I have a >.44 that has been eating me up. At least once per cylinder full it gets very hard to cock the hammer or pull through the double action.
Have smoothed through everything I can find with a burr on it, put in wolff springs and worked on the ejector star with a Arkansas stone.
Bought the gun used and it had hardly been fired but looked to have been dry fired about 10 million times as the extracter star is worn badly, and the bolt notches in the cylinder were burred. Help! Bernie

A couple of diagnostic questions. Does the pull get hard on the same cylinder position? When the pull is hard, is the cylinder also in a bind? Spin the cylinder when open, is there any wobble in the cylinder or ejector rod? Keep looking the problem will show up.

Might be the primers are not seated deep enough.

"as the extractor star is worn badly" Timing problem. First place I'd look.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Kobe:
Might be the primers are not seated deep enough.

+1

Reloads or factory ammo? Bullets could be creeping forward under recoil.

Jim notes seating of the primers. Could you have swapped large rifle primers for large pistol? The thickness is different between the two. Rifle being thicker.

Jeremy

Yoke is bent.

One major problem is that everyone wants higher velocity. Well the 44 mag doesn't kill by velocity but by punching a BIG hole .Higher velocity [more powder] wears the gun much faster but the higher velocity slows down faster !my old one is still in great shape Lots of targets , lots ofr deer !!

Make sure the ejector rod is tight-left hand thread. I have seen several 29's and 629' get tied up because of this problem.
C.G.B.

Make sure the front of the cylinder is not dragging on the barrel. I had a POS model 27 that did that. Some things that S&W built were just trash.

Thanks guys for all the input;
The pull gets hard on the same 4 cyl. holes never the other 2. I have spun the cyl. and can see no wobble.
I do not think it is ammo related as the problem is there empty or loaded, although it seems to be slightly worse loaded. (This is bad enough that you will not have the heart to pull harder on the single action hammer for fear of breaking something.)
I always reload my ammo, at least for the last 50 years,Am very careful about primers and actually recut all my primer pockets. Lost a nice Colo. buck to a high primer.
How do I tell if the yoke is bent?
I really don't think velocity is the problem because I am using 12.5 gr. of HS-7 with a 240 rcbs swc and it is a fairly mild load. and I have fired fewer than 400 rounds since I got it.
Checked the ejector rod again its ok, has blue locktite on it.
I have been leaning toward replacing the ejector, but tonite I smoked the bbl. and cyl and am getting some slight rubbing. If I push back on the cyl. there is a .004 inch gap. but it will not go up to the top of the barrel. Don't have a .003" gage. If I push farward on the cyl. then I can see no light between it and the bbl. and a .002" will not go! Beginning to think I need to make a shim to try and maintain the .004" gap!?!
I smoked them again and think I can see some chatter marks on the back of the bbl.
Should I make a shim or stone off the chatter marks or both?
Hope you can make sense of all this dribble! Bernie

You are making progress. Do not mess with the barrel until you get farther along. Try to figure out why it is only on the four holes that it gets hard. Is that in relation to the rubbing marks? From your description, it sounds like the end of the barrel and the cylinder are not parallel, the gap is not consistent. That could be a number of reasons. With the rest of the damage to timing and rotating features, the yoke could also be bent. Someone with more experience could tell you how to check. If you have access to machine shop equipment, that is the way I would approach it. Shims would be a good (and reversible) approach if other problems are resolved.

Simple--send it back to S&W In my experience they give very good customer service.

I forgot to say that it is a Model 29-3, made sometimes in the 1980's.

I agree that you should send it back the factory, but, after reading some of the posts on the S&W forum, there seems to be a back log of work there and it may be the better part of 18 months before you get your gun back. You might try a local smith or one of the popular pistol smiths.

Sounds like you have a worn yoke, ie too much cylinder play front to back.

A good S&W "mechanic" can stretch the yoke, or you could get some yoke spacers[they look like washers]. I think Ron Power used to make/sale them.

I just finished making and installing a .003" spacer/shim (what a pain to make)and it looks as if that was the problem. Haven't had time to shoot it yet, prob. tomorrow nite.
noticed the last post noted that Ron Power makes/sells them and I would highly recommend going that way as I put about 5 hours in this ONE. Thanks to all!!!!! Bernie