USFA birdshead hammer - project gun

[Capt. Wiley]

I am turning a USFA pre-war into a sheriff's model. I know I could sell the pistol as it was and bought one or another model but my wife bought me this pistol new in 2008, she is not a gun person at all,  she  got a friend of mine to help her and  ordered a pre-war in .357 with 5.5 inch barrel, as a promotion gift for making E-9 and USFA gave her a great deal on it.

The gun is beautiful but it never shot well at all. When I first went to fire it, the timing was great but the trigger pull was terrible and  on the 3rd shot the hand broke in two. It sat in my safe for awhile then I  fitted a uberti hand to it and cleaned up the notches on the hammer at the same time because they were really rough.  I couldn't get it to group, figured out it had a burr n the crown. I recut the crown and the groups shrunk drastically, then the bolt broke. So it sat in my safe for years.

I finally retired and now have time to work on some projects and have been working on this one. I put in a new bolt all new springs and did an action job and  now have a crisp 4# trigger, I took the barrel off, cut it down to 3 inches set the site back and regulated it to POI for my normal load. I machined the ejector boss off the frame and lightly fluted the frame like colt did on some of the early sheriff's models that they produced, and fit a uberti birds heard backstrap to it and had one piece Giraffe bone grips installed.

Right now it is apart boxed up ready to ship out to be nickle plated with fire blue screws, hammer, trigger and base pin at least it was until I saw the link that Buckaroo Lou posted. Is the hammer on that a  Bisley hammer or is it even lower?

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/960517894

[Buckaroo Lou]

Capt. Wiley, If I were guessing I would say a Bisley. The only person that might know for certain is GaryG.

[GaryG]

USFA called them a Birdshead hammer.  The first one was made by welding the bottom half of a "regular" SA hammer to the top half of a Bisley hammer.  Drawings and dimensions taken and from that point on they were all one piece hammers.  If you can find one, it should drop into your USFA single action.  It will not work in a Bisley