Jammer Six
member
I've been working on my milspec again, and I have a few problems.
I'm been using a Marvel Hammer & Sear jig, and gazing forlornly through a Yavapai jig at the results.
I have three problems.
My first problem is this: after carefully stoning the hammer hooks in the jig, mating the sear angle to it with the Marvel, the sear doesn't want to drop all the way into the hooks.
It almost feels like there's some kind of tiny debris in the way- I can push the sear into the hooks, and it will go, but as soon as I release pressure, it springs back out.
In frustration, I took the hammer and sear out of my loaded model, and put it under the microscope. Not the same. That hammer and sear drop happily together, and stay there.
So I've done something wrong with my new hammer and sear. Somehow, the angle of the hooks or the angle of the sear is holding them apart, and, of course, without proper engagement, the hammer follows when you drop the slide from slide lock.
Working the sear and the hooks together on dykem blue shows that both hammer hooks are hitting the sear.
The second problem is that the Yavapai jig only allows the microscope to observe one side of the engagement, and I would dearly love to flip the hammer and sear over, and look at the other side, to see if the other end of the angle is hitting before the side I see makes contact. How do you look at both sides?
I have a set of pins to install on the frame, and while I can look at both sides that way, I can't use the microscope on them, and I see things under the microscope that I'd never see without it.
The third problem I have is I don't see how to adjust the angle of the sear primary engagement face relative to the sear pin- if it needs to be something other than parallel, I don't see how to adjust that with accuracy. I have the same problem with the hammer hooks- if the Marvel jig is cutting them at some angle other than parallel to the hammer pin, how would you know, and how would you correct it?
And finally, I now have the Marvel jig, the Brown sear jig, the pin set and the Yavapai jig. After screwing around with them for a couple days, I like the Marvel jig for cutting the hammer hooks (mainly because I have no other way of doing them) and the system it has for setting the primary angle on the sear relative to the hammer is great, but I like the Yavapai jig for tuning it- for two reasons. One, there is no substitute for gazing though the microscope, it really makes it easy to see, as far as it goes. Furthermore, it leaves both your hands free, so you can beat your fists on the bench and swear loudly at the same time, and that's becoming very important to me. :banghead:
And two, on the Yavapai, you don't "loose" the angle when you take the sear out of the jig. In the Marvel, as soon as you take the sear out of the jig, it has to be set up again from scratch to work on it, and there's no way to set it up relative to your last setting- your last setting is lost. With the Yavapai, you just turn the set screw out a half turn, and you have a new angle, a little shallower or deeper than the one the microscope is telling you didn't work.
Of course, that means I spent an hour and a half last night patiently adjusting the angle THE WRONG WAY, but that's why it's so important to be able to beat on the bench and swear. :banghead:
I'm been using a Marvel Hammer & Sear jig, and gazing forlornly through a Yavapai jig at the results.
I have three problems.
My first problem is this: after carefully stoning the hammer hooks in the jig, mating the sear angle to it with the Marvel, the sear doesn't want to drop all the way into the hooks.
It almost feels like there's some kind of tiny debris in the way- I can push the sear into the hooks, and it will go, but as soon as I release pressure, it springs back out.
In frustration, I took the hammer and sear out of my loaded model, and put it under the microscope. Not the same. That hammer and sear drop happily together, and stay there.
So I've done something wrong with my new hammer and sear. Somehow, the angle of the hooks or the angle of the sear is holding them apart, and, of course, without proper engagement, the hammer follows when you drop the slide from slide lock.
Working the sear and the hooks together on dykem blue shows that both hammer hooks are hitting the sear.
The second problem is that the Yavapai jig only allows the microscope to observe one side of the engagement, and I would dearly love to flip the hammer and sear over, and look at the other side, to see if the other end of the angle is hitting before the side I see makes contact. How do you look at both sides?
I have a set of pins to install on the frame, and while I can look at both sides that way, I can't use the microscope on them, and I see things under the microscope that I'd never see without it.
The third problem I have is I don't see how to adjust the angle of the sear primary engagement face relative to the sear pin- if it needs to be something other than parallel, I don't see how to adjust that with accuracy. I have the same problem with the hammer hooks- if the Marvel jig is cutting them at some angle other than parallel to the hammer pin, how would you know, and how would you correct it?
And finally, I now have the Marvel jig, the Brown sear jig, the pin set and the Yavapai jig. After screwing around with them for a couple days, I like the Marvel jig for cutting the hammer hooks (mainly because I have no other way of doing them) and the system it has for setting the primary angle on the sear relative to the hammer is great, but I like the Yavapai jig for tuning it- for two reasons. One, there is no substitute for gazing though the microscope, it really makes it easy to see, as far as it goes. Furthermore, it leaves both your hands free, so you can beat your fists on the bench and swear loudly at the same time, and that's becoming very important to me. :banghead:
And two, on the Yavapai, you don't "loose" the angle when you take the sear out of the jig. In the Marvel, as soon as you take the sear out of the jig, it has to be set up again from scratch to work on it, and there's no way to set it up relative to your last setting- your last setting is lost. With the Yavapai, you just turn the set screw out a half turn, and you have a new angle, a little shallower or deeper than the one the microscope is telling you didn't work.
Of course, that means I spent an hour and a half last night patiently adjusting the angle THE WRONG WAY, but that's why it's so important to be able to beat on the bench and swear. :banghead:
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