I am wondering if this peening around the firing pin hole on my Cimarron SAA is normal for nearly 2000 rounds of various loads ranging from light cowboy to moderate loads and a few hundred rounds of heavy black powder loads.

I have noticed this on some of my S&W magnum revolvers but wasn't so concerned because there is an insert that can be replaced. The same is not true on this gun. Will this wear get to a point where the gun will be unfireable or some how unsafe?

Also BTW I don't do much dry fire with this gun which I understand can cause this problem. The gun may have only been dry fired 50 times in the life time of the gun. That may sound like I lot but not compared to the number of live rounds though it.

By the way that's not a crack in the frame but a cat hair. lol Also even though the photo is a bit distorted the wear is even around the firing pin hole so is the gap around the firing pin which I also wonder about. The firing pin tip is uniform and undistorted in reality and the shape of the hole is uniformly round but appears to have become a bit larger from what I remember when it was new.

I would call that normal.  Been shootin' revolvers since the seventies.

Ray

Ok it's just kind of alarming to see something like that start to develop and it be worse on some guns than others.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that just brass marks from the case being forced back, not wear?

Recoil impact of the cartridge case wearing away the color case hardening. You get similar marks with blued revolvers on the recoil shield.

Is that your revolver?  .455 Triple Lock?  

Sexy.

A wee bit smaller actually. It is a .32 Hand Ejector from the nineteen-teens. Would love to find a triple lock in good mechanical condition. No matter what the wear looked like.

I wasn't referring to the wear of the finish but the raised ridge of metal known as peening around the firing pin hole. I see even your gun has that happening. Every revolver I own beside the 38 spls seem to do it.

IMHO the only thing that could cause that type peening, that is peening toward the inside of the frame, is dry firing. If you look closely at the firing pin and its shape, it's pretty easy to see how it could happen. Too, I've noticed on my Uberti's that the metal around the firing pin hole is really quite thin.  
The Uberti I shoot most has about twice as many rounds as yours and doesn't exhibit that type peening. I've never thought there was anything wrong with dry-firing centerfire handguns, but do so only occasionally. The peening is easy enough to fix; either carefully peen it back with a brass hammer or knock it down with a small stone. If you're going to continue dry firing you might want to have fired cases in the cylinders so the spent primers will support the tip of the firing pin and prevent the firing pin from contacting the area around the firing pin hole.

Well as I have said before I have probably only dry fired the gun maybe 50 times in the two years I have owned it. I think the peening is more from the fact that the firing pin hole is over sized and so when the primer sets back during firing it hits the recoil shield or what ever you want to call it and it moves the steel microscopically in the path of least resistance which is toward the firing pin hole. Its very difficult to tell in these photos but the entire imprint on the recoil shield where the primer would be is cratered ever so slightly. My S&W M29 44 mag is doing the same thing. The M29 probably only has about 1200-1500 rounds through it and mostly Spls and light Mags but the wear is starting to show.

I just don't see how dry fire would be the culprit like everyone says when you actually look and see how thick the metal is in the firing pin hole and when I consider that all of my 38's which are not showing this issue have many more rounds through them than these two guns and each and everyone has been dry fired thousands of times. All are S&W's a J, K, and L frame.

One other thing that just came to mind is that I am not convinced that the firing pin it self actually bottoms out in the firing pin hole but rather the hammer stops on the frame itself. I'm making this deduction based on the observation that in no instance have I ever noticed any kind of wear or deformation of the firing pin where it might contact the frame on any of the revolvers I have ever owned which include four Smiths, two Iver Johnsons, this Cimarron in question and a Colt 1917 I no longer own.

 You are correct. I just now smoked the face and firing pins of the hammers of one of my Uberti's and one of my Cimarron's then dry fired them. On both, the hammer hits the frame about half way between the firing pin and the top of the hammer. So, as you said, the firing pin isn't bottoming out in the recess.

If it wasn't that way we would undoubtedly have way more busted firing pins than we do.

Is firing pin piering the primer?  I had a Smith that did a lot and it etched a groove in the shield around the pin.