Ruger Blackhawk double tap?

[MeekandMild]

I saw a really weird trick shooting stunt on cable TV a few days ago. There was a guy with a "special" Ruger Blackhawk shooting steel reactive targets. He shot a double tap with the pistol, two shots so close together that the second shot hit the target as it was being knocked away by the first one.

How did he do that? Blackhawk is a single action pistol.

 

[James Bondrock]

That's interesting. The only two ways I can think of are "fanning" the hammer, or shooting with a two-hand hold wherein the non-shooting hand is used to cock the hammer for the next shot. Some of the top cowboy shooters are pretty fast with this method. The "special" gun may have had some internal modifications, perhaps a lighter hammer with a shorter throw, and almost certainly an extremely light trigger. The ammunition was likely handloaded for very low velocity/recoil.

 

[Jim March]

There's a number of possibilities.

Was he using one hand, or two?

A guy who is REALLY fast with just one hand will cock it with the thumb during the draw, fire with the trigger, then keep holding the trigger back while "thumbing off" another shot. YES, you can do this with an SA revolver. It's a bit tough on the gun but not TOO bad...technically the second shot is being "hammer slipped" with the thumb. You can get off a whole string of hammer-fired shots while holding the trigger back.

"Fanning" means he did the same basic thing but on the second shot, swiped the hammer with his off-hand palm. Again, the trigger is pulled back on the first and all subsequent shots.

The most difficult variant is the "five fingered fan". Strong-hand thumb cocks during the draw, strong-hand trigger finger fires and holds, and then each finger on the off-hand fires another shot in turn...imagine curling all your fingers in sequence. All five rounds can fire in less than a second...this is with either very light loads or more likely, blanks. Rate of fire borders full-auto territory...sounds like a single "riiiip".

"Fanning" beats the hell out of the gun. Bob Munden is both a gunsmith and artist with this stuff, entering various trick-shooting competitions and beefing Rugers up to where they'll cope with these stresses, at least for a while. The safety gets ditched, among other mods...

 

[c_yeager]

Ive seen a very few SA revolvers that had something of an "auto-fan" arrangement. Im not up on the method enough to explain how it works very well. But i believe the idea is to reshape the firing pin in such a way that escaping gas can push the hammer back for the next shot. Im not sure if it requires piercing the primer or not to pull it off.

More likely the guy was just REALLY REALLY good.

 

[BluesBear]

...escaping gas can push the hammer back...

I think whoever told you this was pulling your leg. That would be very dangerous!
Besides the primer would flow into the firing pin hole and lock the gun up.


In fast single action shooting you use your support hand thumb to recock as the revolver comes down out of recoil.

 

[Imaginos]

Slip Hammering

In his book "Cowboy Action Pistol Shooting" Charles Stephens describes a process called "slip hammering" where the off hand thumb is used to draw back the hammer and allow it to slip forward to fire the gun. He states that it is almost as fast as the traditional double tap executed with his Glock.

Unlike fanning where the offhand is used to slap the hammer back with a hard jeking motion that rapidly batters the gun, the slip hammer method seems to be much easier on the action.

Elmer Keith wrote about his friend John Newman in his book "Sixguns".
Newman's "slip guns" had the triggers completely removed from the gun and the hammer spur relocated about half way down the back of the hammer. The thumb of the shooting hand grasped the hammer spur and held it down thus "cocking" the gun. When you ar ready to shoot, you allow the hammer spur to slip out from under the thumb joint and fire the weapon. Keith says that this was the most breakage resistant gunfighting weapon available, but once you mastered the slip gun you lost the ability to do good work with a trigger.

With the low velocity / low recoil loads common to Cowboy Action Shooting, I have no doubt that this would be an extremely fast method of firing a SA revolver. I would like to see the comparison in speed between a CAS load and a full house factory load. The difference would probably not be much, but I think it would be detectable.

 

[Jim March]

There WAS a "semiauto conversion" for SAs way back in the day. It had nothing to do with gasses though...they rigged a rod parallel to the barrel and a sliding weight on the rod that had a linkage to the hammer. You cocked it for the first shot, and then recoil cocked it again. Or you could even "shake cock it" for the first shot by giving it a front/back jiggle.

And yes, if you held the trigger back, you had full-auto fire. Sorta. In a ridiculously stupid fashion .

It was NOT real popular at all...but it did exist circa 1880ish.

 

[MeekandMild]

This guy was not fanning the pistol. I don't know what he did. They played back their video at 1/20 speed and I STILL couldn't see him do anything except squeeze the trigger. The two shots at 1/20 speed sounded about like 2 shots from a machine gun. It was really weird.

 

[SDC]

There HAVE been instances of a single-action revolver going full-auto because of a too-sharp hammer-mounted firing-pin causing pierced primers; in these cases, the gases escaping from the pierced primer had enough force to throw the hammer back and index the cylinder to the next chamber. I'd imagine it would be an interesting experience if you weren't expecting it.
In this case though, it sounds like a trick shooter doing some variation of fanning or slip-firing.

 

[BluesBear]

OK, I'll bite...

There HAVE been instances of a single-action revolver going full-auto because of a too-sharp hammer-mounted firing-pin causing pierced primers; in these cases, the gases escaping from the pierced primer had enough force to throw the hammer back and index the cylinder to the next chamber.

Show me.

 

[AgentOrange]

boy, this thread ended abruptly didnt it?

 

[Virginian]

Sounds like Bob Munden. I've seen him rip off three (3) rounds from his Colt so fast it sounded like one slightly longer than normal report. And he hit three (3) different balloons doing it, too.

 

[tomh1426]

Bob munden does it, I seen this video a million times and I still love watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYdkt7yIFLY