Years back I was in a small gunshop and manhandled a stainless 4in gp with a bobbed hammer. It was used, if I remember the story right some sort of Canadian police trade in. Anyways for some reason I mention this to a friend of mine recently and we squabble about the reasons for this and its practical uses and now I am sure that I am interested in one. Did they ever actually make this model or was it some sort of one off custom thing?

Probably a DAO (double action only) model with no hammer spur. I have one (a .38 special) which I understand was a police gun from NYPD. The spur was omitted to prevent the user from trying to thumb cock the revolver.

Cant say what the Canucks have been up to, but it was common practice in the revolver days to cut off the hammer spur.
The thought was too many unintentional discharges with cocked revolvers. I believe at one time S&W offered spurless hammers as a factory option or as separate parts.

Personally I HATE spurred hammers on revolvers. I have a very high grip on them, and the web of my hand actually keeps the hammers from coming all the way back.

For a thought on the size of my hands, my competition 625 wears the SW X-frame grips from the 460XVR "Bear kit", my hands fit it really well, but my web sits on the very edge of the hammer "track".

My grip put the bore axis almost completely even with my radius bone straight up my humerus and to my shoulder, so it's a natural sightline down my arms and to the front sight. Kids happened before I could get my A or M USPSA class, but I'll be back at it soon. The new 8-shot rile kinda sucks for that though.

I have spurs still on my 617 (so it will fire reliably) and one on my model 67 for training people, but that's it.

Back in the early 90s I removed the spurs on my SP-101s for that reason. Miami PD had an OIS where the officer was supposed to have cocked his revolver. They went to the Glock 17 shortly thereafter. Still have the SPs and they fire fine.

I remember lots of these things for sale at the local shows for dirt cheap. Between 200 and 300 bucks and I should have bought a bunch! It's consistent with their Smith semi-auto pistol configuration as well mostly being DAO.

DAO GP-100's and SP-101's don't pop up too often. If they do, it's usually a former cop gun.

I have a pair of bedside DAO SP-101's that get night watch duty.

The Ruger bobbed hammer variants were most probably those carried by members of the Quebec Provincial Police, the Surete de Quebec. The RCMP used S&W wheel guns exclusively and the blackstraps engraved "RCMP".

I can verify that such guns were made by Ruger. I bought one with a 3 inch barrel and had it for years. Good pistol. I even had Ruger fit it with a spurred hammer, so I had two hammers for it. It worked fine either way.

TBK