Dry fire practice caps for 22LR?

[Ohio Varmint Shooter]

Is there anything wrong with using spent cartridges for dry fire practice with a bolt 22LR? Just as long as you pay attention and make sure the firing pin doesn't strike an area that's already been hit. I could easily get 6-7 more dry fire shots out of a used cartridge. Squirrel season is coming up and I'd like to get a little more practice in.

I have a Savage Mark II...and I've heard for years: "Never dry fire a Savage."

 

[sdneil]

small YELLOW drywall anchors work great, get most hardware stores, maybe Walmart too......

 

[Nvreloader]

Just use a cut hose washer and place it onto the very rear of the bolt,
close action and you can dry untill you are "Blue in the face" and never hit bbl end with the firing pin.

Tia,
Don

 

[Outrider27]

Or just do what you propose - use once fired brass. The problem occurs when/if the firing pin, when the trigger is pulled on an empty chamber, strikes the breech surface of the barrel (whether or not this occurs with any individual firearm depends on the sophistication of the bolt design and/or the stacking of a number of dimensions in the system, including headspace; some firing pins also have a "stop" shoulder built in, and preventing repeated hard contact between this and the matching area of the bolt interior is also desireable, even/especially if hard contact with the barrel breech surface with an empty chamber won't occur with any individual firearm). Using spent cartridges prevents this, and you have a pretty much endless supply of snap caps. ;D

While firing pin blows on a surface of the cartridge rim previously struck will prevent contact more than adequately, I pitch the spent cartridges after 4-6 snaps just on general principles, just as you propose, as the extra cushioning effect on the whole firing pin system when striking a "fesh" portion of the rim may not be bigtime beneficial (see above comment on firing pin stop), it sure can't hurt.

 

[Minesweeper3433]

I myself do exactly as you suggest. I even store my rimfires with a fired case in the action in case I or someone else I let into my safe gets careless and dry fires one of my rimfires.

 

[Fotheringill]

Not a problem except the pain in the ass in getting the spent casing into the chamber.

 

[TAJ45]

That's why I like the #6 drywall anchors, yellow in this neck of the woods. They feed from my S&W model 41 mags. Get a lot of snaps before they get weak and battered.

 

[Thauglor]

For the savages, you can get an O ring (I use a #92 from Ace), cut it, tie a string to it so you can remove it easier, then place the O ring onto the hammer. The O ring will prevent the hammer from falling down all the way and wont hit the firing pin at all. You get unlimited dry fire practice with nothing going into the chamber at all. I use this every day for my silhouette gun.

I have an older Savage Mark 2 that has a different hammer design than the current ones, I had to drill and put in a pin into the hammer so that it sticks out a bit, then I used the O ring on that too. Works perfectly.

 

[dmccrerery]

All these methods are fine, but you can't check proper feeding.
Check out the little blue dummies at Brownells, I think they are the best

 

[dickn52]

Those little blue Dummies are NOT snap caps and it says so on the packaging.
"Manufactured to exact specifications, including diameter and length dimensions, weight and balance of factory loaded ammo, these DUMMIES have the proper functioning characteristics to reliably check magazine feeding, action timing, extraction and ejection of all guns. The only professionally accepted and safe way to check gun functioning"...No where in the product specs does it say 'dryfire'.

 

[Thauglor]

Found someone else's picture:

 

[cznut]

The drywall anchors work great