C3, Can you rule out anything that the customer did to the weapon ?? I haven't heard of anything similar to this happening with a .500 (any bbl length) in the past. I would be very interested in knowing any and all details as I am real close to buying one of the custom shop 500's. This is especially sad because this tells me that not only was the manufacturing process flawed,but so was the assembly,AND,the QA process,which is the ultamate FUBAR. The S&W people failed it's customers in a big way with this one. Just as I was slowly"coming back around".