INSTALLING an SAA hammer

[broknprism]

When looking online for instructions about HOW to swap an SAA hammer, I found instructions for complete SAA disassembly, and not much else.  Is it possible to remove and replace a hammer without taking the grip frame and trigger guard apart...?  I can study an exploded parts diagram and get the basic relationship of parts, but I'm hoping someone here has done this and that the steps are few, and simple.

Thanks!

[Pettifogger]

Not trying to be sarcastic, but f you don't know how to take out the hammer, then maybe you can't fit it properly.  You absolutely cannot remove the hammer without removing the trigger guard and back strap.  The hammer and hand are the last things out of the gun when disassembling and the first things back in when putting it back together.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Pettifogger is correct. The hammer is the last thing you remove from a SAA. You can't get it out until you have removed the trigger guard, the split bolt/trigger spring, the trigger and the bolt. Then you can get the hammer and the hand out. Not very difficult once you have done it once or twice. I figured out how to do it all by myself when I was 18 years old, long before the internet existed. 

Here are some pretty good take down instructions for a Uberti, which is almost identical in function to a SAA. The take down instructions are the first part of the article, he goes on to talk about some smoothing too.

http://www.hobbygunsmith.com/Archives/Oct04/Interview.htm

Now the question remains - why do you want to swap hammers? There is usually a little bit of custom fitting involved, they don't always drop right in.

[Pettifogger]

From your other post I know you are trying to put a USFA hammer in a Colt.  The USFA has a fixed firing pin, the Colt uses a floating firing pin.  Make sure you have everything fitted properly or you might damage the recoil shield in the Colt.  Luckily Colt uses replaceable shields, but swapping one is definitely a job for a gunsmith that knows what he is doing.

[Rap Scallion]

   As a guy who rebuilt carburators for many years and was accustomed to things popping out and springs go flying, I thought it would be best to get some help with my Rugers.  I always like to know what I'm getting into, and I don't like surprises!

I spent $20 for the AGI Ruger SA Armorers tape and found out step by visual step what I had to do to take them apart and put back together.  One heck of good investment with all the how to and a lot of bonus talk from the instructor about timing and such!

I am swapping out the hammer on a 3.75" Ruger 45C  Sheriffs pocket cannon this weekend, if my house don't get blowed down.  Really pretty simple, but like all before me said, it's pretty much the last part of the innards to come out!

Good Luck,

[broknprism]

Thanks fellas, for the input. 

Yes, I am/was planning to replace the 3rd gen Colt hammer with a 1st gen USFA clone.  I wouldn't bother to do this on a single action army, since so much of a modern SAA is cosmetically 20th century, but Colt made the new Frontier Six Shooter so close to the 19th century version, the job sort of begs to be finished.  I wish they had just built it this way to begin with.  What that would have added to the cost would have put it near the USFA PreWar, which is a Colt without the Colt name anyway (better quality notwithstanding -- I know they've very very nice guns, and better Colts than a Colt is). I don't know why Colt doesn't take its own market back.

Anyway... yes, the impact point of the cone firing pin through the recoil shield will be critical.  I assume that once I have it all apart, I can put the hammer in, loosely secured with the big screw, and see where the pin will fall -- I don't need to reassemble the whole thing to learn that much, and that will cue me to proceed, or abandon the project.

[Pettifogger]

Definitely.  Put the hammer in with no other parts and move it back and forth by hand to see if the firing pin is fitting correctly.

[broknprism]

OK, I got the thing apart using a Colt SAA screwdriver set -- sweet tool kit.  Fits the screws perfectly, and they all came out easily. 

The new hammer fits fine, but the firing pin doesn't intrude into the frame far enough for reliable ignition, so that's out.

(When I reassembled it, I had the sear/trigger spring flipped over, so it didn't reset the trigger, and I panicked for a minute.  Works fine now.)