Hammer & Sear Angles

[Bill Z]

I give up. Squaring the hooks is about a 10 or 15 dollar job and they would be perfect. I'm glad John sees the wisdom in getting them right first, but that squaring file you just wasted your money on is a joke.

No stone is going to hold a true square for long. The ceramic stones are better used to polish the hooks after they are cut correctly. If you use them to cut the hooks, you will grind the corner off slightly and not have a true cut on the bottom corner of your hooks.

Sounds to me like you'll have several hundred dollars in this trigger job before long.

 

[saltydog452]

Yeah, but lookit all the fun he is having.

salty.

 

[Bill Z]

You've got a point. It's all business with me and I have my 'fun' doing it right the first time the easy way. Sorry I butted in, I thought Lyle wanted the quick and easy solution. Many times I forget that the journey is more important than the destination, no matter how expensive or complicated it is.

Now, where'd I leave my good pair of jeans, I have sear noses to polish......................

 

[45auto]

Quick question:

If you buy a high quality hammer like C&S, Nowlin,etc, aren't the hammer hooks already square?

Not picking on a brand name, substitute Brown, Wilson, EGW, whatever.
If I pay $50 for a hammer, I'd assume the hooks are correct, perhaps need polishing.

Thanks

 

[saltydog452]

Bill, don't forget that you might need a handy door and frame to complete the 'trigger job'.

Jammer, I admire what you are doing and have done. You just wanna fix your own 1911s and do it correctly. Sounds good to me.

From what remains of my brain cells, I seem to remember someone saying that the toughest part of doing a trigger job for 'NRA Outdoor Pistol' was what you had to do after ' the jig'.

I dunno, that was just a passing thought.

salty.


P.S.

Dang, that don't sound good. A 'passing thought' sounds a bit like flauence afer a large order of bean and cheese nachos. 'Fanning' the covers don't help much.

Just a small attempt at a bit of levity.

sd.

 

[CCW1911]

Tuner, come on you use 600 grit and a lathe blank and don't do 3lb glass rod triggers? I think you're being too modest there.

The squaring file is for when you are trying to save very messed up hooks and don't have access to a surface grinder to do it the easy way. It's a last resort kind of thing but with some skill and patience you can get the hooks back to square with one, I've done it. Then you have to follow up with stones and then if you really want it nice with Tuners lathe blank and 600 grit. It's doesn't hurt if the bottom of the hooks have a small radius, if you look at most of them under a high power microscope you'll see that they do. If you have any kind of break away angle cut into the sear it's never going to touch that radius. Stones require maintance, keep them clean and oiled and they last, you can square them back up when you need to. Ceramic stones seem to last for me but I only use the very fine ones, and you can square them back up too when you need to.

The quality hammers usually come with nice square hooks but you can't take that for granted.

 

[Jammer Six]

Nope, I've bought two McCormick hammers, now, and neither one of them had square hooks when I bought them. That said, they weren't $50 hammers- the hammer and the sear together were fifty bucks, so it's possible that a more expensive hammer could come square, but I'll never believe it. So far, the only other new-in-the-package hammer I've looked at under the scope was a Brown, and the hooks on it definitely weren't square, either.

I suppose that the thought that they come square could be comforting, but you probably better not look at them under magnification if you want to believe that. I know I'll never again believe that the hooks are square until I look at them...

'Tuner, the stones are what I've been using. The reason I didn't start out with the file is because I figured I could do less damage with the stones. That turns out to be way wrong... I can do lots of damage regardless of what system I'm using.

That's why I asked if it's true the stones wear out, and if so, how soon. Now it occurs to me to wonder how you would tell- if the stones are worn, and aren't cutting at 90 degrees, how would you know?

Lathe blank. Huh. I may have to look into that. That has to be smoother than the file.

Ross, how do you re-true the stones?

Bill, now I see why you send your hammers out.

