S&W with hammer-mount firing pins

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Sevens

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I am pretty sure that only my 17-6 has a frame mount firing pin for obvious reasons, but all of my other S&W revolvers are from before they moved the firing pin.

One of my revolvers was an interesting purchase...
It was a six-inch Model 66-3 with such a laundry list of small issues that some folks would run away from rather than purchase. So when it was offered to me at $300, and the function, lock up and timing were all dead-on, and bore looked terrific, I jumped on it.

One of the many issues is that the firing pin does NOT have the springy spring in it the way it is supposed to.

This has cause me no issues whatsoever and I don't feel a need to address it, but I am curious about it. Is it a leaf or coil spring? What is it's purpose?

Anyone else lose or break one, did you fix it?

It seems funny that I haven't heard this discussed.
 
Good question. I have a Model 66-2 which didn't have the hammer nose spring or the spring was broken. The firing pin did break. After sending it back to S&W for repair, it did come back with a hammer nose spring. I don't know if it broke because of the lack of the spring, however.

Here's a thread from another forum from 2009 addressing the subject:
http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-smithing/92914-hammer-nose-spring-replacement.html

Edit: Another thread:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=521753
 
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Howdy

I can't claim to be an expert on all things S&W, but I do have quite a lot of them. In my experience, only the big, relatively modern N Frames; Model 24, Model 27, Model 28, Model 29, etc, have the spring loaded firing pin. I have a 44 Hand Ejector 4th Model from from 1955 and a Model 1955 Target from 1955. These two big N frames also have the spring loaded firing pin. My really old N frames; Triple Lock (two of them), 44 Hand Ejector 2nd Model (two of them), 44 Hand Ejector 3rd Model (two of them), Model 1917 (three of them) do not have the spring loaded firing pin.


I have oodles of K frames; Model 10 (two of them), Model 12, Model 13, Model 14, Model 19, Model 65, plus bunches of old M&Ps (lost count of how many), K 38 (two of them), 32-20 HE, and probably a few others that I am forgetting. NONE of these K frames has a spring loaded firing pin. Neither do any of my little I frame 32s.

Frankly, in my rather biased opinion, spring loading the firing pin accomplishes nothing. Starting way back with the Model 1899, the firing pin of a swing out cylinder Smith has always been able to find its way through the recoil shield just fine without a spring. The firing pin of a Smith is a flat affair, except for the pointy end. If you look inside a Smith, you will see that the firing pin rides through a slot as it finds its way through the final hole in the recoil shield. Because of the shape of the firing pin, and the way it swings through the arc described by the hammer pivot, the firing pin HAS TO 'find its way' through the frame. There is no other way for the firing pin to get where it needs to go. That is why the firing pin (S&W likes to call it the Hammer Nose) is mounted with a rivet and is free to rotate up and down slightly on the rivet. I can't see that a spring loaded firing pin actually accomplishes anything, except to keep the firing pin pre-loaded in the down position. As the firing pin finds its way through the frame it will overcome the teeny little firing pin spring anyway. But like I said, Smiths were made for many decades with no spring in the firing pin. They always worked fine.

By the way, the firing pin in a Colt Single Action Army is free to wiggle up and down slightly in the hammer for the exact same reasons.
 
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Of the S&Ws with hammer nose firing pins, the earlier models had free-floating pins without springs. The hammer nose could be moved up and down freely. Later models (when the change was made varied with the model) had a small spring added, in order to keep the hammer nose more or less in the correct position - which helped prevent breakage. But, even with the later (spring-equipped) models, the hammer nose MUST still be able to float.

Breakage of the pin is always due to the pin NOT free floating as it should and thus being jammed against the frame of the gun as the hammer falls (rather than dropping through the hammer nose bushing as it should). The causes for this can be either 1) the rivet holding in the pin was set too tightly, thus the pin does not free float as it should and/ or 2) the assembly is allowed to get gunked up - which (again) leads to the pin not free floating as it should.

The solution is to keep the pin assembly clean and to make sure that the assembly is free to move properly. The spring in the later models is not really necessary.

Ensure that the hammer nose can float properly and the odds of the pin ever breaking are quite remote. Breakage is NOT normal and the hammer nose is not considered an expendable part.
 
Well hey, I guess now I need to dig out my wheelguns and double-check them...
I really thought they were all springy but I could be quite mistaken!

I will update and thanks guys -- good stuff.
 
S&W has played "now you see it..." with that spring. As Driftwood says, the first model M&P has no spring, but some models do, and I have never been able to figure out any system or, for that matter any reason for it. I don't think gunk or dirt would break a firing pin (S&W calls it the "hammer nose"),more likely it would just prevent the hammer from falling all the way.

FWIW, I think the spring was meant to cushion the firing pin when dry firing. I think that because in the few S&W's I have replaced the hammer noses on, metal fatigue from dry firing seems to have been the cause. Maybe they used the spring, then fixed the problem some other way, like a different heat treatment, and took the spring back out.

Jim
 
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