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Ever had a handgun that you had high hopes for but it just disappointed you for whatever reason?

Bought a S&W Model 35-1 several months ago, that’s the 6” J-frame .22. Right off the bat ejection was very sticky, you had to tap the ejector rod on a bench top to get the cases started out, plus the cylinder was difficult or rather very sticky to open. Even starting with thoroughly clean chambers the brass would stick.

I took it to the range a few times, it was nicely accurate with a great SA trigger pull (which is to say right on par for most S&W revolvers) but that difficult ejection and sticky cylinder quickly became tiresome. Took it out last Monday morning, same same as before and I finally decided, “well, f you, you’re gettin’ sold”.

Yesterday after calming down I got to feeling inquisitive and decided to polish the chambers to see if that would help. Got them slick and shiny and inserted some ammo to see if it would drop in or not. One did, the other five rounds still needed to be pushed home all the way, then they were very tight to eject without even being fired. I looked in the chambers with a 5x loupe and lo and behold finally discovered the culprit. It was the ammo all along.

I’ve been using CCI AR Tactical for several years now, it makes up the majority of my rimfire ammo stash. It’s always been very reliable and very accurate in all of my 22's. It’s supposedly “optimized” for semi-autos but apparently what that means is that it’s heavily waxed. After ejecting unfired rounds from perfectly clean chambers, they all had little bits of wax in them. That’s what was making the empty brass stick after firing. Cleaned the wax out of the chambers and inserted some Winchester Super-X, they all fell right in and then fell right out. Prior to this even the Super-X had been sticky but I'm guessing that since I have a lot less of that I'd probably always fired the CCI ammo first and gunked up the chambers so that anything after that would stick. Well, sonuvabitch, says I, mostly at myself for missing something which should have been obvious.

On to the cylinder opening. I completely disassembled the revolver and started looking at everything for burrs, oddities or anything that might possibly affect that. The hand, cylinder stop, ratchet, their surfaces were all smooth and burr free. Finally got to the extraction rod locking bolt and it looked odd. The bevel on the right side only went about 3/4 around, it transitioned to a 90 degree surface toward the front. Not being afeared of totally ruining everything, I took a fine stone and carefully extended the bevel so it was 180 degrees around the right side, then polished it all up with some 600 grit paper. Oiled everything good, put it back together and the cylinder opened like it should.

Took it out to the range this morning and put about 75 rounds of Super-X ammo through it, this time it ejected all of the empty brass easily and the cylinder still opened slick as you please every time.

I had really wanted a Model 35 for a while and searched for a few months until finding the right one at the right price only to be thoroughly disappointed by it. Nice to know it was always a decent little revolver, it just needed a change of diet plus a teensy bit of TLC.