 

[Old Fuff]

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe – maybe not. But I am posting several images of 1911 pistol hammers that show the hooks in different shapes and conditions. All came out of this or that gun.

I invite all of you to use these in your discussions. If they prove to be popular I can do more. Please notice some of the more horrible things that can happen when someone gets carried away with a stone or file. Perhaps we can all learn or profit in some ways from the experience.

In this first picture the angle is wrong and there is a small radius in the bottom corner.

 

[Old Fuff]

Next picture. This hook is almost perfect.

 

[Bill Z]

It's cheap, easy, and works every time. Your time has to be worth something, not to mention the excessive cost of too many tools hanging around.

Even the most expensive hammers can be off, it doesn't take much, so don't rely totally on them being square. The talents of a highly skilled crafstman on his digital mill, well, I trust that way before I would someone stuffing plastic baggies. Now, I do still polish them up before I use them.

Salty, you are correct. If one were to sit down and think of all of the contact points in the frame that start with the trigger and every part until the release of the hammer, including the parts of the MSH, you have an idea of what goes into the work.

 

[Old Fuff]

And the last pictures.

Going left to right, the first pictures shows what happens when someone tries to stone the hooks with a too-soft stone that rounded on the corner. Notice the radius in the hook's corner.

In the next picture the hooks were lowered too far, and there is a small radius in the corner. When it was matched with a sear with too much of a break-away angle the hammer fell and the half-cock notch was chipped off.

In the last picture the hooks are about as good as you can get.

Comments?

 

[Jammer Six]

Bill, it was all in the emphasis.

'Fuff, you old dog, how did you take those pictures?

That was way cool!

In that middle picture in the post with three pictures, what's the purpose of the relief on top of the hooks?

Let me rephrase that: I think I see. It was ground down too far, and then broken.

 

[CCW1911]

Jammer, you said McCormick hammers, I didn't see that before. They are supposed to be drop in parts and from what I've heard they work pretty well that way on some guns at least, I don't use them so I can't give first hand info. I believe Chip uses a little different geometry on his hammers and sears, I talked to him when he first came out with them and IIRC that's what he told me. If you stuck them in a jig and started stoning I can see what happened. I would give McCormick a call and ask them.

I do trigger jobs from under 1lb on some specialty competition guns to carry type trigger jobs. I don't believe in drop in trigger jobs although lots of people have told me they dropped in some parts and have a great trigger. I spend a lot of time on trigger jobs, nothing has ever dropped in for me. There is a steep learning curve to learning how to properly set up a 1911 trigger, I've been doing them for 30 years and am still learning. I have developed a method that works for me, other gunsmiths go at it a different way and have success, there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is why you get different information from different smiths and it all could be correct but it may not all work inconjunction with each other. Some guys seem to be emotionaly attached to their methods and will attack anyone who does it different. I can understand that in a way, you pay a pretty good price to learn how to do it right but I try to stay open to any good ideas. It's hard from my perspective to encourage folks to do their own, if they really are dedicated and will learn enough to do it right I'm all for it. Most seem to just want to save the few bucks us gunsmiths make on a trigger job, that's the ones that worry me. We have a saying around my shop " to the amateur everything seems easy ".

Fuff, that last photo does look pretty nice but I see some editing in there, one of my hobbies is photoshop. So how much touching up did ya do? I still don't think that square corner is neccessary but like I said if it works for you good on ya.

Some of the really good hammers are made of S7, real tough stuff. You better have a rigid mill and some really sharp cutters if your going after the hammer hooks on one of these babies. I got digital and it's nice but I can still mess up if I try hard enough!! The C&S hammers I get in are pretty nice right out of the package, not seen one yet that had bad hooks, not saying I don't do some prep work on them.

