Can you dry fire a Smith and Wesson 686-4 .357 mag revolver?

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Aim1

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This .357 revolver has the firing pin on the hammer. Can you safely dry fire it?
 
S&W manuals for their centerfire revolvers state that it OK to dry fire them. Doesn't say anything about needing snap caps. However lots of people believe that you do need them with hammer mounted firing pins (hammer noses to use S&W terminology). I dry fire mine without.
 
I dry fire mine and never had a problem. I have read accounts of the firing pin breaking though. I think the theory is that the inertia damages the firing pin when there is no primer present to stop the forward momentum.
 
The cross pin that hold the hammer nose in place may be what actually shears over time if you dry fire it without a snapcap in place. I used spent cases myself on those types of guns.
 
Since it is fairly well documented that hammer noses are less durable than frame mounted firing pins under normal use, I myself, would err on the side of caution and just use snap caps for dry firing.
 
I would clarify. If you are just dry firing it a handful of times after cleaning to make sure everything it working right and to spread the fresh lubrication around then there is no problem in dry-firing a center-fire S&W revolver independent of hammer or frame mounted firing pin.

If on the other hand your getting read for a serious session of dry-fire practice where you will dry-fire the revolver several hundred times during the practice session then it's advisable (not required) to use snap caps with a hammer mounted firing pin. Since for my own dry fire practice sessions I am also practicing my reloads I fill up some moonclips with snap caps and now I have good safe dummy cartridges to practice reloads and to dry-fire without worry.

Even if the hammer-nose firing pin is not more easily broken by dry-firing it is significantly more involved to replace (due to being riveted into the hammer) compared to a frame mounted firing pin (that is retained by a simple pin captured under the side plate) so making it last a little bit longer is probably worth the extra effort/cost of snap caps.

-rambling
 
It should be perfectly fine to do occasionally. You probably won't hurt anything during your lifetime doing it a couple dozen times every year. Dry fire it 100 times everyday and I expect to run into a problem eventually.
 
Dry fire it 100 times everyday and I expect to run into a problem eventually.
Click to expand...

Fire it 100 times everyday and you'll eventually run into a problem if dry firing or live firing. On MOST firearms I'm of the opinion that firing pins and most other parts other than the barrel will break at the same round count whether they are dry fires or live fires. Obviously someone who does a lot of dry firing practice is going to get a lot more cycles of everything than the guy who only live fires so those guns appear to wear out sooner.

There are of course many guns that should not be dry fired and you need to know which ones are OK.
 
I managed to break the firing pin on my model 66 long ago, but only after years and years and hundreds upon hundreds of cycles of dry-firing (I used the gun in various LE training programs; even after I went to an automatic, I still kept my skills up with it). Then again, I also fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds through it, so, who knows. I have never broken a firing pin on a carbon steel S&W...
 
I'm one who for years has believed that it hurts nothing to dry fire them, and I'm sort of still in that camp. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand cycles, dry or live fire, and something will probably break. What caused it? Who knows. Maybe it just wore out?

A set of snap caps is cheap insurance though and don't hurt anything apparently.
 
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I have broken a hammer mounted firing pin on my 19-2. Hard to precisely say what was the culprit, but that gun probably got 50 dry fires for every live round it shot so that’s probably what it was. Better stay safe and use snap caps.
 
I’ve dry fired my S&W’s for decades. I’ve never broken a pin or sheared a retainer pin. And I mean literally millions of dry firings.
But, most of my guns had received trigger jobs that reduced spring tension.
Which reminds me, I need to start my dry firing program ahead of the competition season...
Yeah, 50 to 1 sounds about right, NF.
 
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