I have a wonderful 617, no lock. I think mine is a -2 if I remember correctly. I picked it up at a shop in CT when we lived in CT. It had been used as an indoor 22lr plate gun. From what the owner said, it was his personal gun. No box, no papers. He'd put well over 100k through it but was now having accuracy issues.
I took a chance on it and worked a buy-two-get-a-chunk-off deal. (other gun was a dan wesson vbob.)
I did shoot it a half dozen times and did a cursory clean and oil of the gun. I had issues with ammo sticking in the cylinder. I ended up needing the Lewis lead remover brass patches to clean out each of the chambers. That's how much fouling had built up. It now loaded and fired easily, but the accuracy was not so good.
Every fifth or sixth round would fly off to Oz. I decided to run the Lewis lead remover patches through the barrel. It got stuck an inch after the forcing cone. I pulled with all of my might and felt it move. I kept pulling. To put how hard I was pulling in perspective, I had my foot braced against my bench and the gripless pistol in a soft-jawed vice. I kept having to tighten and adjust the pistol down.
Why would I pull so hard? Because I had four six-inch long slivers of lead from between the groves exit the barrel. It took me about five hours of cleaning after that to get the barrel clean.
I've put an additional 125k through the gun, worn out two hands (the one it came with and a second,) and had to replace the firing pin with the factory extended firing pin because the first wore down to a nub.
I love this revolver, and to this day, if anyone asks me what gun to buy as a first gun, I tell them a Smith 617.
