As I understand it, you are somewhat limited in the pressure of the cartridge you can use with a rebounding hammer.  The hammer doesn't hold the firing pin in the primer as the cartridge goes off, allowing high pressure loadings to force the part of the primer under the firing pin back into the firing pin channel.  With a small firing pin, you can go slightly higher in pressure than with a larger one.  Don't know what the upper limit would be.

greetings,

take a look at some of tne modern bolt actions in the super duper magnum calibers. they seem to do quite well with a rebounding firing pin.

..ttfn..grampa..

Joe,
I know that the Ruger # 1 does not have a rebounding hammer, but does it have a rebounding firing pin, I know that it has a firing pin rebound spring but not sure how it works. I've shot a lot of them and never had a problem with blown primers, could Ruger have solved this problem. ?
  Shooter

I realize lots of rebounding hammers are out there and are working fine, I'm merely relating my own experiences. Please see Ackley's comments re rebounding firing pins in one of Landis' books, he didn't like 'em at all.

And please don't let's get stsrted on Hepburns!

Rebounding hammers and firing pins IMO are kinda like double-action-only semiautomatic pistols: a questionable solution to a nonexistent  problem. But that's JMO.
Regards, Joe

All the high power bolt actions I am familiar with keep the firing pin forward under spring pressure until the bolt is lifted and the cocking cam starts the firing pin back.  Or they keep it forward until the sear catches and the forward motion of the bolt recocks the action.

Dunno how the NEF does it--maybe the backward travel of the pin is only enough to bring the tip flush with the standing breech.  That and a small diameter might work with the higher pressure cartridges.

Rebounding hammers are great on shotgun actions, where the pressures are low, and, of course, more convenient than manual cocking on black powder rifles.  For varmint rifle use, De Haas advocated grinding the rebound part of the Hepburn mainspring off to let the hammer nose stay forward, and manually half-cocking the hammer before opening the breech.  Sounds like way more trouble than it's worth, and anyway, Hepburns are much cooler in the original calibers.  There was a picture of a varmintized one, tricked up with a skinny round barrel, a scope and a California-style Monte Carlo stock on the cover of a Rifle Magazine about 25 years ago that gave me nightmares for months.

Consider a High Wall. It has a few pounds of hammer force on the primer when down. Divide this by the area of primer strike and how many psi of support do you get? Let's say there is 5 lb of force on the firing pin at rest and the diameter of the firing pin support is about 1/32", so we have about 7000 psi. 

One effect not easy to quantify is how much the firing pin nose might be squeezed. The dimple in the primer is dome shaped and under pressure it will push in on the firing pin from all sides. Any radial thrust will be born through the pin; the rearward component must be carried by the spring. 

Actually, the dimple is a dome, and it's of work hardened brass. As such, it should carry a fair amount of the pressure directly into the breech face surrounding the firing pin hole.

Sorry, I have no answers here, just a few thoughts.

Varminteer, you just made the best argument for a striker action - no stinkin' hammer needed...