Dry firing and mechanical triggers - how much ?

[JulianY]

At the moment I estimate my dry fire routeen but true dryfire and rika trainning to be in the region of 250 - 300 shots per week , no problems with an AP but what about a 22? The two pistols I am considering are the SP1 and AW 93. The SP1 is fine no pin movement. The aw93 (a lot cheeper) cliams it is designed to dry fire with no cap!

Is 300 shots per moth a lot of dry fire ? how many do you do?

Could an aw93 sustain this ?

JY

[Steve Swartz]

Julian:

I dry fire at least 10-1 for training (more for cartridge guns) and have a bit of experience with dry firing .22s. I humbly offer the following (forum experts welcome to disagree of course) two observations:

1) Out of the various .22 designs that have stated "O.K. to Dry Fire," none of them were. Each design (firing pin shoulder against stop, hammer limiter, etc.) would wear and eventually either firing pin broke (best case) or breech face got peened.

therefore

2) Always use a snap cap of some type; spent cartridge, bit of rubber, rubber band around breech face, etc. etc. or just go ahead and buy some commercially available ones. Yes, they wear out. Yes, it is tedious to recock for each snap. But yes, the snap caps are cheaper than bbroken firing pin springs/firing pins/breech faces!

Never had a problem with any other component- just firing pins, firing pin springs, and stuff the firing pin smacks.

Steve

[Axel]

AW93 fiering pin is thick and very durable, impossible to break imho. I have no idea what about other parts that can break due to dry fiering. (Steve) But a friend in my club have done lots of dry fiering with his AW93 without any problems.

[Mike T.]

Interesting to note that the manual for the AW93 seems to warn against using a dry-fire plug or snap-cap.
To quote:
"Dry-firing must be practised without buffer cartridge."

Or is this just a case of incorrect translation into English. Perhaps it should read "can", rather than "must"?

Mike T.

[JulianY]

I just re read my original post I should has said 250 - 300 per week not month!

[Steve Swartz]

Not familiar with the AW93 design- maybe someone has finally broken the code on dry firing .22s!

What does the firing pin smack against to prevent it hitting the breech face?

The energy has to go somewhere . . . If the firing pin won't wear, whatever it hits surely will.

The older model Ruger Mark IIs had a deal where the firing pin had a shoulder that smacked against a ledge inside the bolt. The firing pins were fine . . . the ledge was fine . . . after some hundreds of hits, however, the two parts wore enough to allow the firing pin nose to hit the breech face.

I'm not sure the engineers plan on us dry firing as much as most (many) of us do.

My only point is this: Keep an eye on the bits that smack together.

If the owner's manual truly states not to use a snap cap, then I retract that bit of advice. But other pistols I have owned have claimed that "dry firing is o.k." only to find that apparently it is o.k. if done ocasionally, not 30 or so times daily for years.

Steve Swartz

[Andreas]

I own a AW93 since 4 years. I bought it from a tecnician working at feinwerkbau factory. He told me the design of the AW 93 allowes to dryfire as often you want No bumper nessesary. If there is no cartrige in the camber the firing pin will be stopped at his shoulder. The involved sourfaces are designed tho absorb the energy.

[ColinC]

My old Unique DES69U seems to me to be the perfect pistol for dry firing. A heavy bolt which you can screw through from just under the rear sight, protrudes enough to catch the hammer after it travels 3-4mm (quarter of an inch for those not metrically enlightened).
It enables you to feel the trigger and release without the need for the firing pin to slam into anything. It is a pity someone else has not taken up the open design of the Unique. They rarely need cleaning because all the residue just blows away.
I haven't used the Unique for a couple of years. Loaned it to a young club member at the state titles this month and he beat me! Maybe I should go back to it!!

[ColinC]

My old Unique DES69U seems to me to be the perfect pistol for dry firing. A heavy bolt which you can screw through from just under the rear sight, protrudes enough to catch the hammer after it travels 3-4mm (quarter of an inch for those not metrically enlightened).
It enables you to feel the trigger and release without the need for the firing pin to slam into anything. It is a pity someone else has not taken up the open design of the Unique. They rarely need cleaning because all the residue just blows away.
I haven't used the Unique for a couple of years. Loaned it to a young club member at the state titles this month and he beat me! Maybe I should go back to it!!

[Mark Briggs]

Julian - I learned this tip from a former Soviet-bloc shooter who shoots an AW93 and of course shot its Russian counterpart which is the progenitor of the AW93 design. I also applied this technique in my pistol and it works fabulously.

Let's start with how the pistol normally works... The hammer rotates on a cross pin. When the slide moves to the rear it rotates the hammer around its rotational axis into the cocked position. When viewed by the shooter this looks at first like the hammer is being pushed backward and then downward under the slide, where the sear engages it and holds it in the cocked position. Any time the slide is more than halfway open it is effectively above the hammer, blocking the hammer from rotating.

The beauty of the AW93 design is that the trigger disconnector allows the trigger to re-connect after the slide has moved forward only a little bit from its rear-most position. With the slide almost fully open the hammer is effectively blocked from moving very far by the breech block portion of the slide. When you pull the trigger the hammer moves upward a tiny bit before coming into contact with the BOTTOM of the breech block. All you hear is a little "click" as the hammer has had no opportunity to build up kinetic energy.


Use a piece of plastic, wood or similar to prop the slide partially open (I had a piece of wood with a plastic tongue glued to it - the tongue went into the chamber, thus stopping the block of wood from falling off the pistol when I re-cocked it. Whatever you use, you'll have to trim it to the proper length to get it just right, which will likely take about 5 minutes. With the slide propped open at a point just forward of where the trigger becomes active one can VERY safely dry-fire the pistol. And recocking the pistol for the next dryfire takes very little effort as one only has to move the slide a small amount, perhaps 1cm.

Hope this helps. I know I was very pleased when my friend showed me this technique as I found it to be tremendously useful.

[Pradeep5]

My aw93 came with a red plastic "plug". If you cut off the top bit that sticks up into the sightline, it makes a great plug for dry-firing.

[Andreas]

Hello,
I had the same Idea when i got my AW93. But the man from Feinwerkbau told me not to do so.
The red part is a securety mark to tell arange officer the camber is empty. Feinwerkbau adet the little tongue to prevent the use of this part by dryfiring.

[Pradeep5]

Feinwerkbau probably wouldn't tell you to do such a thing to what they may consider a safety device, personally if I'm running a range the small red plug from FWB is insufficient proof of an unloaded condition, I want to see the slide locked open, magazine empty and out. If the slide can't lock open (pretty common with some European guns like old GSPs), something like a plastic toothbrush down the magazine well works.

When using the cutoff plug there is zero chance of the firing pin (very substantial as it is) striking the breechface. And it's true, the feel of the aw93 dry firing is very gentle, almost like an air pistol.