Smith & Wesson .22 Top Break Revolvers?

milsurplus

Cant seem to find any info on Smith & Wesson .22LR Top Break Revolvers, were there any ever made?
I want to get something of better quality than my Harrington & Richardson 999 Sportsman .22LR top break revolver, even as nice as it is by no means is even close to the quality and fit and finish of a Smith & Wesson?
Thanks.

11b6r

S&W got out of the top break business LONG ago. Yes- they made them. Early 1900s.

milsurplus

Any suggestions for a better quality .22 top break revolver then, as Harrington & Richardson seem to have poor quality mechanics, metal and fit and finish?

tsr1965

You will not find a modern top-break, of any better quality than the H&R. That is precisely why there was H&R, then there was the S&W.

beantownshootah

First of all, the overall number of .22 revolvers in ANY action type in current manufacture is pretty small. Smith effectively has 2 or 3 DA models, and bizarrely, Ruger only offers single-action .22s. A few of the other offer DA revolvers in .22 (Taurus, Charter arms), but these are lower tier makers. And there is the zinc-alloy single action Heritage.

Double action .22 revolvers just seem to not be that popular in general right now. This is probably in part because the simple blowback actions makes .22 autos relatively cheap.

Pretty much nobody is making ANY top-break revolvers anymore, with the exception of a few Navy arms repro guns in older low-pressure black powder rounds such as .38 special, 45LC, and .44 Russian. I think Uberti (ie Beretta) has a model like this too. Smith put out an older top-break repro a few years ago for a limited time, but in was in some obscure caliber. None of these guns are inexpensive.

There is a modern design Russian top break in .38./357 called the mp412 though its not legally importable into the USA. I have no idea how strong this gun really is:


The reasons for this are pretty simple. The top break action, in general, isn't as strong as modern DA designs, and today's guns operate at much higher pressures than the older black powder rounds. It doesn't make sense to spend tons of money on R&D creating a new top-break design then tooling up for it, when demand for these is so low.

While .22 would seem to be an ideal caliber for a new design top-break, I think the low demand for .22 DA revolvers in general makes this a losing business proposition. I don't think a top break design is going to result in a cheaper gun, and in fact, the converse is probably true.

Personally, I'd love to buy a modern recreation of one of the older .22 top break SINGLE SHOT guns. Even though production (and therefore retail) costs of this kind of single-shot should be really low, I'm probably the only nut who'd actually buy it, so I'm not holding my breath.

joel_black

Probably the best quality .22 beaktop you can find is the Webley MK IV .22 target model.

Hawk Carse

S&W did not make topbreak .22 revolvers.
They put some .22 single shot barrels on revolver frames for slow fire target shooting.

spasmcreek

notice how high the prices on a h&r sportwman 999 went lately ...nuts for a $100 revolver... and no ..cylinder is to short to rechamber 22 mag