That deformation, along with some corresponding deformation of the firing pin, allowed the firing pin to move back into the hammer too far, which contributed to my problem. The cross pin is made of soft steel, which is why it is slightly deformed in the middle. Using a pin punch barely smaller than the cross pin, I drifted the cross pin out of the hammer while supporting the other side of the hammer. The pin could wiggle a short distance in & out of the hole in the hammer.Īt this point, I measured the distance from rear of hammer spur to tip of firing pin with the firing pin pushed into its hole I knew I needed to make that distance greater than the 1.660″ I measured. A cross pin (middle arrow) retains the pin in the hammer, but not rigidly. The hole (right arrow) goes all the way through the hammer, and is of larger diameter up front, where the firing pin (left arrow) is. The firing pin lies in a hole in the hammer. I started looking more closely at the hammer, to see just how things were put together. (Photo © Russ Chastain)Īs you can see in the photo, the firing pin wasn’t really protruding forward as far as it ought to. When it failed to fire, it was because of light primer strikes, so I started looking for the problem, after completely unloading the gun, of course.
#Colt saa hammer how to#
How to recover my lost love? Repair, of course! I’d gotten an Italian-made copy of a 45 Colt single action in a trade, and liked it, but when it failed to go bang every time, I became less fond of it.
5 Photos of Firing Pin Repair on a Colt Single Action Clone