Yul Lose Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 I don’t know if this has been discussed here on the Wire before so forgive me if it has. A couple of matches ago I started having fail to fires with one of my Old Armies. I had some extra time this week so I took the ferrules with firing pins out and the pins were mushroomed or peened quite a bit on one revolver, the problem one. The firing pins were noticeably mushroomed and it looked like that was causing the pin to stop short of a full stroke and was causing light hits on the primer. I chucked up the lower part of the pin, the end that hits the primer, in a small drill chuck and lightly ran the mushroomed end against one of my slow speed grinder wheels to remove the rim. I did that to all of the pins on both revolvers even though the one revolver wasn’t showing that much peening. With the pins separated from the ferrules I cleaned them in the hydro sonic cleaner, reassembled and oiled with Mobil 1 and fired 20 rounds through each one without any fail to fires. I shot a match down at Dulzura yesterday and they performed flawlessly. This probably isn’t a long term fix but it looks like it will squeeze a little more life out of these firing pins. Last night when I emptied the brass bin out of my gun cart I checked each piece of .45 brass that I used in the match and all of the primers showed a very nice deep firing pin indentation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prairie Dawg, SASS #50329 Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 YL: Happy Trails at The Smith Shop used to sell hardened pins for these conversion cylinders. You might want to check with him to see if he still does, 401-864-2348 --Dawg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colorado Coffinmaker Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 Care must be taken with the after-market hardened firing pins. If used with heavy OEM springs, the hard pins may well crater the hammer. I'd be more inclined to keep a spare set or two of OEM firing pins for the Howell cylinders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yul Lose Posted December 15, 2019 Author Share Posted December 15, 2019 YL: Happy Trails at The Smith Shop used to sell hardened pins for these conversion cylinders. You might want to check with him to see if he still does, 401-864-2348 --Dawg He still does but I was trying to see if I could resurrect the originals and it seems to work. I’ll see how long it lasts and report back. My hammer springs are 19lbs on both sets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Kiowa Jones #6765 Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 He still does but I was trying to see if I could resurrect the originals and it seems to work. I’ll see how long it lasts and report back. My hammer springs are 19lbs on both sets. Take them back out, heat each one to a low cherry then kick them off into some old motor oil, or even cooking oil. That should harden them sufficiently. If you feel they are too hard dip each one back in the oil, hit it with the torch to light up the oil and let it burn ff. That should draw them back a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
45 Dragoon Posted December 15, 2019 Share Posted December 15, 2019 + one with Nate. ^^ The ROA hammer is probably hard enough to not have a problem. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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