A new Union Hill Ballard followed me home and needed some cleaning up, so I removed the breech block, cleaned the bore, made some cerrosafe castings, etc.  Inside the breechblock was decades of dried oil/crud mix, you know the usual stuff.  After soaking all night in Hoppes, the parts cleaned up pretty good.  That's when I discovered the crack in the hammer right at the back of the pin hole.  The rifle will still hold a full cock, but this crack is probably only going to get worse.  There does not seem to be much metal on the rear side of the hole, it is very thin, thus the crack.  Does anyone know of a source for Ballard breech parts?  I think I should like to replace this hammer. 

Seems like the hole got drilled too close to the back edge of the hammer.  Could I silver solder a thin "strap" of something over the crack just to reinforce the break?  As long as it did not interfere with the end of the mainspring.

A crack at that location is very common in many Ballard rifles. Often once they crack, they relieve the tension, and nothing more happens. That crack is as big as I've ever seen, but still not worth messing with, unless it fails. I sent a #4 Perfection to Cody years ago to have it casehardened, and a broken trigger repaired. I also mentioned a tiny crack at the same location, and once they looked at it they told me not to worry, and didn't fix it. It's been many years, and many shots fired since then. It's still working fine, and not opened up.

Thanks to all.  It makes me feel better knowing that this hammer crack is not unique.  I was not aware it is a common occurrence.  Kind of like a "Ballard curse No. 2"!!  I'll put her back together tomorrow and not worry about it.   

ClaMar wrote on Apr 5^th, 2015 at 4:37pm:


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read somewhere that these cracks are created when an unknowing person tries opening the breech with the hammer at full cock.
As the block goes down the back of the hammer spur contacts the frame and with the trigger engaged as it is, it strains the hammer resulting in a crack at the thinnest section of the pivot hole.

I have an Eric Johnson (.22 lr) Ballard that has a cracked hammer that looks very much like this one. The  barrel is stamped 8/20/40 and shows a lot of shooting wear. I've shot it for a few years and the shooter I got it from shot it quite a lot and it seems to work fine. I showed it to my gunsmith and he wasn't concerned so I'll keep on shooting it as is.