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Hammer Half Cock


jmcmanis

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DON'T! What possible reason would you have for removing the half cock catch on your hammer. Some day, and it WILL happen, the sear will not engage the hammer hooks correctly and the gun will go bang with possible deadly results. There is a reason Mr. Browning designed the half cock into his gun and every manufacturer puts it on their hammer. Don't be a fool.

CYa,

Pat

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The purpose of the half cock is an additional safety which disallows the hammer to strike the firing pin in the event that the hammer is partially cocked and then dropped or if the hammer hooks fail/wear out and it allows the hammer to fall unintentionally. One limitation of the half cock notch on the hammer is that its height needs to be tuned along with the height of the hammer hooks. What commonly happens is people will cut down the hammer hooks while doing a trigger job but then forget to lower the half cock notch as well and they get light strike issues because the sear lip catches slightly on the half cock notch as the hammer falls. This catching on the half cock notch slows down the hammer and causes the light strike issues. You can completely cut out the half cock notch on the hammer, but as whatmeworry says, that can lead to a very unsafe situation if the hammer falls when its not intended to do so.

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Some people are taking it off the EGW Hammer. The issue is that the hammer comes down and then sometimes bounces back to half-cock. It's not a problem at all for regular shooting because the slide is going to push the hammer back all the way anyway. It just gets a little annoying when dry firing. For me it was happening about 40% of the time.

I suspect that part of what causes the hammer to go back so easily is that unlike the stock hammer, the EGW hammer has a lot more material around the area that is near the trigger bar. Since it'll be an elastic collision between the hammer face and the firing pin stop, the hammer will bounce back a little bit. I'm guessing the trigger bar is adding a little bit of force to that backward motion, and so at times, the gun goes to half-cock after dropping the hammer.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

What are the risks involved by removing the half cock on the hammer?

What is the best method/approach to taking it out?

Thanks

My wife was experiencing the same problem, the hammer would half cock after some dry firing drills. If you disassemble your pistol and take a peek at the hammer half cock notch, you may see some wear. Simply adjust your reset/pretravel screws to ensure clearance. If you still have issues, remove material from the half cock notch until you get 100% clearance and the half cock hang-up goes away.

Henning has a great video on adjusting the reset/pretravel screws, keep that in mind when modifying your hammer.

I wouldn't recommend removing the notch completely; it's there for your safety and will likely help prevent a DQ if your pistol goes full auto!

:)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Henning has a great video on adjusting the reset/pretravel screws, keep that in mind when modifying your hammer.

:)

Where are these videos located? I've looked in his tech section and watched the dis/assem vid's but I didn't see anything about triggers?

TIA,

Sal

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