 

[Old Fuff]

Jammer:

Concerning the pictures. Some years ago they were taken with a 35mm SLR camera with a 100mm Macro lens. What you see is a small part of a large collection that was taken for an on-going project at that time. What you are seeing is the tip of an iceburg. I just happened to come across the negatives and thought about this thread. While Tuner and Bill have been explaining I'm not sure that everyone who is following the thread always understands. This may help.

The originals are much more detailed, but I'm on a learning curve so far as uploading them to The High Road is concerned. If this continues I'll try to do better in the future.

Concerning the picture you cited (I need to find a way to number them). Thay came out of a pistol where the owner had someone do a trigger job (maybe the owner himself, but if so he wouldn't admit it). Anyway, when those hooks were matched with a sear with too much break-away on the back the sear bounced and the hammer fell. The result was a damaged sear nose and the half-cock notch lip chipped off.

If people can't make out the important details I may resubmit the pictures and do a better job of showing just the hooks.

 

[Jammer Six]

Ross, I didn't buy McCormick because they were drop in, I bought them because they were cheap. I actually bought the first set to learn on, as 'Fuff is suggesting, but when I got it done, they lasted for more than 10,000 rounds.

Now I'm wanting to do exactly what you're talking about: get my method laid out. The cheap way out is definitely to use a gunsmith in the first place. I knew that going in, and made the decision to do this based on other criteria. If I were out to do things the cheap, easy way, I'd just follow Bill's advice, or take Sample's class, and be done with it.

So how do you true up stones, and how do you tell if they're square or not?

 

[Old Fuff]

CCW1911:

You have a good eye, but all I touched up was the background. There were some light reflections I didn't want. P.M. me an e-mail address and I'll send you a unretouched copy from the negative. You'll find no difference so far as the hooks are concerned.

BTW: I don't have Photoshop. Wish that I did.

Also note a similar hammer in post #34.

 

[Old Fuff]

Now ya' got me thinking ...

Concerning that square corner ...

How much it matters depends on how the sear is set up. It was very important in Browning's original design because the sears didn't have any relief at the back (what we now call the break-away angle). If any part of the sear can engage that radius one can end up with a very strange
trigger pull. If the sear can't (or doesn't) touch it for whatever reason it becomes a moot point.

Later-day Browning Hi-Powers use a sear without any break-away angle, and they're hooks are cut with a thin cutter or cutoff wheel that cuts a little notch and eliminates any possibility of a radius and insures full engagement by the sear. I've sometimes wondered why 1911 hammers are not made that way.

 

[RogersPrecision]

Many of the 'trick' aftermarket hammers today exhibit the altered geometry spoken about by CCW.
The hooks are still at 90 degrees to the floor in front of them, but both the hooks and the floor have been rotated to the rear by about 8 degrees.
This was done to facilitate 'drop-in' trigger jobs.
I do not use hammers with this modification as I can not achieve the dead crisp break that I need.
I don't know how the hammer is located in the jig that Jammer is using, but suspect this difference in geometries is complicating his situation.

The first two pics illustrate a McCormick hammer and an old GI spec hammer.





This next pic is a Wilson 'ultralight' compared to an STI.



I hope this helps!
If you need better pics, I will redouble my efforts!

 

[Jammer Six]

Oh, great...

So out of the package, not only are the hooks not square, but the hammers themselves vary in geometry!

Thank you very much, Chuck, those pictures make the point quite clear. Hammers are different from manufacturer to manufacturer.

I could probably think about this for the weekend, and come up with a couple conclusions, but I'd miss something.

Right off the bat, the only thing I see is that the hammer travels farther on each shot before locking up when the hooks are rotated that way, but I'm not sure what that means. Shorter hammer/sear life, maybe?

What gains are there to such geometry?

And what brand is closest to original specifications?

I realize this next question is going to throw gasoline on the fire, but which geometry do you guys prefer, and why?

