S&w 648 2 - It's nice to be reminded from time to time that life can pleasantly surprise you. When I went to my FFL to pick up some T&E pistols, I had no idea that I had not one, but two S&W pistols waiting for me. I was also impressed by how closely my girlfriend watched the three stainless steel guns on the counter and how before I even started filling the 4473 she asked, "Can I shoot this?" Finally, I am very surprised at how much I am
The recently introduced Smith & Wesson Model 648 is a .22 WMR revolver built on a midsize K-frame. As the "6" in the nomenclature indicates, the construction is stainless steel. Unlike the previous version of the 648, the 648-2 is an 8-shot shooter. Let's take a look at the details of this weapon.
S&w 648 2
The barrel on the 648-2 is six inches long and is only available in that length. The heavy barrel also has a full-length butt pad, the combination of which - and the absence of only a small amount of metal to create a small .22 caliber - makes the barrel incredibly strong. This adds a lot of weight to the gun and makes the barrel feel heavy. Although I think it would be appropriate in a revolver marketed as a target weapon, the crown of the barrel is not recessed. The top of the barrel is serrated to reduce glare and has a pedestal for the attached front sight blade.
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The trunk smoothly transitions into the frame of medium-sized weapons. The top of the top handle is smooth, again to reduce glare. The top handle also houses an adjustable rear sight, which I'll talk about a little later. The window frame looks a bit longer than I'm used to, with a chunky cone jutting out to meet the cylinder. The left side of the frame has the standard accessories: the release cylinder, the S&W factory logo and, of course, the lock. Despite the lock, this is a neat revolver.
The fluted cylinder has eight small countersunk holes and rotates smoothly. The ejector rod provides sufficient protrusion for
Carefully clean the long brass .22 Magnum from the cylinder. I did not measure the throw of the ejector rod. This weapon is not designed for rapid reloading anyway; I'll explain why in the reliability section.
The grip is now a standard S&W grooved rubber grip. I didn't mind this grip on the larger N-Frame 610. I really liked it on the smaller K-Frame. It provided the perfect diameter for my hand, and the grooves are smooth enough that they don't interfere with a firm grip.
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The trigger itself isn't bad, it's wide and smooth. The trigger, on the other hand, was a bit too much for my taste. I measured half a dozen clicks on my Timney trigger. The average double action pull was 13 lbs. It's a pretty heavy trigger and the same action with rimfires. However, even the 648's trigger was not heavy enough to completely eliminate misfires.
The single-action pull was a little friendlier at 4.5 pounds. The target-style sights, long barrel, and external-fire chamber seem to work well for target shooting, so I occasionally used the wide trigger of the 648. Although I mostly shot this in double action, the strong attraction made single-action shots particularly appealing. The single-action trigger breaks extremely cleanly, as seems to be the trend with the last three S&W revolvers I've had in my hands this year.
I cannot say enough good things about the scope on this particular revolver. At the same time, there is nothing special to say about them. The rear sight is a standard S&W adjustable rear sight. The back blade lacks the white outline for a simple black on black pattern which suits me just fine.
The front sight is a smooth, sharp black Patridge style blade. Combined with the rear sights, they provided an excellent and reasonably good overview picture that I really enjoyed. This combination, along with the single-action trigger, provided impressive accuracy.
Smith & Wesson Brings Back Model 648 .22 Magnum Revolver :: Guns.com
During my evaluation of the S&W 648, I fired 407 rounds of .22 WMR in nine shooting sessions. Of these, I fired seven different CCI/Speer, Federal, Hornady and Winchester loads. Since I generally use all firearms for self defense, I preferred Hornady, Speer, and Winchester special defensive loads.
The more I work with modern S&W revolvers, the more impressed I am with them. The accuracy of the S&W 648 was phenomenal. It was a breeze to gnaw through mouse holes at 15 meters, an achievement that is no doubt due to the weight, increased sight radius, excellent aiming, and excellent single action trigger.
Speaking of the single action trigger, I decided to shoot in groups to record the single action. Since the 648-2 is not primarily a self-defense revolver, this seemed acceptable to me, although I was still shooting groups off-hand. The first group of records I shot was made with a 40 grain gold Speer hollow point barrel. This load reached an incredible 1 1/2 inches, a size I have not been able to replicate with any other load.
Just out of curiosity I decided to try the same load at the same distance with a double action. The group itself is nothing to look at, but it is instructive. This illustrates the trigger weight of the 648 much better than I could with words alone. The group not only doubles in size (3 1/2″), but also expands vertically and to the left.
S&w 648 2 .22wmr
I shot two other group loads: Hornady's 45-grain FTX Critical Defense load and Winchester's 40-grain PDX-1 load. Both got good enough results, although nothing came close to the first group with Speer Gold Dots. I was able to print a 3 1/4 inch group with the Hornady Critical Defense load.
The spread of the Winchester was the largest of any load I shot at nearly 4 inches. However, it does include a pamphlet, which is no doubt my fault. Except for the leaflet, this group is much denser at 2 3/16 inches.
True to form with rimfires - and despite the bulky trigger - I failed to fire three times. I tried one with all three defensive loads: Winchester PDX-1, Hornady Critical Defense, and Speer Gold Dot. All cartridges fired after the second hit. This is a bit disappointing, but again, not entirely unexpected.
There's one more area of reliability I have to touch on: emissions. To be clear, I've never had a problem pulling empty boxes. The ejector rod is nearly full length and the brass always ejects cleanly. However, I've always had problems with dust collecting under the hood star. This is where, again, I get frustrated with self defense ammunition. Even the optimized "short-barreled" ammunition did not seem to burn its powder completely, causing the "sura under the star" to malfunction.
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This issue was fruitful, not accidental. Happened with all tested ammunition. Almost every time I ejected the brass barrel up, enough debris accumulated under the star that it was impossible to close the cylinder. With that in mind, I wouldn't expect this revolver to reload quickly, even if speedloaders eventually become available for it (currently, to my knowledge, no one makes a speedloader for the 648).
Aside from some light hits and multiple malfunctions under the star, the gun performed well. If I were to use this for serious purposes, I would consider the 648 an eight-shot pistol and not plan on reloading in a hurry.
Unfortunately, having to scrub under the extractor star between each fire sequence made the fun a little short. This became quite tiresome and discouraged me from long range shooting with this revolver. If it weren't for that, I probably would have put a lot more through this gun than the usual 500 rounds because it was so much fun to shoot.
Since I've used a lot of modern defensive loads in the long barrel 648-2, I wanted to get an idea of their velocities. Protective cartridges generally only work within a certain velocity window. Some of the .22 Magnum loads seem to deviate from this; the Grenade charge, for example, lists the velocities of both weapons
Rifleman Review: Smith & Wesson Model 648 2 Revolver
Rifles, possibly indicating suitability for use in both (?). The Winchester load only offers one velocity, but the published velocity is still well above what I recorded on the 648. Just out of curiosity, I also clocked the 30-grain Hornady V-MAX.
These findings are interesting. The speed with the Speer Gold exceeded the advertised speed by almost 20%. Since the Gold Dot is specifically labeled as "Short Barrel", I would probably avoid using this load on the 648 for anything other than target shooting. The Hornady load was 178 fps above the published pistol muzzle velocity, but still 500 fps below the rifle muzzle velocity.
Winchester's payload is well within the published velocity window, which makes me wonder what weapon Winchester used when testing the PDX-1 payload velocity. Did I stress the S&W 648-2 while on defensive duty?
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