitoes that are thriving in the current wet conditions. Only 3 years ago we were as dry as any place in the US.
I splurged on a good sized lawn tractor earlier this year and I am mainly mowing with a push mower because the tractor churns my lawn into a swampy mud pit. I wish I could send some of this your way.
Your post prompted me to pull out my 3-screw Ruger Single Six. I finally found out which cylinder is the .22 LR and which is the .22 Magnum.
.
My dad had one of those, it went to my brother after my dad died.
Would have liked to have had it but I got the 1954 Marlin 39 lever action rifle.
Nice. I just bought a Marlin 39 about six years ago. Still haven’t fired it. Nor my Winchester 94/22.
Cool piece – and from my all-time favorite brand!
Mine 9 shot (I think it is) is an Iver Johnson (not actually an automatic) Safety Automatic. Can’t remember if mine is the Sure-shot or Supershot. It has a transfer bar-like thing which makes the “safety” the part that’s automatic ----- but its basically a plain old wheel-gun. Its sort of a family heirloom and not much more. From a vise it will print a fairly nice group but the sights suck so bad that you would almost be better off throwing the gun than shooting it. I’m sure I could figure them out in time but ------- some day.
To my non handgun owner’s eye the pistol appears to be massively overbuilt for a gun handling .22 caliber rounds. Why is it so (seemingly) heavily built for a gun shooting .22 caliber bullets?
I’m wondering if it is to be a copy/tribute to the iconic 686.
Congrats on the gun, **River Hippie. **
I think handsomeharry nailed it.
It’s not light but not as heavy as it looks like it might be.
I just weighed it. 2lb, 8.6 oz.
It’s a K-frame revolver, meaning that it’s medium-sized and built to handle .357 Magnum rounds.
You’ll never wear one out with 22lr rounds!
My 617 came with a green lightpipe front sight which I changed to red. For me red’s easier to see in most conditions.
I don’t have it but there are mounts that replace the rear sight assembly allowing you to easily install a red dot type sight.
I shot about 70 rounds through it earlier today. There were dark storm clouds threatening to break loose at any moment and the mosquitoes were horrendous so I didn’t spend a lot of time on accuracy evaluation. I tossed a few cans in front of the backstop, stepped back about 30-40 feet and blasted away. I was hitting the cans pretty much every time. The single action trigger pull is fine, the double action pull was much heavier than I expected. I don’t anticipate using DA much so no worries.
The cleaning was harder than I expected, tried 3 different cleaners but the powder residue on the cylinder and breech end of the barrel came off really hard. I tried a cleaning rod and a bore snake but there appear to be deposits of crud at the breech end in the barrel too.
I have one other stainless gun but I don’t remember it being particularly hard to get residue off.
My Ruger SP101 requires this to get everything off. Even then the cylinders have scoring from firing the shorter .38 Special through it. I’ll only do that once a year or so.
Getting the surface residue off is typically good enough. You could spend hours trying to make it look new, but what for?
Not knowing much at all about firearms, I’m curious what makes this special over a typical .22. Keep in mind that I don’t know what “typical” is.