Guns: S&W K-22 Masterpiece review

Introduction

There are some guns that you hope to pass on to your heirs, and Smith & Wesson's K-22 Masterpiece is certainly one of them.  This fine .22 LR revolver was first introduced during the Great Depression as a target and hunting piece (S&W called it the "Outdoorsman").  Both demand and production ramped up after WWII, and my example came from the early post-war era, around 1947.  How can you tell? Well, the gun doesn't have the old pencil barrel or blended rear sight, but it does have a "five-screw" frame (with screws in the top of the sideplate and the front of the trigger guard).  

At the time it came out, the K-22 Masterpiece was considered the best production .22 revolver in the world. But how does the 80-year-old K-22 stack up against modern guns? Let's find out.

Sights, Action, and Grips

As with most firearms back then, the K-22 Masterpiece came with simple black patridge sights, with a square pinned front sight and an adjustable rear sight.  They're pretty small (again, very common for a gun from the 1940s), but they are precise, and it's easy to get a clean sight picture.

After several previous owners and probably thousands of rounds, the blued finish on my gun is worn but the serrated double-action trigger is smooth, with a crisp and light single-action pull - maybe around 2 or 3 pounds.

My K-22 looks like it wears the original Circassian diamond magna grips with a target style square butt.  The grips provide a surprising amount of traction given how old and worn they are, and the gun remained very stable in hand in both double and single action fire.

Range Report

The K-22 is probably the best handgun around for training people who have never held a gun before. It's very easy to load and unload, and when shot in single-action, the light trigger makes getting good hits easy.  The full-size steel frame is a little heavy for smaller people, but it also makes .22 cartridges recoil like an air gun. Overall, the gun is so pleasant that I taught Mom to shoot with it about ten years ago:

Is the K-22 quite as accurate as modern semiautomatic handguns? Perhaps not, but it's accurate enough for my purposes.

12 rounds of Federal AutoMatch (the cheap stuff) at 20 yards:

18 rounds of Federal HV Match at 20 yards:

24 rounds of Winchester 222 bulk pack (40 gr.) at 20 yards: 

12 rounds of Remington Golden Bullet at 15 yards:

Functionally, the gun worked great, except for a few failures to fire (light strikes) when shooting in double action.  I attribute these occasional malfunctions to the 80-year old lockwork (I have no idea if the springs have ever been replaced).  Since I don't plan on using this gun for self-defense anytime soon, it's not that big a deal.

Conclusion

If you're tired of the quality control issues with the revolvers put out by Smith & Wesson (and every other manufacturer) nowadays, the K-22 Masterpiece is for you.  It hails from a time when it was commercially feasible to sell a full-size all-steel .22 revolver that required large amounts of hand fitting and polishing.  Those days may be gone now, but at least the guns remain...