Sunday Smith #60: .38 Double Action Perfected Model

Certain models of Smith & Wesson have bits of apocryphal lore that become permanently entwined with them. You can't see a top-break .44 Russian without someone telling you that the weird hook on the trigger guard was to parry saber slashes.

People like to repeat the myth that the tiny M-frame .22 "Ladysmith" was discontinued because a puritanical D.B. Wesson heard that it was popular with "ladies of the night", because that's sexier than the fact that it was selling poorly, expensive to make, and constantly broke when people ran the then-new .22 Long Rifle cartridges through the fragile little guns.

Similarly, there's a legend involving Mr. Wesson that's attached to the final iteration of the .38 Double Action, as pictured above. In this case, the story goes, D.B. heard the tale of a police officer who, while arresting a miscreant, had the offender reach over and pop the latch on his top-break Smith, dumping the rounds on the ground, like Jet Li with the slide of a movie prop Beretta. The officer, goes the legend as it was told to yours truly, was killed in the ensuing struggle.

Moved by the fate of the dead officer, the apocryphal tale has Mr. Wesson designing the Perfected Model top-break. This model features a Hand-Ejector style cylinder latch that must be operated in conjunction with the more normal "T"-shaped barrel toggle in order to break the revolver open.

This origin myth is almost certainly, to use the technical term, a load of hooey.

For starters, the Perfected Model was designed by Joe Wesson and hit the market in 1909, three years after D.B. Wesson was in the grave.

While Roy Jinks' History of Smith & Wesson does make the claim that Wesson was worried about the possibility of a policeman's revolver being popped open in a tussle, it's presented as more of a hypothetical concern rather than the response to some specific incident. I'd say it's safe to file that under "stuff that didn't happen".

While the old 5th Model .38 Double Action remained in the catalog alongside the the Perfected Model for a couple more years, it soon went away while the Perfected Model remained until 1920, selling alongside the more modern .38 Regulation Police Hand Ejector for the last three years of its lifespan. Nearly sixty thousand were sold over its eleven year run, in barrel lengths ranging from 3 1/2" through 6".

The pictured gun, a 4" model with a serial number that dates it to the last few thousand made, was acquired at a gun show back in 2014.

Note that the photo shows the two most notable oddities of this chimeric little wheelgun: From the cylinder window back and the frame latch down, it's pretty much a straight I-frame Smith. It shares the lockwork of the I-frame hand ejector and is therefore the only top-break with a trigger guard integral to the frame and the sideplate on the right-hand side.