Hammer Fired Pistos

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Hammer Fired

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In the world of modern firearms which use centerfire cartridges, there are two major types of mechanisms used to trigger the cartridge primer. One uses a hammer and another uses a striker. Therefore, mechanisms that use a hammer are called hammer-fired and the ones that use a striker are called striker fired. As you can guess, each mechanism has its own group of supporters.


In a hammer fired mechanism, the hammer is a heavy piece that is allowed to rotate about a pivot point. When the hammer is cocked, it compresses a spring. When the trigger is released, the spring pushes the hammer and forces it to rotate forward. The end of the hammer strikes the back end of a firing pin, which is a thin steel pin with a hardened tip. The front end of the firing pin strikes the primer of the cartridge, thereby detonating it. The image below shows how this works.

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In some revolvers, the firing pin is attached to the hammer directly.

Firing pin attached to the hammer of a Smith & Wesson Model 13 revolver.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.The main thing that we conclude after looking at all the images above is that a hammer-fired weapon is a rotating type mechanism.

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