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Old 07-28-2012, 01:23 PM
wrangler5 wrangler5 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Louie View Post
The hammer block is a drop safety. It is there in the event the gun is dropped on the hammer spur hard enough to shear the pivot pin the hammer rides on, and this would allow the hammer to go forward and fire the gun. * * * The reason it was incorporated into the firing mechanism, is that some guns WERE dropped on the hammer and DID fire as a result of shearing the pin the hammer pivots on.
I thought I'd read a slightly different story about the introduction of the hammer block. That it was added not because the hammer pivot pin could shear off, but because the "tip" on the hammer, which normally engages a bump on the rebound slide to prevent forward hammer movement until the trigger is pulled, could break off if the gun was dropped and landed on the hammer with enough force. See the discussion in this thread Do you need a hammer block in a modern S&W? .

The conclusion is the same, though - the hammer block was added as a backup to the hammer blocking function built into the original action design, when after 40+ years of real world experience it was shown that the original design could fail under specific circumstances. (According to the thread linked above, the failure that generated the addition of the hammer block occurred during WWII when a Navy sailor dropped a K frame Victory model revolver which landed on its hammer and discharged, killing him. At that point I believe the Hand Ejector action had been in production for over 40 years, and I think it's remarkable that there had not been enough of these failures before then to cause S&W to improve the drop safety of the guns.)
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