I’ve been using speed hammers in three of my No 1s for a while now, 7mm Mauser, 220 swift, and a 204. I haven’t ever had a problem with them.

Last spring I installed 400-grain speed hammers in my hunting rifles, 7mm Remington 1 B, and my 25-06 1 B. One thing I notice right from the get/go was light firing pin dents. In fact I started having miss fires in the 25-06 so I changed the hammer spring back to the factory spring. The miss fires stopped but the primer dents were still on the light side. I didn’t have any problems with the 7mm all summer until last Saturday, opening day of the Colorado antelope season.

Opening day started as any other opening day, parked the truck by the section fence and walked a half-mile in the dark to one of my favorite ambush spots and then laid down in the sage brush and wait for shooting light. Right at shooting light a 17†buck walked within 100 yards of me to the east. I lined up on him, thumbed the safety off, and pulled the trigger, “CLICKâ€. He didn’t run away. He couldn’t figure out what I was or what that noise was but when I opened the action and the case went “Ka-ching†against the safety, he was out of there. Unfortunately for the buck his exit strategy took him right into the waiting arms of my hunting partner, ¾ of a mile away. Needless to say, I wasn’t happy.

I missed shots on 3 more bucks the same way. I finally took a “meat buck†on Tuesday with my wife’s Encore 243 with the bantam buttstock on it, what a pain in the ass the little stock was to hunt with.

Moral of the story; if it doesn’t look right and it doesn’t feel right, done go hunting with it. It may be fine at the shooting range but not in the field were it really counts.

After I finish cutting up the last of the meat today, those 2 rifles get their factory hammers put back in them. I can’t say that I’ve seen any real improvement in accuracy so those speed hammers are out of there.

Ruger No. 1 rifles are noted for having light hammer blows. It seems to me that reducing the weight of their hammers to gain a couple milliseconds in lock time would inccrease the rifle's tendency to produce these misfires due to light pin srikes.

I believe that's what you experienced. If anything, the No. 1's need stronger springs and heavier hammers!

What’s interesting about this week is I took my Swift and 204 with me to shoot prairie dogs. Both of them have speed hammers also. I fired 160+ rounds through the Swift this week and around 600 rounds through both of them this summer and about the same last summer with no miss fires or light strikes. So go figure. Different guns different personalities.

any chance the firing pin has some drag or other issue?

quote:

Originally posted by Hairtrigger:
any chance the firing pin has some drag or other issue?

There was no obvious drag that I detected this last spring when I had them apart. At the time the transfer blocks moved pretty freely when I pushed them with a pin punch.

The first 3 rifles (7mm Mauser, 220 Swift, and 204 Ruger) I installed speed hammers on all work fine, very normal firing pin marks. The interesting thing was, when the 25-06 started miss firing I changed the hammer spring back to the factory spring and the miss fires stopped. Right then and there I should have stepped back and realized that there was something wrong with this picture.

My biggest mistake was to assume that just because the 7mm Mag hadn’t had a miss fire, it was OK to go hunting with. Wrong! The 7mm Mag has been my “go to†rifle for 14 years and here I am goofing around, changing things when they're not broken.

That's a darned shame (about the antelope, that is).

Still, there are a lot of gadgets on the market which really don't solve a problem other than helping the seller earn a living. Maybe Ruger speed hammers are one of them.

I honestly suspect ol' Bill Ruger's hired boys and he maybe had a reason for the weight of hammer and spring they designed into the No. 1 to start with. Not perfect, but work reliably.

That's definitely not a criticism of you. But, it does make me wonder a tiny bit about the folks making and selling said speed hammers to honest, hard-working hunters such as yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
That's a darned shame (about the antelope, that is).

Still, there are a lot of gadgets on the market which really don't solve a problem other than helping the seller earn a living. Maybe Ruger speed hammers are one of them.

