Thoughts on Cocking Ejectors

[ArtS]

In a thread earlier in the day, I passed on the information that Joe Breda still was making ejector hammers and that he had them in stock.

The reason this came up was that a few days ago, I had a gun broken down to clean it and was reassembling it. The ejectors weren't cocked and I was cocking them using a short 1" hardwood dowel, which was my normal practice. I think most people use this system. When they were almost cocked the dowel slipped off, I heard them snap but there was also a high pitched ping sound and only one ejector was cocked. The other wouldn't cock and I knew right then what had happened. I removed the iron from the fore end and the sear end of the hammer fell out. So the order for a new hammer.

I thought about this for a few minutes and realized that this is likely always a danger if the dowel slips. When the ejector hammer is released normally, it strikes the rod operating the ejector. This transfers the shock of the blow to the square end of the rod with a lot of buffering. When the ejector hammer is released during cocking while out of the gun and the dowel slips, a lot of the impact of the release actually is centered on the tiny L shaped end of the hammer on the sear. This is equivalent to dry firing the gun only probably worse. I remembered another discussion about cocking the sears with the barrels off and the fore end on. Place the muzzle on the carpet and push the ejectors back into the barrel with a wood block. I tried it and this works perfectly without risking dropping the ejector hammers on the sears. I intend to do this in the future. I think it can prevent stressing a high stress area for no reason and may prevent ejector hammer breakage.

Thoughts on this?