S&W Speak.
Those of us that have spent a lot of time around S&W revolvers sometimes use use strange terms like HBH which stands for Hump Back Hammer. but what the heck is that?
In the days of long ago target shooters stood on their hind legs and shot with ONE hand at targets 25 and 50 yards away. slow fire 1 minute per shot, timed fire 5 shots in 20 seconds and rapid fire 5shots in 10 seconds.In those days target shooters always cocked the hammers on their revolvers even though they were double action. This hammer cocking took time and disturber the aim especially in rapid fire where you only had 10 secons to cock and fire 5 times. Just prior to WW2 S&W came up with the hump back hammer. (1937) It looked strange but target shooters found that it allowed them to cock their revolvers faster and with less disturbance to their stance and hand hold. Others said they were ugly, funny looking, etc. WW2 came along and after the war S&W shortened the travel and widened the lowered hammer spur. Auto loaders also took their place on the line allowing the shooters to not even think about cocking the hammer. Thus the HBH is a little known varaition. It looks like this.
http://www.fototime.com/A0349A5C0A80963/standard.jpg
