Accidental fire from my iof .32 revolver with safety on.

[dany]

It so happened that me nd my family with cousins are enjoying warmth of fire after we all enjoy a great dinner. Approx 15 people are gathered there with kids nd all. I was also setting there with my 2 yr old girl on my lap.as she is feeling sleepy so I stood up to giv her to mother thn suddenly my revolver fell from my waist nd it fired a round. But due to god grace no one is hit. Im 100 percent sure tht my revolver is on safe mod as I always keep it on tht mod. after fire whn I examine th revolver found it to be in safe mod but th revolver has fallen on itz hammer as I could see concrete on the edge of hammer. After further examination of site I found the bullet mark on the wall opposite to me..it narrowly missed my wife nd little girl..more over another 12 kids and adults were there..if iof .32 mk3 revolver fires if it falls on hammer thn for wht the hell thy hav put tht safety device..or do we hav to carry our revolvers with 5 rounds..

[brihacharan]

Good Heavens....after reading about the incident, the shiver that ran down my spine was paralyzing....
Your wife & daughter were lucky indeed, further as there was no ricochet of the 'delinquent bullet' to hurt any innocent bystanders...
Please report this to IOF & see how they respond......
Briha

[aadhaulya]

Guys this is serious. My friend suggested that I keep 2 chamber's free so that if some one snatches the revolver you would have to time to react before he shoots you with your own revolver. But this incident makes me reconsider and have two chambers of the revolver free.

Regards

[dr.jayakumar]

Thank god nothing happened.you should have a sling attached to your pant,to it from keep falling.did you check whether the safe is functioning?
regards
dr.jk

[AgentDoubleS]

Dany, glad to hear you and your family are safe. It is indeed worrying to read about this incident.

I am no expert but my understanding of the IOF revolver's design is the manual safety only prevents the hammer from being pulled back. So its not really the manual safety, which practically serves limited purpose, but the transfer bar safety that should have prevented the accidental discharge. I am assuming yours is Mark iii which does have the transfer bar mechanism?

I hope the experts in this area can advise. And a good gunsmith checking the revolver might be the answer.

Regards,
SS

[bennedose]

Dany, glad to hear you and your family are safe. It is indeed worrying to read about this incident.

I am no expert but my understanding of the IOF revolver's design is the manual safety only prevents the hammer from being pulled back. So its not really the manual safety, which practically serves limited purpose, but the transfer bar safety that should have prevented the accidental discharge. I am assuming yours is Mark iii which does have the transfer bar mechanism?

I hope the experts in this area can advise. And a good gunsmith checking the revolver might be the answer.

Regards,
SS

This sounds like the right explanation. See the following link:
http://www.firearmsid.com/A_FirearmFunction.htm

[xl_target]

First of all, I am glad to hear that no one got hurt.

Any revolver without a hammer block safety or a transfer bar safety should be carried with an empty chamber under the hammer.

Here is something that TC had to say back in 2007 about the IOF revolver:

The new IOF .32 does not have a transfer bar safety. It just a has a spring loaded firing pin housed into the mainframe just between the cylinder and the hammer. The hammer has a flat surface that falls on the pin which in turn moves forward and strikes the primer. Thats it. Incorporating a tranfer bar safety in the Webley design would have been a major breakthrough because the way the trigger and the hammer are placed there is no space left to place a transfer bar that moves simultaneously with the trigger and hammer.

As penpusher rightly pointed out, tranfer bar safety has been the best safety designed for DA revolvers. In this case the IOF does not have any proper safety that way. If the hammer is down and the revolver dropped from a height with the hammer hitting the ground directly then the weapon will discharge by all probability.

quote from here

Don't blame the firearm for something that was your fault. The IOF revolver will fire the cartridge under the hammer if you drop it on the hammer.
Remember that you dropped it on its hammer. It did not just jump out of your waistband because it was evil and decided that it was going to get you.
I am going to be harsh on you here. You do realize that the fault is yours and not the firearms?
You put your family in danger; not IOF, even if they have a substandard product.
If you totally rely on a mechanical safety, you are making a mistake and are irresponsibly misinformed.

Don't blame the inanimate object, blame the person carrying it irresponsiblly.
You had it in your waistband, without a holster, didn't you?
While any one can have an accident, if you carry a handgun without a proper holster, you are asking for trouble.
As you can see, you are risking the lives of your loved ones, if you continue to carry this way.
Can you live with the consequences of that because you want to look like someone you saw in a movie (with a handgun inserted in his waistband)?

