Who makes the softest pistol primers for .38/.357? By this I mean, requiring the least impact from the hammer?

I was lucky enough to recover, after about 10 years, an original Colt Trooper in .357 that had been stolen from my home. It had been severly abused - the hammer spur crudely ground off, factory target grips gone, wide grooved trigger ground smooth, rust pits, etc. My brother was going through Yavapai College's gunsmithing degree program and one of his fellow students needed a Colt v-spring as a required project. So my abused Trooper was beadblasted (pits too deep to polish out without removing stamps), a new target hammer and trigger put on and an action job performed for free. Pretty lucky, eh?

But in double action, the gun does not always set off the primer. So I could replace the springs and start all over again, but I was thinking about trying softer primers. Any thoughts?

Yes, here's a thought. Replace the hammer spring. You don't want to depend on always having ammunition loaded with a super-soft (thin, sensitive, whatever) primer for your firearm to function.

Oops -- one more thought. Have you checked to see that the hammer rebound mechanism is not defective and keeping the hammer from falling all the way each time?

Thanks for the suggestions. I will check on replacing the spring, and check on the rebound spring. I have not shot factory ammo in .38 or .357 in years, though, and I do not want a DA trigger pull that only a gorilla can work easily.

Stonecreek has the right thought, those were the days when revolvers were made by selective assembly so a simple interchange may not be right. Some fitting may be necessary. You certainly wouldn't want to depend onsoft primers , you obviously have marginal ignition which has to be fixed.

I have been using Winchester primers, since I can pick them up in bulk at low prices at the guns shows, and thought that I would try other brands of primers as a fast, inexpensive way to check and eliminate that as a factor before taking the gun apart.

Well Don't know if this will help but after doing trigger work on my S&W 357 I did have problems. Called the people I got the Trigger kit from said it was the primers I was useing. I swiched to Fed. Primers and problem went away. cci & win didn't fire even though they had a big dent from the fireing pin. If you check around you will find other people will tell you Fed. primers are more sensative. Hope this helps. If the gun is stock it should shoot anything I did do trigger work on mine. One last the other thing I was told to check was that my primer was seated all the way.

Federal primers for sure. I used to shoot in early revolver IPSC like matches and had my double action pull smoothed and lightened to the point that it would only fire Federal primers reliably, no others.

Thanks for the help. I'll try some Federal primers. If that doesn't work, it's time for a new spring or two.