30 October 2019

Historically Unsafe?

The venerable, and multi-named, Colt Single-Action Army, Peacemaker, M1873 has a safety flaw.

It's common to nearly all revolvers of its era, so it's completely forgivable.

The firing pin is attached to the hammer in a manner that makes it unsafe to carry with six rounds in the cylinder.

Kind of makes calling it a "six-shooter" something of a lie when you can only load five and have the hammer down on an empty cylinder.

Armi San Marco and Pietta went with an extended cylinder pin with two detents in it.

You push the cylinder pin release and then press the cylinder pin to the rear where it will intrude into the hammer recess and prevent the hammer from falling all the way to the primer.

Cylinder pin intruding...
...No firing pin intruding.

No cylinder pin intruding...
...Firing pin intruding.
It's awkward and irritating to use.  Especially so with the Pietta version where there's just a single groove in the cylinder pin which must be perfectly aligned with the cylinder pin release.  The Armi San Marco version has the groove running 360° around the cylinder pin.

It's not realistic to expect someone to use this as a means to carry six rounds safely and most likely exists only to allow importation from Italy with a historically correct firing pin.  This system also retains period correct guts which has the proper 4-clicks.

Uberti has taken a different path.

Their firing pin floats.

Firing pin to the rear.
Firing pin foward.
Uberti has a linkage up inside the hammer which presses the firing pin forward when the trigger is being held.

Holding the trigger.
Trigger released.
It's not spring loaded, so it will not retract unless you press the firing pin's nose or let gravity pull it down.

This is a lot more practical, but...  The lockwork isn't normal SAA and it only has THREE clicks!

Abomination!
Posted by Angus McThag at 10:59
Labels: , ,

5 comments:

  1. Old NFO30 October, 2019 17:30

    I still load one, skip one, and load four...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Angus McThag30 October, 2019 20:24

      Me too.

      Even with the Uberti that's supposed to be safe with 6.

      I figure if I don't break the habit, it's less likely to give me a shock.

      Delete
  2. skybill31 October, 2019 03:44

    Hi Angus,
    I've heard it said that in "The old Daze," the old Cowboys would have a folded up piece of paper with their historical data on it stashed in this "dead chamber" of the cylinder in case of their demise!!.....
    skybill

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Angus McThag31 October, 2019 08:35

      I've also heard of them rolling up a dollar in that chamber so they'd have something after the saloon.

      Delete
  3. SofwareJanitor31 October, 2019 11:10

    Heritage took a different design direction to add a safety to their Rough Rider single action. They added a hammer block safety lever on the left rear side of the frame. It is ugly and not period correct but it does work and doesn't affect function, albeit Heritage, being a low end product, isn't exactly the smoothest to begin with. It's a .22LR after all. But it is fun, and not a bank breaker.

    ReplyDelete

You are a guest here when you comment. This is my soapbox, not yours. Be polite. Inappropriate comments will be deleted without mention. Amnesty period is expired.

Do not go off on a tangent, stay with the topic of the post. If I can't tell what your point is in the first couple of sentences I'm flushing it.

If you're trying to comment anonymously: You can't. Log into your Google account.

If you can't comprehend this, don't comment; because I'm going to moderate and mock you for wasting your time.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)