Guys this is serious. My friend suggested that I keep 2 chamber's free so that if some one snatches the revolver you would have to time to react before he shoots you with your own revolver. But this incident makes me reconsider and have two chambers of the revolver free.

Why stop at two chambers? You might as well carry it empty, then the revolver snatcher cannot shoot you at all.

If I sound a bit blase about this, its only because I've heard it so many times. "If you have a gun on you, someone will take it away and use it on you".
Tell your friend that if it is so easy to take away a gun from someone, you'll just take it right back.
Can this happen? Sure, if you totally let your guard down and ignore what is going on around you.
If you are going to carry, you have a responsibility to carry that firearm securely and to be aware of your surroundings so this cannot happen.
If you can't do that or are not willing to do that, you shouldn't carry it all.

I just hope that everyone can learn something positive from this incident.

[shooter]

First of all, I am glad to hear that no one got hurt.

Any revolver without a hammer block safety or a transfer bar safety should be carried with an empty chamber under the hammer.

Here is something that TC had to say back in 2007 about the IOF revolver:

The new IOF .32 does not have a transfer bar safety. It just a has a spring loaded firing pin housed into the mainframe just between the cylinder and the hammer. The hammer has a flat surface that falls on the pin which in turn moves forward and strikes the primer. Thats it. Incorporating a tranfer bar safety in the Webley design would have been a major breakthrough because the way the trigger and the hammer are placed there is no space left to place a transfer bar that moves simultaneously with the trigger and hammer.

As penpusher rightly pointed out, tranfer bar safety has been the best safety designed for DA revolvers. In this case the IOF does not have any proper safety that way. If the hammer is down and the revolver dropped from a height with the hammer hitting the ground directly then the weapon will discharge by all probability.

quote from here

Don't blame the firearm for something that was your fault. The IOF revolver will fire the cartridge under the hammer if you drop it on the hammer.
Remember that you dropped it on its hammer. It did not just jump out of your waistband because it was evil and decided that it was going to get you.
I am going to be harsh on you here. You do realize that the fault is yours and not the firearms?
You put your family in danger; not IOF, even if they have a substandard product.
If you totally rely on a mechanical safety, you are making a mistake and are irresponsibly misinformed.

Don't blame the inanimate object, blame the person carrying it irresponsibility.
You had it in your waistband, without a holster, didn't you?
While any one can have an accident, if you carry a handgun without a proper holster, you are asking for trouble.
As you can see, you are risking the lives of your loved ones, if you continue to carry this way.
Can you live with the consequences of that because you want to look like someone you saw in a movie (with a handgun inserted in his waistband)?

Guys this is serious. My friend suggested that I keep 2 chamber's free so that if some one snatches the revolver you would have to time to react before he shoots you with your own revolver. But this incident makes me reconsider and have two chambers of the revolver free.

Why stop at two chambers? You might as well carry it empty, then the revolver snatcher cannot shoot you at all.

If I sound a bit blase about this, its only because I've heard it so many times. "If you have a gun on you, someone will take it away and use it on you".
Tell your friend that if it is so easy to take away a gun from someone, you'll just take it right back.
Can this happen? Sure, if you totally let your guard down and ignore what is going on around you.
If you are going to carry, you have a responsibility to carry that firearm securely and to be aware of your surroundings so this cannot happen.
If you can't do that or are not willing to do that, you shouldn't carry it all.

I just hope that everyone can learn something positive from this incident.

+1

Cant say anything more. Agree 100% with every word.
If anything, XL has been very polite and watering down what he is trying to say.

[AgentDoubleS]

Xl,

Not to take anything away from your valid points about firearm safety and handling but a later post from winnie says the revolver does have a transfer bar safety. From http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php ... 86#p140005. Maybe the later Mark 3 had it.

Needless to say, mechanism or not firearm safety rules apply without compromise.

Regards,
SS

[TwoRivers]

Was going to make some comments, but XL has said, politely, what needed to be said.

[deep27]

Thank God no one is hurt and totally agree with XLtarget.


Sent from my XT1022 using Tapatalk

[xl_target]

There is another thing to consider.
Dany has posted his experience, probably with the hope that everyone can learn from this incident.
We really don't want to come down hard on him now. Hopefully he has learned a lesson that he will never forget.