I honestly suspect ol' Bill Ruger's hired boys and he maybe had a reason for the weight of hammer and spring they designed into the No. 1 to start with. Not perfect, but work reliably.

That's definitely not a criticism of you. But, it does make me wonder a tiny bit about the folks making and selling said speed hammers to honest, hard-working hunters such as yourself.

Another possible option for light firing pin blows is to use a softer primer. The Federals come to mind....

The 7mm Mag and the 25-06 went to the range yesterday with their factory hammers and springs reinstalled. Life is normal again.

I also took the Swift and 204 with me (400 and 330 grain speed hammers installed). Their firing pin blows were the same as the 7mm and the 25. The 7 Mauser also has a normal firing pin blow. So I have a 60% success rate with speed hammers. All evidence is pointing to weak springs on the last 2 hammers I bought.

I’m going to call Moulds and see what they say and maybe get some replacement springs. I won’t put speed hammers back in my big game rifles again, but I do have my eye on a couple of new (new to me anyway) No 1 Vs.

Like MikinColo I too have a speed lock hammer. Mine is the 400gr model. I noticed when I put in the new spring that it had much more tension and I had trouble getting this spring in. Hy #1 is a 25-06 an old model with the adjustable trigger. This new hammer has never giving any ignition trouble. I know that the CCI primers are very hard and do not ignite in my Stiller BR Viper action. So I have been using Federal Match primers in all my precision loads, the 25-06 Antelope loads is one of them. This rifle when I bought it was very much butchered about it. The forearm was a disaster. After a lot of rework and installing the speed lock hammer it became a 1/4" rifle.

Non of my other four #1 have speed lock hammer, and they seem to do just fine.

Like Colo yesterday I went to my favorite ambush spot where we saw six Antelope the night before. Hiked out in the dark next morning alas the animals were not there anymore. We drove all day in the prairie with high winds blowing all day never got any closer than 540 yards. Until very late in the afternoon a 385 yrd shot presented itself, but what of the wind 11" high and a foot forward made the kill. It was a guess shot, but after a day of nothing it was the best available and you only get one shot.

I was using 100gr TSX Moly plated bullets and Reloder 22. Vel. 3420ft this is a hot load at 65ksi

The sitting position with shooting sticks could not be used because of the knee high grass all over. The long shooting sticks are not all that steady in the wind. A tough day of hunting.

Good shootin Fred!!

Sounds like a pretty darn good guess to me Zermel.

quote:

Originally posted by MickinColo:
Sounds like a pretty darn good guess to me Zermel.

Ill bet when it all comes down to the bottom line, we'd have to credit more of that shot to experience and skill than to just a good guess. Funny how the more skilled and experienced folks get, the luckier they become.

Tim and MickinColo.
Thanks for the compliments. Elevation out to 400yards is no problem but windage is a demon. Antelope hunting around here is complicated since you only have three certain days with a tag available only every 3-4 years. I be 83 by the time I can get another tag. Really to old to cut the mustard.

Anyway I was lucky to get an animal under the rough condition. The Antelope is all cut up and in the freezer.
I will take my Custom H&R 257 Roberts and my 7x57 Ruger#1 for deer in two weeks. I have six deer tags, they issue two tags for each application, two WTails and two Mulies plus a general WTail buck and one supplemental tag in a special Zone. All these deer are very easy to get. Five deer I will have give away.

But it will keep me hunting all November, not that I have too. It simply is a thrill packing a single shot rifle.

To harvest the deer two tags are issued per draw to cut down the number of hunters in certain zones.

One thing I wont have to take a 400 yard shot on deer. I have shot a lot of Antelopes and the last one was the longest shot shot I ever had to make for an Antelope. It used to be that you could shoot either sex, not any more.

This year there were more bucks than does. Groups of 6-8 Bucks were not unusual. One has to be very careful not to shoot the wrong kind, specially at long range, besides you don't have much time to figure the range and wind, find the right sex, standing alone, and set up to make a shot.