Schofield Hammer Block Safety

[gunboat57]

I recently bought an Uberti Schofield in 45 Colt with a 7" barrel. Absolutely love it so far. I can hold 2" groups at 25 yards off a rest with 260 gr LSWCs. POI is POA, too. This is in spite of the sight picture looking like a utility pole in a railway cutting, and a creepy trigger.
Mine has the hammer block safety. Because cocking the hammer felt kinda rough, I removed the hammer block and only loaded 5 chambers for safety.
That got rid of some roughness but didn't really improve the trigger pull. So I put the hammer block back in.
I just want to share some observations about this hammer block safety based on studying the Uberti patent and how my gun operates.
Starting with hammer fully down, the first quiet click as the hammer is pulled back is the hammer block rising into the safe position.
The second click is half cock where the bolt drops, cylinder is free to rotate, ratchet hand is retracted, hammer block in safe position. This is where loading/unloading is done.
The third click is full cock. The bolt has locked the cylinder, and the hammer block is still up in the safe position.
As the hammer falls, it drags the hammer block down out of the way so the hammer nose can reach the primer. Almost exactly at the same time the primer is being struck, the hammer releases the hammer block so it could rise if the face of the hammer weren't in the way.

My point of all this is: You put the gun at half cock to load it. Then after loading, if you take the gun to full cock and then lower the hammer to the full down position, the hammer block is NOT blocking the hammer. The hammer nose could be resting on a live primer.
A safer procedure would be to start with the hammer all the way down, pull back to half cock to load, then lower the hammer from half cock to the safe position. Don't go to full cock before going to the safe position.

Just my 2 cents.

[Dan Cash]

I removed the block on my specimen and sent the bits to the trash. The "safety," was patently unsafe IMHO and I use the empty chamber or hammer nose between cartridge rims as a better system.

[gunboat57]

I have to agree that unless you know how the hammer block works, you could be in an unsafe condition and not know it. Leaving one chamber empty is pretty safe.

By the way, since I posted I got most of the creep out of the trigger. Really like this revolver.