SA Revolvers: Why Pins instead of Screws?

Howdy,

Quick question for those of you who are smarter than me: why, in revolvers like the Super Blackhawks and Blackhawks, are pins used in the receiver to hold the hand and hammer instead of screws? I know that the old models of each of these revolvers use screws, so I was curious. In my Super Blackhawk, the hammer pin is constantly walking out to the right so I have to keep tapping it back in.

Here's a few theories I have:

1. Cost savings
   • they don't want to pay for the tooling for tapped holes in the receiver
   • I'm guessing QC would be more expensive because a tapped hole is more likely to be botched than a through-hole
   • Pins are cheaper than screws
     • I suspect this is the reason. An assembly tech can have buckets of pins with slightly different diameters to select one which fits the best, and if the holes in the receiver are slightly oversized, a larger pin can be used. The same would go for the hole at the base of the hammer
2. Durability
   • Pins might be stronger than screws because of the larger diameter (versus a threaded diameter
     • I don't think this is probably the case because it's not like the hammer is exposed to a lot of shearing forces during operation
3. Aesthetics
   • I could see where one would argue that pins are more elegant than screws. It has a cleaner look and nobody is going to booger up the pin by using improper tools

I don't really know that much about how these are actually assembled in the factory, so these are kind of just what comes to mind for me. What do you think? Is there a widely accepted reason that makes pins more desirable for this application?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Olon

RKRCPA said:

The hammer pin is captured by the grip frame screw and should not be capable of "walking"

Click to expand...

Which grip frame screw captures it because mine moves around quite a bit.

Maybe it's incapable of coming out but it looked pretty close. Nice to know it's being held in there though