Fast Draw 101 with Howard Darby - Thumbing & fanning

Welcome to Fast Draw 101, I'm Howard Darby, and today we're talking about Thumbing and Fanning Shooters on the line, shooters set In the sport of Fast Draw we use single action revolvers that means there's only a single action to pulling the trigger, it doesn't make the gun go *** all by itself, you first have to manually bring back the hammer, and then you can pull the trigger your to have the gun fire there's two many ways of doing that, there's what's called the Thumbing method where the thumb brings back the hammer, then you can pull the trigger to fire a gun or you can use your off hand to fan back the hammer and then pull the trigger. That's what we're going to cover today, the different methods and why you would want to do one or the other in fast draw. The thumbing styles is often considered the basics of all fast draw, if you watch old western movies you'll see people doing the thumb draw you don't see a lot of fanning in movies and it wasn't the way the single action revolver was designed to be shot, it was designed to be the thumbed back and operated on a slower style then the speed fanning you see in fast draw these days for people who are fanning if you use a holster like this one, a Mexican Loop holster where the boot is slid onto the belt, and you use a thumbing draw you could shoot in any fast draw competition in North America, even if it's an open style World Fast Draw Association style contest that people are twisting or fanning, you can still be very competitive with a draw like this, so if you use this type a holster and this type of draw you can shoot in Cowboy Fast Draw, World Fast Draw, Ohio Fast Draw any fast draw competition and be competitive against any other shooters no matter what style they're using. Now although you can use a stock gun for thumbing, when you come to the fanning you're going to need a specially tuned fanning gun, stock single action revolvers are not designed to be used with the fanning method because when you fan you get a lot more speed out of cocking the hammer than you do when you're thumbing although you can be pretty fast thumbing and getting a lot of motion thumbing the hammer back the fanning of the hammer is a lot faster, it puts a lot more stresses on the gun, we put extra blocks inside the frame we put block at the bottom of the hammer struts, we do a lot of timing changes to me the cylinder rotate not fully so that it uses inertia to go the last little bit of the rotation, and it's tuned up a lot to make it take the stress of speed fanning because when it spins fast, locks into place it puts a lot of stresses on a gun, and if you take a stock gun like a Vaquero like this one here, which is a very strong gun do fanning with it, I've seen these guns breakdown after only a a few dozen shots, and start skipping and have problems, so make sure if you're going to do the fanning style you get a gun that's been specially tuned for fanning otherwise you're going to have problems with your gun. I mentioned a minute ago that in Cowboy Fast Draw thumbing is about all you'll see in competition, that's because with the left hand fanning and the fact that you can't have a turned up hammer for fanning in Cowboy Fast Draw, it has be be a stock hammer like this one and when you come down on that stock hammer it causes the barrel to jump, so at 21-feet that's hard to hit, so almost everybody in Cowboy Fast Draw thumbs in World Fast Draw there's a side division called Hollywood Division, it's shot at almost all the major championships and it's a side competition, and it's all thumbing, with stock guns like this, so there's a great place for thumbing in World Fast Draw plus in the major competitions you'll see many of the competitors also doing the thumb draw, and they're very competitive in it, even against the fanners if you're a good thumber you can beat almost anybody in the sport so its a great way to start and be good in World Fast Draw, in Ohio Fast Draw there's a thumbing division, actually a lot of competitions are just thumbing type competition, but a lot of people also do thumbing in the major competitions as well in the main divisions. Now that I've shown you what thumbing and fanning is all about let me show you some examples of the thumbing draw when people start thumbing they often do a draw where they come out, bring it up and fire from this position, and it gives them a good visual representation of where the gun is, they can see it it's well in their sight as they're drawing and firing, the trouble with that is there's a lot of wasted motion, you're way out here before you pull the trigger but also there's a lot of time when the barrel is not pointed at the target until youre at the very end of the draw if you you pull the trigger anywhere beforehand, you're going to miss the target, so it's a good draw to start with and its a good way to get into the sport, often people want to quickly move into a faster draw, and that's essentially where you try and snap up as fast as possible, and often people will follow through pointing towards the target as they pull the trigger that helps you get towards the a target, towards aiming at the target, making sure you're on target before you pull the trigger after that of course people want to speed up a little bit more and that's usually eliminating that poke forward and firing the gun just as it gets in-line, and that often involves a bit of snapping back the shoulder, a snap of the back a little bit to get the gun up and out, and make sure it's in-line after that of course if you want to do the ultimate thumbing draw it's minimizing the motion of the gun as much as possible firing as soon as physically able to, which is just as it clears the top of the leather like that. That's the evolution depending on the type of shooting you want to do. With the fanning method for the relief fast draws I have to move off to a different type of holster, but you can do most of the fanning daws from a pretty stock holster when we start teaching people we start with a draw that gets them hitting the target faster than if they tried a really fast draw. That's called the "Poke Fan" the poke fan is best done with the left hand out here, and the gun comes to the hand it means the gun comes up in line with the target, coming towards it then you fan the gun as it's out towards target on-line with the target that's the poke fan, if you shorten that up a little bit bringing the hand in, you have to make sure you snap up and forward, and that's the "Ram Fan", at that point you can start bringing the hand in as you're contacting the gun, and if you shortened that up even more where there's almost no forward motion of the gun this hand has just come back and fan the hammer that's the "Up Fan" the fastest way to get a single action revolver out and firing is the traditional style "Dump Draw" or the "Twisting" style with the open style holster, I'll show you that in a minute for traditional style World Fast Draw which is a little bit smaller holster this one here is a Mernickle FD7 the gun can not turn sideways, it must be straight up and down but it fires just as you clear the top of the holster it's called the Dump Draw because you dump it backwards, and just as comes out of the top it fires, now when you have this sort of draw you want to make sure you have a lining because every once in a while you're going too shoot too fast, and you're fire in the holster, and if you don't have a liner on your holster you're going to blow it apart eventually, so make sure you do these type of draws you use a holster with a liner it in, that's the dump draw used in World Fast Draw traditional style competitions, the final fanning method I'm going to show you is something called the "Twist Draw". The twist draw is the fastest way to get a single action revolver out and shooting, and it relies on a bit of physics on the way your wrist works, you can move your wrist that way a lot faster than you can that way, and most draws rely on your wrist moving up and down this way, not this way for example if you have the gun in the holster and you draw, you're having to turn your wrist that way to get it in line but if you put the gun sideways, and you just do that, you see the barrel comes in line with the target a lot faster than if you just do that you can go that way faster than you can do that, and the twist draw starts with a guy like, 45 degree angle, a bit on its side wait for the light, draw and fire turning it almost upside down as you draw, that draw will take about 2-3 hundredths of a second off your time as compared to the dump draw which is the fastest way a doing a non-twist type draw. I hope that gives you an overview of thumbing and fanning and why you'd want to do one over the other, with thumbing remember that if you have a stock holster like this and a stock gun, you can't thumb in any fast draw contest in North America sometimes you'll be competing against fanners but you can be very competitive with this style of shooting, for fanning its probably going to be the fastest way you could do fast draw because with two hands and driving back that hammer with the left hand you can be a little faster than most to the thumbers, although there are some very competitor thumbers who will be at the top level of almost every fast draw competition you go to, so it's up to you whichever way you want to do it, hopefully this video has helped you figure out that I hope to see you at a contest someday, have fun