My nephew brought over his Model 36-9 last night and said a tiny piece of metal came out while shooting last weekend. He had the part and showed me where it came from...it was the top part of the hammer block that goes between the hammer and the firing pin area. It just snapped off. I took the rest of the HB out of the gun and told him he needed to get a new one from S&W and that we could put it in. My questions:

1. What would cause a hammer block to fail? They don't normally get much stress on them from going up and down in that track, right? Is there any way he or his wife could have accidentally done something to cause this to break?

2. What is typically the best option for fixing such an easy thing? I thought sending the whole gun back to S&W for such a small thing would be a terrible inconvenience...so is it OK just to call S&W and tell them what happened and see if they'll send you the part? It is about a $5.00 part on their web site...

Thanks in advance for your help and advice! B