I recently picked up a S&W 640 Pro at my LGS. I really hadn’t intended on spending that much, but there was an unfortunate saga involving a 642 with a cracked frame (detailed in this thread: https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...935/m/7360059684/p/1). Thankfully my shop was awesome about it, took that gun back, and I ended up using the refund and paid the difference to buy this little guy.






The gun is a 640-1 "Pro Series", all stainless J-Frame in 357 Mag. This is going to be a carry gun…it’ll serve as an on-duty backup, and performance and reliability are my primary priorities. I’m not really worried about cosmetics, but I know that matters to some people (especially in a gun that is priced pretty outrageously for what it is), so I’ll try to speak to some of that in this review as well.




The gun has a 2 1/8” fluted barrel, dovetail night sights, and the cylinder is cut for moon clips. S&W included 3 with the gun, and they have TK stamped on them, so I imagine that they’re made by TK Customs.






The 2 1/8” barrel allowed S&W to incorporate a slightly longer ejector rod than some of the other J-Frames, which facilitates more positive ejection of the longer .357 cases than you typically get in these guns. The open cylinder clears the grips enough that you can just barely squeeze a moon clip or speedloader in there.




Speaking of the grips, these factory rubber boot grips that came on the gun are my favorite J-Frame grip. I’ve swapped them onto every J-Frame I own, replacing the 3-finger “combat” grips that S&W likes to put on many of them. IMO they are the best balance of comfort and concealment out there, the finger groove is in just the right place for my hand, and they’re also pretty inexpensive. The set on this gun has some extra flashing around the front strap and they’re a little proud at the butt…not something I’ve experienced with any of the other sets I’ve had as the fit was always perfect on those.




The big selling feature of this gun for me (apart from the fact that it wasn’t broke, and made of materials not likely to get broke) were the dovetailed night sights. Since I’m planning to use this as a BUG at work on night shift, that’s a really nice feature. Even during the day, they are easier to acquire than your typical J-Frame trench sight. The dovetail base of the front sight does stick out a bit on either side of the barrel dovetail. I’m not sure why they did that…it looks goofy and seems like it could snag on stuff…maybe it was so there was more material there in case you needed to drift it one way or the other?




A real issue is that the sharp profile of the top of the rear sight does snag on the top of my favorite leather Galco pocket holster to the point that you can’t draw the gun. It’s not an issue in some other holster designs that I have, but for a hammerless gun that’s supposed to be snagless, you’d think they could have rounded that off some to prevent that.




The overall finish on the gun is pretty good. The exterior is nicely polished, while the inside of the cylinder opening in the frame lacks this, and there is a small machining line visible right by the front of the top strap, and another in the lower barrel flute (visible 2 photos above). Once again, not a concern to me, but trying to be as thorough and objective as possible.

Weight-wise, at 24.70oz loaded, the gun falls between my scandium-framed/steel cylinder 360J (16.83oz) and my all steel 3” SP101 (29.22oz). You’re not going to be carrying it around in a gym shorts pocket, but it’s light enough to be barely noticeable on a belt or a vest. Seeing as it’s chambered in .357 mag instead of .38, the extra weight is appreciated under recoil, and can also help prevent bullets from jumping crimp.




As far as controls, it’s an S&W Centennial, so not much to write about. The cylinder latch works as it should. The trigger is a DA J-Frame…it’s long and heavy, but pretty smooth. It’ll likely get better with some judicious polishing of the internals, but I wanted to get some trigger time on it out of the box first. It does have a discernible period of travel between cylinder lockup and the break…so if you want to stage it, it’s pretty easy to do. That seems nice in theory, especially since you don’t have the option to cock the hammer for a single-action shot, but I’ve always found that I’m much more accurate with a revolver if I just pull smoothly all the way through the trigger, rather than try to stage it. This is borne out in the target below…shot at 10 yards, the two rounds at the bottom were me staging the trigger, the two in the X-Ring were smooth pulls all the way through, and the one in between was me being an idiot, trying to pull-though, and then losing focus and giving into the temptation to stage it part way through. The gun clearly has good accuracy potential if the knucklehead behind the trigger would keep his stuff together. The long, heavy trigger and short length of pull to the break do make it a difficult gun to shoot precisely at distance, but for its intended purpose as a backup for close encounters, it should be more than adequate.




