I will be picking up a new pistol this week and before going to the range I like to lub per the manufacturers instructions. Then I like to dry fire about 500 times to smooth the action. Is it necessary to use a snap cap to keep the firing pin from crystallizing? What does the Sig brotherhood feel about this using your collective wisdom?

Personally I think it is cheap insurance to use a snap cap. I do not use one every time I dry fire a pistol of mine for a dozen or so rounds once in a while but I would use one for the quantity you are talking about.

I like to use 'em. It's allegedly unnecessary with modern firearms, but I see no sense in not reducing abuse when I can.

For my Walther PPS M2 it's highly recommended, unless you like having to take the slide apart to replace the plastic firing pin guide on a regular basis. Or so they say on the Walther forums.

I never used them but I have one rifle that I'll use a spent 22 cal cartridge to reduce shock to firing pin (it's a hard pin to find). As for Sigs,ARs and the like nope. Chris

If you got em, use em, if not I wouldn't sweat it.

I dry fire 60-90 minutes a day and have never had an issue that was related to dry firing.

On my SIGs I drop an o-ring in the channel in front of the hammer, I've seen others use foam earplugs... And yes, I've dry fired enough to break FPPP's on a P226 and P220.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Personally I think it is cheap insurance to use a snap cap. I do not use one every time I dry fire a pistol of mine for a dozen or so rounds once in a while but I would use one for the quantity you are talking about.

IMO, says it all. Why play guessing games?

In addition, red/orange snap-caps provide a clear visual indicator that a live round is not in the chamber. Poor lighting, tired eyes, bad day at the office, whatever and it's possible to mistake a live round for an empty chamber.

They may or may not be needed but they are cheap insurance. I will say that I dry fired a metric ton in the military and those guns had even more dry fire on them. No snap caps no problem. However I own snap caps and use them for the most part.

Not only is it cheap insurance, but they are absolutely needed to practice other gun manipulations like reloads and malfunction clearance.

So, get them and get some good training value out of those 500rds by working in reloads and malf. drills while your at it anyway.

If it's a SIG, I say yes. We have seen photgraphic evidence here of broken roll pine and firing pin positioning pins.

I use snap caps for my CF pistols. For my RF pistol I make a kind of snap cap from ejected casings.

I'm in the pro-snap cap camp, at least if you're talking about regular dry fire practice. I've broken the hammer nose on a S&W revolver from dry firing. I have a preference for A-Zoom.

Occasional dry firing for maintenance and function check purposes, for the most part, not necessary, IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by henryarnaud:
Occasional dry firing for maintenance and function check purposes, for the most part, not necessary, IMO.

This is the key. For extended training like what you're going to do I'd use one.

I really don't care one way or the other. I dry fire a lot and use them only if handy.

I really didn't care for using Snap Caps....until I broke a firing pin in a Beretta Tomcat(.32acp) by dry firing the little guy.

I now use 'em. Cheap insurance, IMO.

Snap caps for rimfire, no question.

I haven't broken acenterfire CZ, S&W, Sig, Pardini or Beretta yet. By dryfiring.

FPPP from a P229SSE broken during dry firing.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: gaspipes,

quote:

Originally posted by henryarnaud:
...I've broken the hammer nose on a S&W revolver from dry firing...

When I bought a new M66-2 years ago, I used once-fired cases since I didn't have any snap caps, and they worked fine. I changed them out every 100 or so snaps, and dry-fired about 1,500 times before my first range trip.

It was worth the effort. No damage to the revolver, and a friend who I let handle the little gun said it was the nicest trigger job he ever felt. I still have it.

Not all SIG firing pin positioning pins (FPPPs) are broken by dry-firing without a good snap cap, but all broken firing pin positioning pins were broken by dry-firing without a good snap cap. (Or something like that.)

As usual with these types of questions, there are many variables to consider that more often than not aren’t. The model pistol and type of firing pin mechanism differs among SIG models as do the firing pin retaining pins. In this case we actually know how much dry-firing the questioner intends, but most of the time it’s nothing more than, “Does dry-firing hurt my gun?” There’s a vast difference between snapping a few times at the teevee or during function testing, and the regimens that some people claim to follow of dry-firing hundreds of times each and every day.

I’m no expert on the topic, but it seems obvious that solid hard steel pins are more likely to actually break in two than the roll pins that SIG originally used to retain the separate breechblocks and later went back to as FPPPs. A roll pin can be severely damaged without the operator’s ever becoming aware of it. I’ve also come to suspect that some solid FPPPs were more susceptible to breaking than others.

And something for owners of older SIGs with separate breechblocks in the slide is that it’s important that the retaining pin hold the block tightly. If the breechblock is allowed to move at all during firing, additional stresses are placed on the frame rails. It’s recommended that the retaining pins be replaced every 5000 rounds for that reason. Will damage from dry-firing cause the pins to become loose? I don’t know for certain, but it seems very likely.

Snap caps also vary in quality and design. I’ve seen some that I’m pretty sure serve no useful purpose after a few dozen uses. I normally use the A-Zoom variety, but the primer material even in those becomes indented in short order; are they still effective? How to tell?

With hammer-fired SIGs the most obvious best method to protect all parts of the gun is to put cushioning material under the hammer for it to strike. With some models it’s easy to wedge a properly-sized O ring between hammer and firing pin. Unfortunately, that’s not easy with some guns, but other types of cushioning material could be substituted. If using a piece of foam that’s designed to be pushed into one’s ear, consider how many hammer strikes it will take to flatten it to the thickness and effectiveness of a piece of paper.

This is one of those questions to which negative answers are of little value: “I smoke four packs of unfiltered a day and don’t have lung cancer yet,” doesn’t tell us anything about whether doing that is a good idea. “I don’t use snap caps and haven’t broken my gun yet,” is equally useful. I’m not concerned about what guns aren’t broken or who doesn’t have lung cancer, I’m concerned about who has lung cancer and why, and who has broken their guns and why. If the latter is because they didn’t use snap caps, then I’ll try to avoid the same mistake.