[Tropical Z]

Current Glock thread talks about this.Can anyone post a picture?

[Nero Steptoe]

I don't have any pics, but if you do a search on glocktalk, you'll easily find a few pics. A breechface failure, just as the name connotes, is a cracking or otherwise failure of the structural integrity of the breechface.

[Matthew_Q]

Must be a Glock thing... never heard of a breechface failure on any other kind of pistol.

Maybe you'll find a pic among lots of picks of Glock KBs (Ka-Boom)

[5906TswBaby]

Glocks do not have firing pin/striker rebound spring like TDA pistols, so when Glocks are dry-fired alot, the striker slams into the back of the breechface... cracks/failure on breechface.

XDs are striker fired pistols, but they have striker rebound springs. Owned an XD, and never heard of XDs having breechface failure also.

Pistols w/ firing pin/striker rebound springs absorb the impact of the firing pin/striker when they're dry fired.

[stans]

Must be a Glock thing... never heard of a breechface failure on any other kind of pistol.

1911's have been known to develop cracks radiating from the firing pin hole, so it is not just a Glock problem.

[jc2]

Glocks do not have firing pin/striker rebound spring like TDA pistols, so when Glocks are dry-fired alot, the striker slams into the back of the breechface... cracks/failure on breechface.
Does the Glock manual contain any warning or caution about dryfiring? I know some handgun manual warn against dryfiring, but I don't recall anything in the Glock manual. You have to even dryfire the Glock to fieldstrip/clean it.

[5906TswBaby]

jc2,

There's no warning in Glock manual that I know of, and you do have to dry-fire to field strip, but I think Glock engineers assumes your average shooter cleans/ field strip 20 times a year ?, not dry-fire 100 times per day ;) I think it takes tons of dry fire to have breech failures.

[jc2]

It was more just curiosity than anything--I'm a firm believer in snap caps for dryfiring. I figured Glock didn't think it was a big enough problem to merit mention (besides, I'll bet they'd send you replacement anyway).

[SelfProclaimedExpert]

Seems like people talk about the "toughness" of whatever gun without considering the nuts and bolts of the individual part interactions.

If you look at a Glock striker, you'll see that when it impacts inside its channel (when no primer or cap present), it strikes with the flat area around the primer protrusion. So every dry fire is like a small hammer striking the back of the breech face. Hit a piece of hardened steel long enough with a steel punch and its got to change the structure of both pieces. So the breechface gets brittle than cracks.

I don't drop the slide on empty for similar reasons. Too much metal smacking metal.

[Island Beretta]

Over on GT some guys were saying that the argument that glocks could be dry-fired forever without snap caps was another Glock urban legend. It is said that Glock may soon issue a release advising that snap caps be used for excessive dry-firing.

The Glock frame I saw with the breechface failure had a nice circular cut-out around the firing pin hole. It is news to me that Glocks don't have a firing pin rebound spring, I always thought they had. I will have to go check esp. since a few of us have had increased power firing pin springs installed just to ensure more positive primer strikes.

[Nero Steptoe]

Glock doesn't have a "firing pin rebound spring". It does, of course, have a striker spring, but there's no rebound feature. Absent a primer or other primer-like object, the striker smakes the rear of the breechface when dry-fired.

[Stephen A. Camp]

Hello. The photo below was taken by a friend of mine who is a police officer. Before I retired, the officer to whom this Glock 19 belonged worked on my shift. The gun was new and had had around 100 or so rounds of factory, standard pressure ball fired through it. If it had ever been dry-fired, it would have been minimal. The crack looks to me like it's about the same circumference as the base of the 9mm cartridge. Glock did replace the slide and to my knowledge, there have been no more problems with the new one.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid14/pa02c044aa2c49b9d6d57a2e563cb1452/fddfc0e8.jpg


Best.