FAL: Ok to dry fire without snap caps?

[The Real Hawkeye]

I would like to do some dry fire practice with my STG-58 FAL variant. Is there any problem with this? Do I need snap caps? Anyone dry fire without snap caps and then have a problem as a result?

 

[lrhuntr]

dont do it.you will wreck the hammer springs

 

[RugerNo]

A surefire way to stress relieve steel is to continually pound on it with a hammer. A snap cap softens that blow on the firing pin. You decide.

 

[The Real Hawkeye]

Snap caps work great for dry fire practice on something like a Winchester 94, because you can just keep thumb cocking the hammer for repeated dry fires. No way to do that, that I can see, with the FAL, though. Seems to me you'd have to keep ejecting it and then loading it again into the mag and chambering it again for each dry fire. Don't like putting plastic or aluminum through my weapon's action so often, because bits of plastic and aluminum strip off and get into the works. How do you all do dry fire drills with your FALs, if at all? Give me the step by step details. Don't military trainers instruct frequent dry fire drills? Mauser 98 type actions can be dry fired till kingdom come, and no appreciable harm is done to their firing pins or hammers. Are FAL components inherently more prone to damage than those of a Mauser 98.

 

[iamkris]

Certainly you need snap caps. Because those battle rifles are WAY too delicate for dry firing.

For heavens sake...ITS A BATTLE RIFLE not some woosey benchrest queen. Dry fire the heck out of it.

 

[db_tanker]

iamkris...you better not let the snap-cap manufacturers hear you say that...they might send ninja's to your house...


and tell me...has your sister ever been bitten by a moose?


D

 

[BruceB]

The FAL is indeed a battle rifle and may be dryfired extensively without harm. It was my service rifle in the Canadian Army back in the early '60s, and we dry-fired a LOT.

The only caution flag I'd raise, is that one should NOT dryfire an FAL if the bolt carrier group is not in the rifle to stop the hammer's fall. In such a case, the hammer strikes the front edge of its receiver slot with enough force that it could either batter the slot, or maybe even become fatigued sufficiently to break off at the impact point, which is just above the axis of the hammer pin. There's a lot of energy being concentrated on a very small part of the hammer when it impacts the receiver.

 

[The Real Hawkeye]

The FAL is indeed a battle rifle and may be dryfired extensively without harm. It was my service rifle in the Canadian Army back in the early '60s, and we dry-fired a LOT.

The only caution flag I'd raise, is that one should NOT dryfire an FAL if the bolt carrier group is not in the rifle to stop the hammer's fall. In such a case, the hammer strikes the front edge of its receiver slot with enough force that it could either batter the slot, or maybe even become fatigued sufficiently to break off at the impact point, which is just above the axis of the hammer pin. There's a lot of energy being concentrated on a very small part of the hammer when it impacts the receiver.

Thanks Bruce. That's what I figured, but it is good to finally hear it from someone with extensive first hand experience on the subject. Did you ever hear of an armorer fixing an FAL and stating that the reason for the needed repair was too much dry firing practice? Thanks.