More importantly, we should all, experienced shooters or new shooters, take this as a refresher/reminder that firearms can be dangerous if mishandled.

We should, all of us, be extremely careful to follow the four rules of gun safety.
1. Treat every firearm as if it's loaded.
2. Never point a firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy
3. Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
4. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are on target and ready to fire.

[xl_target]

ss,
I went and read Winnies post that you linked to. He clearly says that it will most likely go off if dropped on the hammer:

3.A safety is there to prevent an accidental discharge,right? In case of a revolver the safety should be such that it prevents the hammer from going forward and hitting the primer with force sufficient to discharge the revolver.In the IOF/ webley revolvers the safety does not prevent the hammer from going forward if there is a sharp blow to the hammer.The only thing it does is that it prevents the trigger from being pulled by stopping the rearward movement of the hammer.Considering the necessarily heavy trigger pull of a revolver,it is inconceivable that it is going to go off unless some one deliberately pulls the trigger.In case you drop a Webley revolver even with the safety engaged and it falls on its hammer it is likely to go off.

Maybe Winnie can clarify what he meant.
If the IOF revolver has a transfer bar safety, as he stated later, it should not go off even if dropped on the hammer.

[timmy]

My Mother always taught me that "a word to the wise is sufficient."

I want to describe some revolver lock mechaisms for you in connection with the issues raised by this thread.

A handgun must be ready to shoot if it is to function as a self-defense tool. The problem with this started back when guns were first invented that could be carried, but let me jump to the era of cartridge guns. I will use the famous old Colt "Six Shooter," or Single Action Army as an example.



This is a drawing of the lockwork parts of a Colt Single Action Army. Note the notches in the base of the hammer, into which, the sear part of the trigger engages to cock the hammer.

You see the firing pin on the hammer, which penetrates a small hole in the frame to strike the primer of a cartridge.

The problem with the Single Action Army is that, if there is a cartridge in the chamber underneath the firing pin when the hammer is down, or uncocked, a blow to the hammer can set off the cartridge.

If the hammer is carried in the half-cock notch (which is normally used for loading the cylinder), a sharp blow to the hammer, such as may happen when the gun is dropped, can break off the half cock notch and allow the firing pin to set off cartridge. This can also happen if the gun is carried on full cock.

Also, it can happen that the hammer can be inadvertently pulled back by, say, passing branches of a bush and under some conditions, the hammer may fall before the sear in the trigger can engage a notch, causing the gun to fire accidentally.

The old Colt Single Action was therefore a very unsafe gun to carry, ready to fire. Commonly they are carried with the hammer down and resting on an empty chamber, so that when the gun is to be brought into action, it must be cocked before firing. This practice means that the gun can only be carried with five cartridges loaded.

When double action revolvers began to be offered, the gun no longer needed to be cocked with the thumb to fire it. It could be carried with the hammer down over an empty chamber, brought to action, and fired, by pulling the trigger alone. This was safe, but it still meant that one chamber in the cylinder was empty, reducing the number of cartridges available to be fired.

One method of addressing the empty chamber was the "rebound lever."



Please disregard the exact type of gun in this picture. I want you to notice the rebound lever, which is in blue and pivots half way down the grip. As it gets near the hammer, only part of its thickness passes on the left side of the hammer to rest on the point where the hand (the part that rotates the cylinder) pivots on the trigger. Thus, when the trigger is pulled or when the hammer is cocked in the full cock notch, the rebound lever rises. When the trigger is released, the rebound lever drops.

There is a part of the rebound lever that is located behind the hammer. The idea is that, when the hammer drops and fires a cartridge because the trigger is pulled, the rebound lever will go down as the trigger is released. It cannot "fall" all the way down, however, because the notched part behind the hammer rests on a surface on the bottom of the hammer. At this point, the rebound lever is pushed all the way down by a spring, and the notched surface on the rebound lever pushes the hammer back so that the firing pin is withdrawn.

This is the state the hammer will normally be in when the trigger is not pulled and when the hammer is not cocked. The gun can be loaded with all six cartridges (or however many the cylinder holds) and the firing pin will not rest on a loaded cartridge.

