Dry firing, broke Ruger Old Army Hammer & safety

[Ed Fowler]

I have been layed up for a few long months (actually years) and been spending my time working on my old Ruger Army revolver making it as close to a target pistol as possible. T5rigger now clean - no backlash, shoots like a dream. I have spent many hours dry-firing it in my living room. I have no idea how many time the hammer has hit the end of it stroke, but well over several thousand. I have never know a good pistol shot who has not utilized the opportunity to learn through dry-firing.

Last night I cocked the hammer, aimed at a spot on my wall and pulled the trigger and something came flying back at me, flew past my face and landed on the carpet behind me. I looked over the Ruger Old Army and it looked OK, then started looking for the piece that flew past me. I found it, the back of the hammer spur, broken off a the first serrate for a thumb grip. This happens to be the most critical spot for a stress raiser and I now understand why the old colts and many of the other single actions all had their serrates or checkering bracketed rather than going all the way out to the side of the hammer.

I do not plan on replacing the hammer, if anything it may be more accurate due to a faster lock time with out the tail of the hammer.

Safety:
The main reason I am sharing this with others who may see it is that I always use safety glasses when shooting, but rarely while dry firing. The tail of the hammer could just as easily hit me in the eye and could have been serious.

All comments are welcome!

 

[Kinman]

I own a couple Ruger Old Army's, I never dry fire them and caution others that are inclined because unlike cartridge handguns cap and ball revolvers have nipples for the placement of percussion caps, the hammer strikes the nipple directly and will batter it possibly making it difficult to place a cap. I have seen many cap and ball revolvers with battered nipples, actually peened over at the outer striking surface. I spend quite a bit of my spare time shooting black powder firearms, mostly flintlocks as of late. When I used to shoot percussion rifles I would spend a good bit of time "tuning" the nipple in order to enhance is reliability and direction of its percussion blast when struck. The obvious reason they work as well as they do is that the hammer on most percussion firearms is designed to impact the nipple directly, hammers can be adjusted slightly by bending if they are not striking the cap with full force, sometimes they are off a slight bit that often results in a cap not firing. If the nipples wear to far eventually they need replacement. I have found that the best nipples on the market are the ones made of AMPCO which is an alloy, they look light brass. They are very durable and hold up well and are not hard like stainless which in many ways is not the proper metal for a percussion nipple, sure they will last longer but the resulting hardness of the nipple will be transferred back to the hammer where it was not designed. This is my long explanation as to one reason why your hammer developed a problem. Your story is the first I have ever known of anyone that has broke a ROA, in their original development they were loaded with a full chamber of Bullseye and did not blow up. I broke a loading lever because I wanted to have it color case hardened, the heating process made the lever too brittle.
If your interested in finding some of those AMPCO nipples, they are carried by a company called TRESO, a six pack will set you back a little over twenty bucks, you need 12 x 28 thread. I also like them because they fit a #11 German cap perfectly, best constant form of ignition I have ever found for the ROA. I've been waiting for Gary Reeder to finish one of my Rugers since mid last year, I sure hope its going to be worth the wait. Best of Luck...

 

[merl67]

I too would not recommend dry firing any percussion pistol, revolver, rifle, or shotgun for reasons gave in the previous post. The other thing the cap does is cushion the hammer strike. I am thinking this was the cause of your situation.

 

[Mike in Reedley]

Looks like the nipples have been removed for dry firing. I still would not dry fire it, or a cartridge firearm without snap caps. If you think the broken hammer is going to give you a quicker lock time resulting in improved accuracy, you're kidding yourself.

 

[alwslate]

I have to agree with the others. I own a Ruger Old Army and can't imagine
dry firing it at all let alone several thousand times

 

[Ed Fowler]

Every little bit helps, I can notice an incremental change in lock time, as soon as it warm up I will know. This is a very accurate revolver!!

The reason I posted this thread was as a warning to wear safety glasses when there is any chance of flying objects! My friend only has one eye, you will never see him with out protection for his one good eye.

 

[Erno86]

Every little bit helps, I can notice an incremental change in lock time, as soon as it warm up I will know. This is a very accurate revolver!!

The reason I posted this thread was as a warning to ware safety glasses when there is any chance of flying objects! My friend only has one eye, you will never see him with out protection for his one good eye.

Good advice...because it happened to me twice with each of my two Ruger Old Army's. Fortunately, the broken thumb hammer spur did not hit one of my eyes, because in the first instance --- I was not wearing safety glasses.

I apologize to S&W, members & guests...for myself not making a thread about this problem with the Ruger Old Army --- Though I posted about this problem on a couple of other forums.

The instruction pamphlet --- that came with the pistol --- said (because Ruger doesn't produce this pistol any more --- probably because of this dry firing problem) that it's "safe to dry fire the pistol."

I inspected the broken hammer...and the inside steel looked soft and cheaply made. When you dry fire the Ruger, the hammer partially hits the back of the pistol frame. If it hits the naked nipple...it is out of tune.

I would recommend sending the pistol back to Ruger --- that is --- if they have any spare hammers in stock --- or do a search online. The Ruger Repair shop is good. They'll not only repair the pistol, but will slick-up the Single action as well...at no cost.

 

[Milton]

From Page 18 of the ROA Instruction Manual:

"The Ruger Old Army can be dry fired without damage to the firing components."

