This ought to cheer you up ....
My brother recently bought a brand new 29 Classic (SKU: 150145) and it too had a lousy blue job .... hidden by all the packing lube. He sent that thing back and they re-blued it three or four times ..... and it still isn't right. He finally gave up, called the CS guy at S&W and informed them this gun had been given the Golden Turd Award. But, since he didn't test-fire the gun before going through all that over the aesthetics, this dog and pony show has another chapter.
We took it to the range this past weekend and some of the empty cases had to be driven out with an improvised range rod. That's right, every cylinder full required this procedure. All the fired cases looked like they had been through a case mouth expanding die. Nevertheless, being good soldiers we plodded along with test-firing and zeroing. The good news is the gun has some potential to be very accurate (three round cloverleafs off-hand @ 15 yards) but to get a working zero we had to move the rear sight as far as it would go to the left to correct for windage. It looks real sporty with the sight blade almost hanging out of the sight body. Since I was a Detective once, I gave the gun a closer look and discovered the barrel isn't clocked with the front sight in the 12 o'clock position. Yea, I know .... whining about such a minor detail.
Anyhow, he paid about $1k for this piece of junk and when he tried to unload the turd at the place of purchase ...... they offered him $450.
I pretty much washed my hands of S&W back in the 80's as they were already on the road to turning mediocre into an art form.
Well, this gun was picked up today after the Dealer he bought it from sent it back ... this was return trip #5. The Work Order said they replaced the cylinder and addressed the barrel not being clocked properly. A quick test-fire at the Dealer's indoor range confirmed no issues with extraction but the barrel is still misaligned with the frame. More shooting must be done to see if it will zero.
Every time I encounter stuff like this I'm reminded of an old saying; "If you can't find the time to do it right the first time, where are you going to find the time to re-do it?"