I shot a variety of .38 Special, .38+P, and .357 mag loads. They all seemed to hit pretty much to point of aim at 10 yards, provided I used the pull-through technique rather than trying to stage the trigger. I found a pretty good .357 mag load using a 135gr Speer Gold Dot Short Barrel that chronographed at 1050 FPS. The gun handles it well, and while I wouldn’t want to spent a full day at the range shooting them, it’s not painful in small doses. .38 and .38+P are both very comfortable.


Ultimately, I’m very happy with the gun. There are a few minor quibbles, but nothing that can’t be lived with or worked around. It seems solid and reliable, and that’s my primary concern. I need to find some more small pistol primers somewhere so I can give it a serious workout. It fills a gap in my previous carry options, and it’s going to get some serious carry time once I can get some more rounds through it on the clock and somebody to qualify me on it.

Thanks for the great report and pics.

Beautiful gun and a nice report.

Gorgeous revolver!

Gotta share my shabby version of your 640...mine is about 25 years old tho...I have revolver envy...

That's not shabby at all...that's a really nice looking gun, and it has aged very well. It's also really nice to know that it's still going strong 25 years in...hopefully one day I'll be able to say the same about this one!

Nice acquisition

quote:

Originally posted by bcjwriter:
Gorgeous revolver!

Gotta share my shabby version of your 640...mine is about 25 years old tho...I have revolver envy...

That was my first handgun. Exactly like yours. My second was my P229 two tone. Still have them.

Loved the little one I had about 10 years ago. Was a great pocket gun for Florida summers. If I remember right that's the one input an apex upgrade kit in. Made a noticeable difference

Glad your happy with it. I love mine. I agree with you on pulling through versus staging the trigger. Besides, under stress, no way am I going to be able to stage it.

I’m almost embarrassed to say I carry my 640 Pro and my 360J with a technaclip appendix. I’m not a fan of the clips on semiautos, but on the J Frame, it works for me.



I carry the 640 and 360 this way and have a 340M&P for pocket or ankle carry.





These are my most carried pieces. I sent the 360 to be cut for moon clips, the 340 M&P is next.

Thank you for the pics and report! I like the looks and features of this revolver.

Nice to hear that your LGS is a stand up guy!

quote:

I’m almost embarrassed to say I carry my 640 Pro and my 360J with a technaclip appendix. I’m not a fan of the clips on semiautos, but on the J Frame, it works for me.

Huh...never seen that before, but it's definitely an interesting setup. I wonder how well that would hide behind a duty belt. Did you bob the hammer on that 360? I was considering picking up one of those new 360Js in .357 (mine is a .38), but ultimately decided that I'm happy not shooting anything more than .38+p out of a gun that light ! I love that little .38, though...you can actually forget it's in your pocket. How do you like the unfluted cylinder?

I did something today that scared me a bit...I took a file to the sights on my new 640. I hated to do it, but if it's going to hang up on the holster, I can't carry it...and if I can't carry it, it's no good to me. I just did a light melt job to the front and rear sight...knocked down the outside corners and the lip a bit, without changing the sight height at all. I've had poor results with cold blue in the past, but it worked pretty well today, and you can hardly tell I messed with it. While I was working on it, I also popped the side plate off and did a light polish on some of the internals with some 1500 grit. There was a nasty burr on the head of the mainspring strut that is now gone, resulting in a noticeably improved trigger pull.



I got qualified with it this weekend. I shot it with another agency that doesn't have a backup course, so I had to run the full duty handgun course of fire with it. This entails speed reloads and stages out to 25 yards. I dropped 5 points out of 100, all at the 25. I'm not exactly thrilled with that, but I'll take it with a DAO snubby on it's first go-round.

The J-frame moon clips are a little picky about case dimensions, there just isn’t much forgiveness in them. Fortunately TK sells appropriate ones for popular case makers. I bought some for the Hornady SD loads I shoot in my 640 Pro.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike748:
The J-frame moon clips are a little picky about case dimensions, there just isn’t much forgiveness in them. Fortunately TK sells appropriate ones for popular case makers. I bought some for the Hornady SD loads I shoot in my 640 Pro.

That's good to know, thanks for the info! I haven't done much with the moonclips yet, but you likely saved me some frustration.

Great score with sooting a snubbie with boot grips! Nice work on the sights, the bevel is barely noticeable. Even if the cold blue wears, you can always reapply it.

