How long can you depend on snap caps to protect your revolver....

Until whatever material is in the primer region becomes beat up to the point where it no longer provides cushioning for the firing pin. Many have a small plug of a sort of poly or nylon type material that eventually becomes ragged or dug out in appearance... that's the time to get a new one.

Froggie

Since I bent an old-school hammer nose on a K-frame decades ago, I've always used them...or at least some empty cases. I like the spring-loaded ones with the hard brass 'primer' made for Pachmayr, and I forget the one or two others. I don't see anyone every wearing those out in normal use. The A-zooms I only use to practice reloads.

I just got a M12 back from our local Smith wizard, and he left the empties in the cylinder for me to try out the action. Also, a local trainer advised he'd just had a hammer-block break in his 60-10. He was dry-firing and not using any caps.

I've broken a hammer nose on a 3" 65 by dry firing without snap caps, so I use them regularly for dry fire practice.

I use A-Zooms. I just check the polymer "primer," as Green Frog suggested. I also inspect the rest of the snap cap for wear-and-tear. Rims can get beat up, especially with semi-autos. I recently had to throw out one of my .45ACP A-Zooms because it got beat up so bad it wouldn't chamber.

I've used the Pachmayr ones with the spring-loaded "primer." On a few occasions I've had the "primer" get stuck inside its channel.

The problem with using expended rounds is that the fired primer doesn't offer much cushion for the firing pin.

My general rule is that if I'm only cycling the trigger a few times as part of maintenance/function checks, I don't bother with snap caps. But if I'm doing dry fire practice for several minutes, the snap caps go in. They're also handy for practicing reloading and malfunction clearing drills.

I’m an outlier when it comes to snap caps: the only guns I use them in are double guns.

I know that snap caps are a good idea in rim fire guns, but my personal experience dry firing 22 target guns like the Winchester 52C and Remington 40X suggests that whatever harm is done by not using snap caps is de minimus.

Understand, dry fire in my experience has nothing to do with trying to improve a gun’s action by endlessly working the action in front of the TV: that’s what gunsmiths are for.

I think you can pull the trigger and lower the bolt handle to ease the firing pin down on these, as well as a number of other bolt guns.

^^^^^ you can, if the purpose is simply de-cocking the rifle. That’s not the purpose of dry fire.

I’m referring to dry fire as an exercise to develop sight picture, breath and trigger control: real dry fire practice.

Most , if not all , bolt actions can be left in an uncocked position by holding the trigger back while lowering the bolt on a empty chamber .
It even works for bolt action shotguns .
My Dad insisted on storing them uncocked to " save the firing pin spring" , I do the same with all my bolt action rifles .
Old habits die hard !

I never could figure out how to do this with my Stevens hammerless double barrel shotgun ... it just stays cocked !
Gary

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Certified Cajun
NRA Member

I think dry firing can improve a gun's action by a small amount, likely insignificant, for the most part. I think it'd be hard to say if any noticeable improvement is due to action-smoothing or the shooter's trigger finger getting stronger/better trained. I wouldn't rely on dry firing to smooth a trigger action. I've done a lot of dry-fire practice with my 642-1, but I'd still like to have a gunsmith do a nice trigger job on it.

I've been shooting handguns for over 40 years and dry firing has always been part of my daily routine. I do it primarily for developing trigger control but I have seen improvements in trigger actions as a result repetitive dry firing. At the moment I have a Smith and Wesson 327 revolver which has about 300 rounds through it and thousands of dry firing with the use of snap caps. The action is much smoother than when it came out of the box with a double action pull weight of 7 pounds 1.32 ounces on my Lymans Digital scale. Singe action come in at 3 pounds 1.72 ounces. That is significantly better than it was out of the box. I originally considered having my gunsmith do an action job on my 327 but decided I didn't need one with the way its already performing.

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Veteran/NRA Member/S&W 327

Did plenty of that in the Army. When the firing pin in the 1911 peened over and jammed in the firing pin stop, the armorer fixed it, for free.

Only gun I am familiar with that had dry fire intentionally mentioned as a built in feature was the S&W Model 52. You can apply the slide mounted safety and the hammer will fall against the safety, not the firing pin.

I must've gotten a bad batch of Pachmayr snap caps. I had 2 packs of them I was using with my CZ-75 and P7M13 (back around 1991), and within about a dozen strikes to each...the plastic bodies had all cracked severely, and the caps just disintegrated. No more of those for me...now I just use the hard orange plastic dummy rounds.

I have snap caps for my handguns, rifles, shotguns, recently have found the A Zoom very satisfactory. For rim fires I use No. 6 drywall anchors.

For .22 I use dry wall anchors. Cheap and easy to replace. I tried the Tipton ones with the sprung primer. I stopped buying them because the didnt last long. The primer would get stuck or the case would split. I've been using Azoom and like them much better. Since I reload. I've been considering making my own. Just haven't done it yet.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

It's not exactly built in, but I have an Anschutz kid size bolt action 22 which has a dry fire striker you can (very easily) swap for the regular striker. It's just enough shorter that it won't reach the rear of the barrel when it falls.