Читать книгу The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery онлайн

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You want to check the sear mechanism with a hammer-fired pistol to make sure there won’t be “hammer follow.” The test itself is abusive, and you want to make sure it’s OK with the current owner before you do it. Insert the empty magazine and lock the slide back. Making sure nothing is contacting the trigger, press the slide release lever and let the gun slam closed. Watch the hammer. If the hammer follows to the half-cock position or the at-rest position, the sear isn’t working right. Either it has been dropped and knocked out of alignment, or more probably, someone did a kitchen table trigger job on it, and the sear is down to a perilously weak razor’s edge. Soon, it will start doing the same with live rounds, which will keep you from firing subsequent shots until you’ve manually cocked the hammer. Soon after that, if the malady goes untreated, you will attempt to fire one shot and this pistol will go “full automatic.”

Because the mechanism was designed to be cushioned by the cartridge that the slide strips off the magazine during the firing cycle, it batters the extractor (and, on 1911-type guns, the sear) to perform this test. However, it’s the best way to see if the sear is working on a duty type gun. (Most target pistols have finely ground sears and won’t pass this test, which is yet another reason you don’t want a light-triggered target pistol for combat shooting.) If this test is unacceptable to the gun’s owner, try the following. Hold the gun in the firing hand, cock it, and with the thumb of the support hand push the hammer all the way back past full cock and then release. If when it comes forward it slips by the full cock position and keeps going, the gun is going to need some serious repair.