As for the hammer on my 360, I bought a hammer for a 340PD on fleabay and installed it. However, a couple buddies of mine, who have the same gun, just removed and bobbed theirs. I like the unfluted cylinder, it just looks cool to me. I picked up the 360 when I was working in a LGS. One of the distributors was running a crazy good sale price on them and several of us picked one up. They had a standard front sight, unfluted cylinder, spurred hammer and FDE full length grips. A really nice airweight 357 set-up. I wanna say we got them for $500 OTD. The owner of the shop takes care of his employees and we did our part by leaving large portions of our checks with him.

To me the clip on a J-frame is carry bliss. The clip keeps the gun in place and my growing belly keeps it from popping up. It wouldn’t be comfortable with a hammered revolver. The downside to the clip is that it does slow reloads a little, but with practice you get used to it. As for the moon clips, I love them because they make it super easy to clear the gun. Open the cylinder and eject the whole group at once and they stay together. Easy to load to carry too. I don’t use them as reloads. If they get bent, you are hosed. I’ve had them bend in a pocket. For reloads I prefer the 5 star speed loaders for speed or speed strips for comfort.

Both the 640 and 360 carry great with the clip. However, I don’t know how it would work tucked behind a duty belt. They are affordable (under $30), so it couldn’t hurt to try it out.

$500 is a steal for a 360 in .357! I think I paid $415 for mine about 7 or 8 years ago, but it's only a .38+p. I've toyed with the idea of picking up a Magnum cylinder for it, since I've read that is uses the same frame, but ultimately decided I should just be content with .38+p, and keep my factory warranty. Now that I have the 640, it makes even more sense to leave it alone. My 360 isn't going anywhere, though...it's still my running companion every morning, and it'll probably keep coming along on backpacking trips in places where there aren't big hungry critters.

Thanks for the advice on the moon clips. I honestly don't usually carry a reload for the J-Frame, and if I do it's just so I have rounds to put back in the gun when I'm done using it. The gun is usually serving as a BUG or I've chosen to carry it because the likelihood of needing it is so low that I can get away with it...I don't see myself being able to reload mid-gunfight with one in a successful manner. I have been putting in some practice time, lately though, just because I think there's value in having the skill. I agree, speed strips are easier to carry, but the speed loaders are a little quicker if you can keep them off the grips.

My wife when we were dating bought her first gun as a S&W 640. Point and click!

These things are tanks and the newer models like yours with night sights are a great evolution for a carry snubbie.

Congrats, I am glad your shop stood behind their service to you.

HK Ag

The Novak night sights and moon clips are definitely much needed improvements for the J-frame, addressing two of my major gripes with my old 642 that I used as a BUG for several years: crappy sights and slow reloads.

(Now, if only they'd do something about the super heavy trigger and low capacity. Maybe rechamber it to 9mm, and make it a semiauto. Oh, wait... That's the P365. )

I really liked mine, but when I standardized on 9mm and .45 it had to go

quote:

(Now, if only they'd do something about the super heavy trigger and low capacity. Maybe rechamber it to 9mm, and make it a semiauto. Oh, wait... That's the P365. )

I realize you're joking, but I've gotta respond to that, because I did actually put some time and thought into this .

I had a P365...It's gone. The P365 is a fine gun, it just didn't fill a role for me. It's too small for my hands, and the trigger pinched my finger pretty badly every time I fired it. IMO, if it fits you, the 365 makes a good belt gun. Decent capacity, decent sights, in a decent caliber....it's a good off-duty replacement for a full-size gun if you don't want to carry one. I just personally like carrying something bigger.

As a BUG, though, I can't get comfortable with the P365's light trigger in non-traditional carry locations like in a pocket or in my vest...basically anywhere that the muzzle might cover part of my body, or someone else's. I won't have a manual safety on a carry gun, either, so that option is out. I'd ankle carry it, but the whole purpose here was to get away from that.

The grips of a J-frame fit my hand better, it's easier to establish a positive grip on it in a pocket, it draws better from concealment, won't go out of battery from a contact shot (something I've found can be an issue for the P365 even just shooting paper at the range!), and can even shoot through a pocket without jamming.

The only places the 365 wins are capacity and reload speed (not a major consideration for a BUG), and the lighter trigger (actually a negative for what I'm doing with it).