The Webley No. 2 Mark I revolver uses a rebound lever. Some of the older British Enfield and Webley revolvers did not. I'm not sufficiently conversant with the details of the older Enfields and Webleys to tell you which ones have a rebound lever and which ones don't. Here is a diagram of the later Webley revolver:



You can see the rebound lever here, and perhaps you can imagine how the notch in the rebound lever pushes at the base of the hammer and causes it to withdraw slightly, as the diagram shows. This kept the hammer back, so that its firing pin was not resting on the primer of a cartridge underneath it.

However, during World War 2, when these revolvers were much used by British and Empire forces, it was found that dropping them could still set off the cartridge underneath the hammer! The angle that the rebound lever and hammer meet, which allows the hammer to be pulled back, still allowed a sharp blow to force the hammer down, raising the rebound lever in the process. In other words, the rebound lever still did not make the double action revolver safe to carry with all chambers loaded.

Colt recognized this problem back at the turn of the century, and included a HAMMER BLOCK in the 1905 "Police Positive" model.

Soon the hammer block was included in all three sizes of Colt double action revolvers.



You can see the part as a little square that is between the hammer and the frame, near the point where the frame is cut away for the side plate. The following diagram shows the hammer block as part # 30:



This little piece of steel doesn't look very large, but there is no way the hammer can compress or break it.



Here, you see a Colt double action disassembled. part #7 pivots on a screw attached to the frame. The lower slot in part #7 rides on a pin in the trigger. The upper slot meshes with the hammer block, which is part #5

When the trigger is pulled back, it pushes the lower end of part #7 up, which pulls the hammer block down. This allows the hammer to fall all the way down so the firing pin can strike the primer of a cartridge. If you are carrying the gun with the hammer in the normal position, the hammer will be withdrawn slightly, but the hammer block will be up, preventing the hammer and firing pin from getting any closer to a live cartridge in the cylinder. Thus, it is impossible for the gun to discharge when it is dropped or struck on the hammer, even when all chambers in the cylinder are loaded. The hammer itself will break first.

Smith & Wesson uses a similar kind of hammer block, but their lockwork mechanisms are different. But, they offer safety like a Colt. I cannot say for sure that the hammer block is totally positive like a Colt -- I need to study it a little more. But if the S&W is working properly, it is safe.

Ruger revolvers, both single and double action, do not use a hammer block. They use a TRANSFER BAR.



Here, you see a Ruger hammer, trigger, and attached transfer bar. (This is from a single action revolver, but the double action parts work exactly the same way.)

Note that, first, the transfer bar goes up with the trigger is pulled, and down when the trigger is released. This is the opposite of the way a hammer block works.

Secondly, note that the hammer does not have a firing pin attached. That part floats in the frame of the gun. Instead, you see that the nose of the hammer has two "steps." The top step is thick enough that it will strike the frame of the gun before the second step can hit the firing pin and fire a cartridge. But, when the trigger is pulled, the transfer bar comes between the hammer and the firing pin, and the second step push the transfer bar against the firing pin, firing the cartridge.



Note here, the transfer bar is raised by pulling the trigger, and the second step will strike it when the hammer falls.

Again, the trigger has to be pulled for the gun to fire.

The transfer bar system is simpler, however some folks have complained that the trigger doesn't have as good of a "feel" as hammer block lockwork. For most of us, however, we won't know the difference.

What does this mean?

The IOF Revolver is patterned after the Webley revolver. However, I understand that, at some point, IOF modified the lockwork to simplify it. I have read that the modified lockwork resembles a Smith & Wesson, but I have never seen a disassembled IOF. The parts diagrams that I have seen are not complete and I'm unable to assess the mechanism. Therefore, I can't give any opinion about how it works or how safe it is to carry when all the chambers of the cylinder are loaded.

I note that the IOF has a manual safety. To me, this is an admission that the lockwork is not safe to carry with a cartridge loaded under the hammer. Furthermore, if the safety does not positively lock the hammer from falling, it is a cheap fraud and a waste of time.

Owners of any firearm, including the IOF revolver, ought, in my opinion, to be familiar enough with the mechanism to know for sure whether it is safe to carry or not, in whatever mode it is carried. The original poster to this thread did not do that and nearly caused a catastrophic accident because of this. This should be a warning to all who use any kind of gun. As my Mother taught me, a word to the wise is sufficient.

[winnie_the_pooh]

Timmy, very informative post...and you are right...the safety on the IOF revolver is useless and a fraud.It defeats the greatest advantage of carrying a revolver...being able to get off a shot without manipulating anything.At the same time it does nothing to prevent something like this from happening.