back in the late 70s and early 80 at my shop

outside of Nashville, we did a lot of "custom" S&Ws, mostly 29s, 629s, 57s and 657s. People wanted the new S&Ws in a snubbie but S&W didn't make anything smaller than a 4", so we did a LOT of 2½" and 3" snubbies in 44 and 41. Every once in a while I get a phone call from someone at a gun show that they have seen one of them want more info on it. Today we got one of the snub S&W model 657s in from a Jonathan McDowell in Florida that he picked up at a gun show. It is one of our custom 2½" 41 magnum 657s. He wants it looked over and a Deep Dish Crown done to it plus some high polish work. Here is his 657 along with some pics of real early snubbie S&W Model 29s. Also "as far as I know" we were the first to do a lot of the snub guns on magnum Smiths. I am sure other custom shops did them here and there but we advertised them and got a lot of guns in from customers to do the custom work.The 657 has a new cylinder release. Other than that is is as it was 35 years ago in the early 80s.

Back then we did a lot of custom work on S&Ws but looking at some of those guns today, they were pretty crude.