Henry Rifle Forums

Got my new Cattleman 12 shot .22 revolver and had been reading about the new floating firing pin safety that Uberti has been using recently on most all their SA revolvers. One thing I did notice on mine was when pulling hammer back the breakaway was notchy sometimes and not quite as smooth as my other older Uberti's.
So my plan is to remove the accuating plunger that you see and measure the thickness of rod that backs up the firing pin. With that figure for thickness of a hard spacer to go behind the firing pin and remove the plunger and spring. From what I have read doing this also reduces the extra friction on the action and of course makes it a 11 shooter...load 3 skip and load eight with hammer down on an empty chamber for carry like my other revolvers.

Now Taylors and Co. does have a old style hammer and trigger for the 6 shot revolvers to eliminate the safety setup as well as giving the 4 click action back instead of the 3 click setup with safety. But don't know yet if it works with the shorter cycle travel of the .22 12 shot action.
Will call them tomorrow about that and if not install my backup plan.

Mounted the hammer on a block to measure height of firing pin to hammer surface.

Good project for these chilly winter's days. It's just silly that you can't buy a new firearm the way you want it. You have to buy what the manufacture is putting together and then make it yours. I'm sure that a lot of these type of safety features are dictated by the manufacturers lawyers.

Paul

Well I punched out two .210 diameter shims from tough feeler gauge material a .030 and .014. They drop in the firing pin hole in the hammer to raise the firing pin to same height as the pin safety plunger would do. Now the pin has a shouldered flat ground in that lets it slide a bit back and forth to let the safety feature work. I found that the flat is ground just a touch too long letting the firing pin free float more than it needs. This is causing the pin to rub on the firing pin hole in frame when you start to cock the hammer which is what I noticed when I worked the action the first times.
Think I can slightly relieve the top part of the frame hole to fix this drag point. If you hold the revolver bore up the pin drops slightly and clears the hole.
That feeler gauge material is tough stuff. I had my hole punch block set up in my hyd. press with the 1/4 inch punch and slowly brought pressure up till it popped the hole and the needed slug/shim. Hammer wasn't going to do the job.
Should have it all back together tomorrow and a test fire.

All back together and did a test fire in the shop using 22 Quiets with the bullet pulled and they fired fine. Action is smoother too after polishing up contact areas and that initial hammer stickyness is gone.

Congrats on a job well done. Now you have an 11 shooter .... unless you like to live dangerously.

Paul

Nice Job.
Looking at the picture makes me wonder if you could fill the groove in the firing pin safety plunger with epoxy or somesuch. Then leave the spring out , put it back in all the way up and re-pin in the up position.
Or get lazy and just superglue it in the up position .