I have been looking for years online regarding more information about the EMF Hartford series made by ASM, I found this thread on the CAS City forum and the information by Original Bad Bob has been very helpful. I figured I would try my best at making a photo op session and take a couple of pictures of the one I got a long time ago. I even managed to dig up the old EMF catalogs that I found in my collection of misc. catalogs. Please forgive the qualities of the pictures, I am not very experienced in uploading pictures online.
This was purchased way back yonder around 1998 at the local gun store. It is the Hartford Premier model which came with a tuned action job and a “fancier” finish than the regular Hartford lineup. I say “fancier” because I really do not know exactly what is different about the finish as compared to the finish on the regular Hartford series, maybe more hand polishing? It also came with the Colt type eagle grips, but being that I am more partial to the look of wood, I replaced the hard rubber grips with wood grips.
The action is very smooth and the trigger pull is very light. But I have not had a lot of exposure to other single action army revolvers to where I could compare the action/trigger pull to mine, so my comparison of the action/trigger feel is limited in scope. Part of the smooth action and light trigger pull seemed to be due to the mainspring that came on the gun which felt in my opinion very weak. The mainspring is tapered to a narrow thin band other than where it screws into the bottom and also where it rides the hammer. Although it gave a very light trigger pull, I experienced a few light primer strikes which caused a failure to fire when shooting my handloads that were using CCI primers. I always check to make sure the primers are seated as far in the primer pocket as possible when priming cases, so I do not think it was the seating of the primers. I have heard that CCI primers are on the harder side compared to other brands, but I do not know enough about it. Eventually, I replaced the mainspring with a Wolff reduced power mainspring. The original mainspring that came on the revolver looks just like the one sold in the action job kit by Lee’s Gunsmithing that I remember seeing in the Brownell’s catalog. I also replaced the sear/bolt leaf spring with a Heinie coil wire spring.
I am curious to find out what other folks who own these ASM revolvers are getting on their cylinder throat diameters. Mine measures at .452”~.453” and .454” on one of the cylinders, but this was measured using calipers so it may not be the most accurate. Is this typical for these ASM Hartford revolvers?
Thanks again to The Original Bad Bob for starting a thread on these EMF Hartfords made by ASM to shed some light about these revolvers.