 

[Ed Fowler]

Thank you Sir! Lots of good information to those who can read. After over 15 years of dry firing my Ruger Old Army can hold 10 shot groups at 88 yards (naturally not all the time) but would not be afraid to go up against my S&W 952 in competition, (with out time limits). My Mod 41 will beat both of them.

 

[nachogrande]

THAT IS SURPRIZING!

From Page 18 of the ROA Instruction Manual:

"The Ruger Old Army can be dry fired without damage to the firing components."

Now I'm gonna have to dig out my manual. R-U sure you weren't reading the single six manual? One of my earliest handguns & knowing VERY LITTLE about guns & it being a percussion gun, it seemed pretty obvious this one would not fare well with dry firing, so I NEVER tried it. NOT SURPRIZED that dry firing broke it, just that it took so long.

 

[Erno86]

I load my ROA using a 38 Special shell casing with 17 grains of Triple 7 FFF, Cream of Wheat filler, round ball, an top it off with a dried mixture of two parts Butter Crisco and 1 part pure beeswax.

A metal lobster fork works great in removing stuck or jammed spent caps.

 

[nachogrande]

LOOKED IT UP ONLINE.

1980 OLD ARMY MANUAL (page 17) under a heading of DRY FIRING. The previous poster weren't lyin. Good luck getting Ruger to fix it, which if they print that in the manual, I think they should, Gotta wonder how many law suits that statement led to?

 

[Ed Fowler]

When I was at the S&W Armorers School, Jhonny Contro (instructor) and I had a long talk about dry firing - no problem! Smith & Wesson and Ruger do not make junk, their products are well fitted and unless someone has been fooling with them will outlast being used. there are ways you can tell real quick if the quality of your firearm will take it, but again this thread is intended to be about eye safety, no one has even responded to this idea.?

Incidentally thanks to our moderator for moving this thread for me!

 

[alwslate]

I think the Old Army was designed such that if dry fired the frame would
stop the hammer just shy of hitting the nipple but would allow it to hit
the cap hard enough to fire it. Very close tolerances. A poster above said
the metal looked soft and cheap after dry firing. Well after many thousands of impacts maybe so. Peening of the frame by only a few
thousandths would probably result in peening of the nipples. When the
manuals were printed Ruger probably had Old Army parts to sell to dry
firers Some view their revolvers as tools to be handed off to a "smith"
to fix when they break them and others tend to baby them.
I don't dry fire any of my guns so they don't have to "take it"

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

Well I am still at a loss as to how dry firing can break the hammer spur????

 

[Ed Fowler]

OK, here is how I read it: If you look at an Old Army Ruger you will see that the top of the hammer spur is serrated from side to side on the tail piece. These serrates start where the tail piece becomes an appendage of the main part of the trigger frame. Any serrate like this serves as a stress-raiser, stress raisers usually contribute to the most likely place for a working piece of steel to break. This stress raiser was very slightly flexed each time the hammer face hit the frame of the revolver. A high resolution slow motion video might record it where we could see it, it would be one expensive camera, since I don't have a camera like that all I can do is hypothesize what happened from the physical evidence manifest from the event.

The face of the hammer slammed into the frame of the revolver setting up a harmonic vibration, just like happened the first time the revolver was dry fired, after repeated events the fracture occurred and the spur only had one way to go due to design of the hammer, stress raiser and event itself. The end of the spur broke loose under a lot of force and bounced back past my head, maybe hitting a chair behind me then continued traveling a few feet more, I would guess somewhere between 12 to 14 feet. It had enough force to maybe cause a light bruise or a fairly serious eye injury.

The damage to the pistol can be seen in the photo, the tail of the spur lies broken beside the hammer. I shot her today, she functioned flawlessly. I kind of like the spur being gone and do not intend on repairing it. This is one very well designed revolver, thanks Ruger!

Stress raisers have been a field of interest to me the first time one of my toys broke and our village blacksmith showed why it broke.

I hope I explained well enough, yours is a good question.

 

[Bakebfr480]

Dry-firing will ruin the nipples on cap and ball revolvers.......PERIOD! Only a moron would dry-fire a cap and ball revolver or rifle in my opinion.

 

[DR505]

Dry-firing will ruin the nipples on cap and ball revolvers.......PERIOD! Only a moron would dry-fire a cap and ball revolver or rifle in my opinion.

Well, I guess you are more knowledgeable than the company that built them and said it is okay to dry fire their pistols. Thanks for the info.

 

[Pondoro]

"Don't ever dry fire" is a religious belief. I teach a class with a guy. He will tell you "Never dry fire." I point to the manual that says "dry firing is safe." He says, "Never dry fire!"

I don't know how to argue with him. He truly has never broken a gun by dry firing!

"Several Thousand" trigger pulls is a lot! I don't know if dry firing or actual firing does more damage, but that hammer has done a lot of work. And I am sure Ruger would fix it.

Or you could completely bob the hammer to make the gun snag free when you pull it out of your pocket! (I'm kidding, really!)

 

[smoothshooter]

If you had been in the habit of putting half of a foam earplug in the frame slot that is the hammer recess before a dry firing session, no damage would have been done.
Just remember to remove it when you are done.

I have always been surprised this method is almost unknown.
Works much better than snap caps in cartridge guns.