Six shooter C&B

[Gee Dog]

The man that dropped his 5.5” Pietta Remington (Johnnie Roper, AKA Gunslinger) said the holster design was faulty. That defect allowed to gun to fall from the holster when he bent over. He later determined that the cylinder safety notch was too narrow to allow the hammer nose to properly fit into it for actual lock up so when it hit the hard floor of his kitchen the cylinder rotated over to the adjacent cap and detonated.

He produced no photos of the gun or the wound and certain elements of his version seemed apocryphal then and still do but he remained a hard core "load all six" guy and insisted it was entirely the holster and gun’s fault. He refused to accept that any human agency (his) had anything to do with the mishap. His habit was to load a Pyrodex pellet over 10 grains of loose Pyro with a .457 on top. He referred to his load as the Medical Examiner Special and reportedly, it bit him.

I was surprised that his hand was still attached to his arm but there were no broken bones or severed tendons and I, personally, really don”˜t know what.

 

[SDSmlf]

Happen to have my camera set up for something else, but thought, hey, why not duplicate Zonie's and Gene L's tests with the mallet, and try and catch it on film? Pistol with cap on a nipple. Hammer down on the cap. One leather mallet. One quick rap with the mallet and BOOM. We have ignition........ got it first try.

Any hammer down on a loaded percussion cylinder questions?

Now I have a pistol to clean.

 

[nhmoose]

Great Picture!! It shows what will happen. :hatsoff:

 

[Zonie]

Can't get much plainer than that. :shocked2:

 

[azmntman]

OK, so im convinced BUT.... what about the slot in between the nipples? Thats where I have been keeping the hammer when loading 6? Is or isn't the slot made for that and SAFE????

 

[Gene L]

Good question. My revolvers have a pin and I'd like to see if pounding them with a leather hammer or a ballpeen hammer (shudder) will make the hammer skip a beat. Not that I wander around with a C&B revolver, I don't, but I like to know things. So sue me.

 

[Snakebite]

Good question. My revolvers have a pin and I'd like to see if pounding them with a leather hammer or a ballpeen hammer (shudder) will make the hammer skip a beat. Not that I wander around with a C&B revolver, I don't, but I like to know things. So sue me.

That’s what I was trying to figure out. Has can the gun fire with the hammer down on the pin and NOT on a chamber. The hammer would have to be cocked and the cylinder rotated to a loaded chamber. The same thing would have to happen if the hammer was on an unloaded chamber, the hammer would have to be cocked and the cylinder rotated to a loaded chamber.

 

[Gee Dog]

Yes, that's what the slots are for on a Remington.

Are they safe? I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

 

[Zonie]

OK, so im convinced BUT.... what about the slot in between the nipples? Thats where I have been keeping the hammer when loading 6? Is or isn't the slot made for that and SAFE????

The slot between the nipples is a Remington style safety slot. The nose of the hammer should fit easily into each slot.

Backing up a bit in time:

When Colt first offered his Walker to the Army one of the first things they gigged him on was the lack of a safe way to carry the gun with all of the chambers loaded.

Colt's solution was to add a slot in the face of the hammer nose and a safety pin between each chamber on the cylinder.

By the time the Remington-Beals was designed, the need by the Army for some sort of safety device was well known so, it was designed with the safety notch in the cylinder from the get-go.

Both of these methods work but the Colt design using pins is more easily damaged.
If a pin gets broken off, it's loss isn't easily noticed unless your looking for it.

Keep in mind, all of the military holsters for revolvers were full flap holsters which completely cover the butt of the gun and protect it from falling out. Even so, the Army wanted some sort of safety device.

 

[azmntman]

Well I have slots n flaps so Im good to go :grin:

 

[M. De Land]

I think you had it on half cock Jene and probably just about knocked it off the hammer! :rotf:

 

[Redstick Lee]

you're referring to him in past tense......has he passed on or just on another hiatus?

some folks simply pull the nipple off a chosen chamber and use that as a "safety chamber"

guess I should do that too........mic out the one o/s chamber every stock cyl has and "nip strip" it.

 

[Gene L]

I'd still like to see if a Colt 1861 Navy or other clones would respond to pounding the hammer on the safety pins. Just for curiosity's sake. I may try this myself and will post the results if I do.

I've been carrying pistols/revolvers for 50 years and have never dropped one. I did have a 1911 fall out of my ******* rig once on a marble steps in the court house, but it didn't go off.

 

[Zonie]

What do you think you'll see if you place the hammer on one of the safety pins and then pound on it?

We're talking about the nose of a steel hammer, straddling a safety pin and resting on the back of the cylinder on both sides of the pin.

The only thing I can think of that will happen is, the hammer face will produce dents in the area of the cylinder it's resting on. :hmm:

 

[Gee Dog]

I won't be trying that anytime soon. It seems pointless and no way to treat a gun.

