1911's and firing pin safeties

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Balrog

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OK i am trying to get a handle on who does and does not use firing pin safeties on their 1911s.

Series 70 Colt-- no firing pin safety
Series 80 Colt-- has firing pin safety

Kimber Series I--no firing pin safety ???
Kimber Series II--has firing pin safety

Springfield Armory--??? not sure about firing pin safety but has a lock in the mainspring housing???

What about S&W?
 
Springfield uses a 9 mm light weight titanium firing pin and a very heavy spring. The only problem I have ever seen with this setup was primer puncture. S&W uses a firing pin safety block to the best of my knowledge.
 
Short of looking at the markings on the gun, is there a way to look at a 1911 externally and tell if it has a firing pin safety?
 
Springfield Integrated Locking System (ILS) is in the Mainspring Housing that can easily be changed to a standard Colt Mainspring Housing with new internals.

Custom guns (Ed Brown, Wilson, Les Baer, etc....) use the series 70 firing system (no FPS parts).
 
Short of looking at the markings on the gun, is there a way to look at a 1911 externally and tell if it has a firing pin safety?
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No, except for Springfield. You can see the small lock in the ILS Mainspring housing.
 
Para Ordnance, Sig, Auto-Ordnance/Kahr, and Taurus have firing pin blocks similar to Colt Series 80.
Kimber uses a form of the 1930s Colt-Swartz system.
S&W uses a version of their in-house linkage modified to work off the grip safety.

Baer, Brown, Wilson, STI, SVI, Fusion, Wesson and all the other low volume and boutique builders that I can think of offhand have no mechanical firing pin block. Those that are certified in California use 9mm diameter titanium firing pins to pass the drop test.

I don't think RIA and the other Armscor of the Philippines guns do anything at all to accomodate the do-gooders.

Short of looking at the markings on the gun, is there a way to look at a 1911 externally and tell if it has a firing pin safety?
Click to expand...

Lock the slide back and turn the gun over. The bottom end of the firing pin block plunger will be visible beside the disconnector cut in the slide of any that I am familiar with.
 
T'was asked:

>Short of looking at the markings on the gun, is there a way to look at a 1911 externally and tell if it has a firing pin safety? <

Yes. Lock the slide to the rear and look underneath, near the back. Series 80 Colts and the clones that use the Series 80 system will have a small round spring-loaded plunger in the slide.

Kimber and others who use the Swartz system will have a rectangular plunger.
 
The SR1911 is free of a firing pin block, but uses a SA design lightweight pin with heavy spring.
 
So the new Ruger 1911 has no firing pin safety?

Also, to clarify, what is a firing pin safety supposed to accomplish? Is it to prevent discharges if the gun is dropped? Or if the sear breaks?
 
Dropped. The 1911 as originally designed is drop safe. In one of Patrick Sweeny's 1911 books he quotes drop test results of a 1911 series 70 pistol - no occasions of discharge when dropped up to 10 ft ht (I think that was the number) with the pistol landing squarely on the muzzle. IMHO 1911 firing pin safeties were dictated by nervous legal departments and are not required by design.
 
So the new Ruger 1911 has no firing pin safety?
Click to expand...
After much reading on the 1911forum, the gun has no FP block safety, just the stiff spring and lightweight FP. Pics of the bottom of the slide also confirms no plunger, and therefor no safety:)
 
Someone needs to post this on the Mythbusters forums.

I'm willing to bet that at the height required to actually get a good 1911 to go off....... that it would be close to impossible to get the 1911 to land nose down which would be required.

As mentioned above, you can rack the slide and see the firing pin plunger in the bottom of the side.
 
The original 1911 design is pretty safe when dropped on the muzzle (the condition in question) because the slide can move back against the recoil spring and enough shock is absorbed that the firing pin momentum is lost.

But, the installation of full length guide rods changed that drastically. Now the guide rod hits and the spring does not absorb energy, so the gun can fire. It is still not a certainty, and it takes a rather long fall, but it is basically the FLGR that has brought about the firing pin locks and all their associated problems.

Jim
 
Just some food for thought. The firing pin being a component of the slide, the only thing isolated by the recoil spring when dropped on the muzzle would be the frame. It would seem the only difference a full length guide would make is to give the entire gun a jolt. Now it may make some sense to to me that it may be less likely to discharge from the sear being jolted loose from shocking the frame but you'd have to have a damaged half cock notch or sear and or very weak sear spring.
 
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The original 1911 design is pretty safe when dropped on the muzzle (the condition in question) because the slide can move back against the recoil spring and enough shock is absorbed that the firing pin momentum is lost.
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So how about when the manual safety is on?

Also, what's your guys' thoughts on custom guns with high end trigger jobs? I've read the sear engagement on these guns can run around 0.013", and that it is not uncommon for the hammer to drop if the slide is racked on an empty chamber. And these are often the same custom guns that do not have firing pin safeties.

The 1911 as originally designed is drop safe. In one of Patrick Sweeny's 1911 books he quotes drop test results of a 1911 series 70 pistol - no occasions of discharge when dropped up to 10 ft ht
Click to expand...
To clarify, the series 70 isn't the original design. The original 1911's could discharge from a drop as low as 3 feet.

Besides. Sometimes a gun isn't dropped. Sometimes it gets a running start. Think chase, running, driving, disarming, etc. There's also rotational speed to consider. If the gun is spinning end over end when it hits, it could have many times greater firing pin inertia. There are also a lot of places/professions where a gun can commonly fall more than 10 feet.
 
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I think non-firing pin safety equipped 1911's are pretty safe, though this is worth reading.

http://www.10-8forums.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92823#Post92823

And the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_QkWEiX2eE

IMHO 1911 firing pin safeties were dictated by nervous legal departments and are not required by design.
Click to expand...
Since the Swartz firing pin safety was developed in the late 1930's, when my guess is that lawsuits were much less common than today, I'd guess they did have some accidental discharges that called for the development of a firing pin safety.

My guess is that all Colt's 1911 and subsequently all 1911's would have had a firing pin safety by the 1940's if not for the advent of WWII. Colt and the US Government probably weren't interested in producing a pistol with new and untested parts in great numbers at the time.
 
Quote:

>To clarify, the series 70 isn't the original design. The original 1911's could discharge from a drop as low as 3 feet.<

Uh...wut??

Three feet?

I'll take that bet.

And the only feature of the Series 70 that differed from the original design...aside from the A1 modifications...was the collet bushing and Accruizer (tm) barrel.

The Swartz modification was Colt's idea, and it was to enhance drop-safety. At the time, the US Army was still using horse-mounted cavalry. Dropping from the extra height was a concern. The system was rejected by the Army due to lack of reliability in firing the gun when it was time to use it. Shortly after the beginning of WW2, the horse cavalry was abandoned, and it became a non-issue. We've come full circle. The Swartz system is still giving problems in that area. The Series 80 system is much more reliable, but still suffers from late release timing on occasion.
 
In all fairness, I don't think the bevel cut on the firing pin stop cover was understood either or how it can affect operational timing. Your knowledge of the Moses design is superb sir.
 
The S&W E-Series has indeed dropped the Swartz safety system previously used in all SW1911s up to this year. They have held over a few Cal. legal SKUs and have kept the legacy frame cut intact causing some of us to speculate that a Swartz may someday re-materialize in that empty void. That last bit of course is pure speculation.
 
The Remington R1 has a firing pin safety, but neither of my Springfield GIs have them. Also, Wilson will do custom work on Series 80 guns (at least last time I checked), but Novak will not.
 
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