I'd dearly love to have a close look at a SAA in .45LC. I'd bet the firing pin will fit very nicely between two cartridge rims.
Howdy
I just checked. It will not. The rims of 45 Colt cartridges in a Colt are so close they almost touch each other. The firing pin will not fit between the rims, it rides along one and then skips over to the next one. With 45 Colt, there is not enough space between rims for the firing pin to drop between rims in a revolver with a cylinder the size of a SAA. This is because the firing pin will be riding at the center of the chambers, where the rims are closest together. I will take a photo later to demonstrate this. If you tried it, the cylinder would not be positively indexed between chambers. It would probably be a different story with a SAA chambered for 38 Special or 357 Mag, but there is not enough room between rims for the firing pin with a 45.
Yes, CAS rules dictate that revolvers only are loaded with 5 rounds and the hammer must be down on an empty chamber. Even if you are shooting a Ruger with a transfer bar you must observe that rule, so that you do not have a competitive advantage over a shooter with a SAA or clone.
In Mike's case, and my own too, I am so used to only loading 5 in a SAA that I do not want to break the habit by loading 6, even if I am at the range and I am going to be perfectly safe and not drop the gun. It just makes more sense, from a muscle memory standpoint, to always do it one way.
Load one, skip one, load four more, cock the hammer and lower it and it will be on an empty chamber. I have been doing it that way for many years and will continue to do so. Yes, the so called 'safety notch' on a SAA is extremely weak, if you drop the gun onto the hammer with a live round under the hammer, there is an excellent chance it will break off either the safety notch or the sear, and the revolver will discharge. No, the old timers were not stupid, but they were no smarter than anybody today. They were familiar with these guns and new how dangerous it could be to load up all six. You did not necessarily have to drop the gun, a stirrup falling onto the hammer was a good way to shoot yourself in the leg.
Regarding only loading five in a S&W with the firing pin in the hammer, that is a completely different story. Since 1899, S&W double action revolvers were specifically designed to be safe to load all six chambers. Iver Johnson had their well publicized 'hammer the hammer' advertising campaign. Even before the WWII era hammer block was installed in Smiths, the mechanism was specifically designed to be safe with all chambers loaded. It would take much more of a blow to the hammer of a S&W, even a pre-hammer block model, to shear off the hammer so it would fire when being struck. The only case I know of where one fired when dropped was the time during WWII when one fell from the superstructure of a battleship and hit the deck, discharging and killing a sailor. So if you are climbing about high up on the superstructure of a battleship, don't drop the gun onto the deck far below. You are not going to break anything if you drop it from 3 feet.