 

[Gene L]

I won't "pound" on it, just give it a sharp rap with a plastic hammer, as you did. I would like to know the reason once and for all why six rounds is a no-no. Not because it was done back in the SSA days before the safety pins.

I also don't throw salt over my shoulder when I cook, I walk under ladders, and don't cross myself when I see a black cat cross the road in front of me. I like to know why I do things rather than "that's the way it's always been done". Any gun is dangerous, but I'd like to know the danger objectively rather than taking well-meaning advice from those who advisably think in worst case scenarios. If there is no need for the tween-chamber pins, and if they are unreliable for preventing drop-tests discharges, I have to wonder why they were put there to begin with.

And now to go afield a bit to make a point.

Back when I was building wooden bows, I was convinced that Yew and Osage Orange were the only two woods suitable for bow building. The reason for this was because of the 19th and early 20th Century books on bow building. Then, about 1990 or so, Tim Baker and others did a lot of tests that disproved the existing standards. There are lots of bow woods that are as fine as the two accepted woods, you just have to treat them differently. The two previous "good" woods were still good, but not the entire picture. Because people were not building wooden bows (very much) in the later 20th century, they were relying on limited instructions for what was accepted back then. The power of the written word was nearly a century behind times. Because there was little testing for anything but that which had been accepted for a long, long time.

What this did for me is to not necessarily accept any thing on its face, which is what I'm applying here.

 

[Gee Dog]

Hi Gene - R&D is good, it’s the American Way.

 

[Zonie]

Well, go ahead and put the hammer down on a safety pin and pound on it if it makes you happy.

The only thing it will do is to mar up the area on the cylinder at the safety pin.

The safety pins only job is to provide a place to rest the nose of the hammer and at the same time, because the pin is in the slot on the hammer face, it locks the cylinder, preventing it from turning.

Because the cylinder can't turn, the hammer can't accidentally end up resting on a percussion cap on a nipple.

It does work, but there is a hypothetical case where problems could arise.

That case is: The hammer is lowered onto a safety pin, locking the cylinder and preventing it from moving.
Then, something, a limb, a bored thumb or something else raises the hammer off the safety pin.

To test what would happen if this raising of the hammer did lift it high enough to disengage the safety pin, I did just that on my Colt 1849 Pocket pistol.

The experiment:

With the hammer at half cock so the cylinder could rotate, like it would be when I was loading it, I then rotated the cylinder to get the safety pin in line with the hammer.

I then raised the hammer just enough to clear the half cock notch and pulled the trigger to allow the hammer to be lowered down over the safety pin.
A very slight rotation of the cylinder by my fingers created an audible "click" as the hammer fell down over the pin.

This locked the rotation of the cylinder leaving the nose of the hammer well clear of the capped nipple and in a totally safe condition, even if the gun was dropped and lit on the hammer spur.

My thumb then became the "errant unknown" and raised the hammer just enough to allow it to clear the pin.

Releasing the hammer, it just dropped back down over the pin and continued to keep the cylinder from turning.

Now, repeating this but adding another unknown thing that could not only raise the hammer off of the pin, but at the same time, could turn the cylinder, I found that yes, if something raised the hammer off of the pin and at the same time it turned the cylinder and then lowered the hammer, the nose of the hammer could end up resting on the live percussion cap.

Notice that this unknown something had to both raise the hammer and physically turn the cylinder at the same time.
IMO, this is not a very likely scenario.

As for the case where something could raise the hammer off of the cylinder pin and move the hammer far enough to cause the gun's hand to rotate the cylinder, I found that the hammer would need to be raised above the half cock notch to get the cylinder to turn.

Without a finger pulling the trigger, if this happened, the hammer would fall into the half cock notch.

In other words, the gun would still be safe and it would not fire.

 

[Gene L]

We all agree that (a) either something must strike the hammer on a loaded chamber, or (b)the hammer resting on a pin must go back to half cock to allow the cylinder to rotate the weapon into battery.

ONE sure way to prevent one of these from happening (a) is to rest the hammer on an empty chamber. However, if the hammer cocks enough to rotate the cylinder, possibly half-cock?, you're no longer on an empty chamber. To me, this is a partial solution to the hypothetical.

I'm not trying to sell the pin on hammer six-shooter idea to those far more experienced than I, just want to open up the floor for debate.

My point on "pounding" the hammer on the pin idea was to see if it will cause the hammer to jump into battery...which I haven't done yet. But will.

Any gun is a dangerous thing, made more dangerous by careless handling.

 

[Gene L]

I tested the hammer on the pin and "pounded" the hammer to see if it skipped to a capped chamber. It did not. I didn't really pound it with a 9 pound hammer, but with an osage wood hammer. About like a drop, I think.

So, do as you please. I'm toting six.

My holster won't allow the cylinder to rotate even if you put the hammer on half cock. As it gets more worn in, it probably will be more flexible. My holster is a Triple K, not at all authentic, but a very good holster.

I don't know about quick-draw, I can't do it with such a long barrel and don't see the need. CASS shooters should beware.