Design of carbine hammers ...
Fooling around with the part in a CAD program, it just struck me ...
Why was the channel cut in the left hand side of carbine hammers, first in a diagonal orientation relative its firing pin striking surface, and later nearly orthogonal to it?
There must have been a reason for incorporating it into the drawings, and the extra machining required to produce it.
A lighter hammer is desirable
to speed up lock time. In other words, it gets into the primer in less time if it is lighter. But as pointed out by BQ, it must be heavy enough to be 100% reliable when it does fall. There may be a trigger pull lightening as well with a lighter hammer, don't know for sure.