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Welcome to Fast Draw 101, I'm Howard Darby, and today I'm going to give you
tips on buying your first Fast Draw gun
"Shooters on the line, shooters set"
During my years in the sport of Fast Draw I've seen a number of new shooters come along
get all excited about being in the sport, run out, buy a gun, and find out they've
bought the wrong gun. I'm going to give you some tips today that hopefully
will help you avoid that situation and not have to spend extra money
and in this video I'm going to reference a few of the fast draw association, the
World Fast Draw Association - WFDA, the Cowboy Fast Draw Association - CFDA
any the Ohio Fast Draw Association - OFDA and talk about the rules they have for
their guns
of course all Fasta Draw guns must be single action revolvers
and that's like this one here, the single action revolver,
the gun that won the west, the six shooter, single action meaning
pulling the trigger does not make the gun fire you first have to manually
*** back to hammer, and then you can pull the trigger to have it fire
double actions are not allowed in fast draw, so that's the first criteria you must
have for a fast draw gun
secondly it must be .45-caliber
for most shooting, for Cowboy Fast Draw
.45 caliber is the only one allowed in the sport that's because it most of the
major competitions the
ammo is provided for you, in World Fast Draw that's also
sometimes a case, but also in World Fast Draw and Ohio Fast Draw
there's a lot of blanks shot in competition and you want as much
powder in your blanks as you can get, and the .45 caliber is the largest caliber
you're allowed to use in competition
so that will give you more powder, more powder flying down range, more chance of breaking
that balloon, having said that, if you already have a single action revolver in a
smaller caliber
you can still use that for practice and you can use it in World Fast Draw and Ohio Fast Draw
competitions, they allow anything above .32-caliber in competition
so go to Spitfire Wax Bullets, C&R Wax Bullets
or Bandit Shooting Supplies, they have web sites, do a search for them, find them
or look at the links
in FastDraw101.com where these videos are hosted
you'll find the links to those vendors. The next thing you need to keep in mind when
buying a Fast Draw gun is the barrel length
4 and 5/8th is the shortest barrel length allowing in all the
fast draw associations, this is the 4 & 5/8" here, 4 5/8ths from
the front of the barrel to the front of the cylinder, 4 5/8th from there to there
sometimes called 4 3/4 by some of the manufactures, but 4 5/8 is the shortest
any longer than that you are taking longer time to get it out
of the holster, so that's what almost all fast draw competitors use
this is a 5 1/5" barrel slightly longer as you can see
this is a 6 1/2" barrel that
you'll see is even longer, so 4 5/8" is
what you're looking for in fast fast draw gun
Sights
Sights like this one here on the Ruger Blackhawk are adjustable
the sight can be moved left and right they're not allowed in Cowboy Fast Draw
or Ohio Fast Draw Old West Division so it's best to get
a gun with the non-adjustable sights like this one here that has a groove down
the center and the
fixed site in front, here it is on a blued
gun, the groove down the center
site on the front, that's the non-adjustable sight
guns that you're looking for when you're looking for a fast draw gun. Another thing you might
want to keep in mind is the fire pin situation
most modern single action revolvers have what called an "in frame fire pin"
you see here the hammer is a flat surface sometimes it has
different notches depending on the set up of the in frame firing pin
but the firing pin is actually built into the frame
it sticks out here, it has a spring in it, as you push on it it goes through the frame
and hits the primer on the shell
firing it, as you drop the hammer on it it hits the firing pin
and pushes it through the frame, on the Old West guns, the Colts
the Colt clones you'll often see the
firing pin built into the hammer, and there's a hole
in the frame here and it just goes straight through that hole and hits the
primer on the shell igniting it, now these are good and they work fine
the one problem is when you come to fan it, and even if you're not fanning normally
if you're going to do any sort fanning of
recovery shots which is allowed, when you come to fan that
it's a spike sticking up there, and if you have done the thing
some people do, which is they thumb back the hammer
forget to pull the trigger, go to recover the shot, and it's sticking straight up
and it will jam into their palm, rip their palm apart, so keep that in mind when you're
buying a single action revolver to decide if you want one with an
in-hammer firing pin or you want one in the frame that's a little safer
not as likely to possibly cause damage
as far as brands are concerned I'm not going to tell you which one to go out and buy
but I will tell you some of the more popular ones, there's the Ruger New Vaquero,
the Cold single action army
the Baretta Stampede, Uberti Cattleman or the USFA Gunslinger
there's a few others out there, what I would suggest is talking to local fast
shooter
or talk to people online, Facebook, maybe the fast draw
group in facebook, or Cowboy Fast Draw Association website
ask questions, joining there and post messages on their forum
one thing I will recommend if you're going to get the
Ruger Vaquero, this is the Ruger New Vaquero, make sure it says
"Ruger New Vaquero" down the side, the
original Vaquero just says "Ruger Vaquero" down the side
its a slightly bigger frame gun, slightly heavier
and one problem is that it has a quite a bit larger cylinder
and when you draw it and you are doing
speed thumbing, you're thumb the gun really fast, that cylinder is rotating and
locking into place very quickly
the heavier the cylinder the more damage that will happen to the
different mechanisms as it locks into place, and it'll wear out
faster than the New Vaquero, the New Vaquero will hold up to
fast draw better than the old one did. Now once you've got your fast draw gun
make sure you know the rules on the sort of modifications you're allowed to do
for World Fast Draw "Hollywood Division", Ohio Fast Draw Association "Old West Division", and any sort
of shooting in the Cowboy
Fast Draw Association you can't do very much to your gun
the only modifications you're allowed to do is you can remove the front sight
you can smooth the knurling on the
hammer because sometimes it's quite sharp and when you're thumbing really
fast
it can bite into your thumb, so you can smooth it out a little bit, although you do
want to leave it there because you do need some of
that to get a grip on the hammer as you're thumbing it
and you're also allowed to do a tune job on the inside
that means smoothing it out, making it so it's a lot
easier, sometimes it comes from the factory a little rough depending on the type
of gun you buy
so you can do a tune job, but you're not allowed to
change any of the actions of how the gun works
you're not allowed to change anything else on the external of the gun
for example you can't put a reverse pawl on there so the cylinder spins
backwards or any of the other modification you can do to
change the way the gun works
if you're shooting World Fast draw fanning or Ohio Fast Draw fanning
you might want one of these guns, this is a highly modified
Ruger Blackhawk, they are the best guns for
fanning, they hold up really well, what we generally do is take a .357
bore it out to .45-calibet, and that makes a smaller frame gun that
doesn't have as much weight on it, we take off all the sights, we turn up the
hammer, we put blocks on the inside
and a lot of tuning to make sure the gun will work
great for fanning because these guns weren't designed to
fan really fast like that, but doing those sort of modifications will make
the gun stand up to the rigors of speed fanning
but this is the sort of gun where you want to make sure you know what you doing, or buy
a used one from somebody who knows what they've done
before you start using it in competition
I hope that helps with your first fast draw gun. If you have any questions please
check out FastDraw.org where there's more information on fast draw
or my other videos FastDraw101.com
check out the Fast Draw group in Facebook if you have any questions, there are a lot
of people there who will be able to
answers some of your questions, other than that I hope to see you at a shoot
good shooting