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Many exotic metals(and are we even certain it was a metal?) and alloys required special and very expensive equipment to only produce the material, much less machine it. Before knowing more about what kind of material was being used I'm going to hold on to my stones awaiting further evidence and claifications.
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If you read the original post it says "the steel used..." So I imagine it isn't some hard to machine exotic metal.
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Understood, I obviously failed to read the post thoroughly. I would agree that any company involved in the manufacturing of firearms for as long as S&W "should" understand the properties of almost all types of steel and also find in unusual that a company with such a reputation would farm out the manufacturing of something as critical to an "ultra high perfermance" firearm as it's barrel, although there are some metals out there being referred to as steel that when alloyed with other metals such as titanium do not have the physical properties "normally associated" with steel.
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As per the website, the barrel is a
•Lothar-Walther Custom German Rifle Barrel
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People lie. Companies lie. "Quality of Steel" could mean "quality of workmanship", "quality of machining", or "we accidentally put .44 caliber barrels on them".
You never know... It may have been as simple as a dimensional error. Either Walther, or S&W could be the guilty party. Sometimes it is an amazingly "innocent" mistake that causes a huge problem.
Now, where did I put that decimal point?....
Perhaps it could even be something along the lines of a manufacturing change that failed to consider previously calculated figures. Maybe the original models had a tighter ball end in the cylinder, and a loose barrel; but the newer models have a loose ball end, and a tighter barrel; while the newest models went back to the old design. With certain loads, the 'mid-production' ends up being a bad combination...