So after a lot of consideration I've come to the following conclusions.
1. There is a real risk to sending the gun back to the factory. I've had two guns to the factory before. The first came back fully functional with a new scratch in it. I was able to more or less polish the scratch out, but it also required polishing the entire gun, and a lot of time on my part. Honest wear is one thing, carelessness by the manufacturer's employee is another. It honked me off. The other gun was an expensive one, and while I enjoy shooting it, it does not always fire in DA, especially if I'm using CCI primers. Additionally when I shot it on Sunday, it was shaving lead. Now I was shooting pretty warm H110 magnum loads, but a shaving actually struck me on the bottom edge of my ear, badly enough that I had to stop shooting and clean up my blood, or I would've had it all over myself. This is a performance center gun, and I feel there is no excuse for this especially given it has been to the factory once. So now I need to look at the barrel cylinder gap to see if it's excessive. I'm thinking it is because I was not getting the velocities I would have expected. The timing could be off too. So right now, I'm just a bit irritated with S&W and the factory in general.
2. While I was shooting the revolver that this thread is the topic of, I realized that when I was blasting away, I did not give the slight imperfection a second thought. I was too busy taking velocity data, banging away on my steel spinner target and having a hoot. So as some folks have suggested, if the gun shoots and has a minor imperfection, who really cares? I think the problem is that when I'm dry firing it I am focusing on that one small issue because I have time to think about it as the gun is not recoiling. So the OCD bit of my brain is focusing on the wrong thing. It's not surprising though. I'm paying close attention to the front sight and trying to keep it oriented properly so as to increase the quality of my trigger squeeze. So that slight disruption in the front sight without any associated bang and recoil is just allowing my eye to focus on the imperfection. It causes me to lose sight of the fact that the gun shoots great, which is what matters.
3. I need to bare in mind the use of this gun. It's a woods gun for me, and it accomplishes what it's supposed to. It isn't meant to win a beauty contest. So why would I risk messing with a tool that works, shows no signs of malfunction, and makes me happy when I'm using it? Because I need therapy is the only answer. I think I'm going to consider this a little bit of self improvement to try and focus on what's right, rather than what's wrong. Everything doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to work. And this one does.
4. I may choose to take the gun in to a smith for an opinion, though it will require an entire day of my time at least if I don't ship it to someone. I'd schedule it to coincide with a roadtrip or visit to a friend, as I really don't have an entire day to go driving my not broken gun around. But until a smith looks and says the words "That's no problem. I can fix that." I'm not willing to send the gun to a technician at S&W, or to risk screwing up an otherwise great gun. I think shooting the gun more to remind myself why I own it is the most appropriate response right now.
Thanks all for the input. I learned a bit about the issue, and y' all saved me from making an unnecessary and rash decision based on an issue that is bigger in my mind than it is in reality.