 

[RogersPrecision]

No. The hammer face location/rotation is identical on the altered geometry hammers.
I prefer stock Colt hammers of recent vintage or the bar-stock Wilson hammers. The Wilson's have the original geometry hook wise, but a
'Gold-Cup' like strut pin hole location. Not as radical as a GC hammer, maybe 2/3rd's of the way.
The bar-stock Wilson hammers come with .021" hammer hook height at a very nice 90 degrees. They should receive light stoning to the faces to minimize a small radius at the hook root, and to improve surface finish.
I also like to stone a small radius at the top of the hooks.

A stock Wilson #337:

A stock STI of older vintage. Note the large 'furrow' at the root of the hooks.
Purpose is to eliminate the radius created by the wire EDM process.

A pic of nicely prepped hooks on a Wilson #337. The radius on the top of the hooks is of a much nicer surface finish than the picture suggests. They are showing reflections of objects in the background.

 

[Jammer Six]

Wow!

Thanks, Chuck!

Now I know where I'd mail my hammers, if I were going to mail them anywhere...

That finish can't be a machine finish. You did this by hand?

Stones? Lap? Magic?

 

[1911Tuner]

Rotation

Chuck's Quote:

The hooks are still at 90 degrees to the floor in front of them, but both the hooks and the floor have been rotated to the rear by about 8 degrees.
This was done to facilitate 'drop-in' trigger jobs.
********************

So they're actually making hammers that are out of spec...on purpose...in order to allow the Tinkerin' Tyro to do what really shouldn't be done in the first place...

Help me, Hannah...

I have a half-dozen new Remington Rand hammers left...and 7 or 8 pre-Series 80 Colt ring...or Rowel-type hammers. I think I'll just keep hoardin'em.

 

[Jammer Six]

I have a half-dozen new Remington Rand hammers left...and 7 or 8 pre-Series 80 Colt ring...or Rowel-type hammers. I think I'll just keep hoardin'em.

Gee, 'Tuner, are you sure you don't want me to take my stones and polish up all those hooks for you?

I'm sure I could save you some time...

 

[CCW1911]

Fuff, I was just pulling your chain on the pictures, I don't believe you altered the important part in any way, sorry if I offended you it was unintentional. Wow, Chuck you did a great job explaining the difference with some great pics. I was going to recommend to Jammer to get a Wilson hammer and sear to play with because of the reasons you already gave. he should've told us sooner he was cutting on McCormick. Jammer you may as well trash those, I don't think you can bring them back now. Changing the position of the strut pin hole takes some pressure off the sear while the gun is cocked, it kinda takes the hammer overcenter, when the hammer is released it rotates thru the overcock and gets the full whammy of the mainspring. The other geometry changes were done to let the sear rotate without further cocking the hammer as it does. You can't get a light trigger if your cocking the hammer as you pull the trigger. Ok it would be very difficult to.

The way I restore the sharp edges on my stones is with a lot of elbow grease and something that will cut the stones and a flat surface. You figure it out from there.

Ross

 

[Old Fuff]

CCW1911:

It takes a lot to get the Fuff offended, and you haven't even come close. This is the first time I've tried to upload pictures of this kind and I'm going through a learning curve. I don't have Photoshop and haven't ever used it. So, I thought, "he knows something about this that I don't and maybe should." I see no objection to cleaning up the background or other details so long as the important parts of the image aren't changed to make them illustrate something that isn't true. The trouble is I don't really know how to do it.

Like Tuner, I have always worked with Colt commercial or USGI parts, and for my own purposes it's going to stay that way. Obviously if one is going to use these "altered from standard" hammers they should probably be matched to a sear from the same maker. Unless otherwise specified I would expect any jigs or fixtures to be based on the standard Colt parts.

I don't consider a trigger pull job to be a "drop in" matter any way you cut it. (No pun intended). I have seen far to many "basement jobs" that were flat-out unsafe. My experience is that someone reads a "how to do it" article, does it, messes up, and then brings me the results with the expectation that I can fix it with no additional parts or labor charge - because working on the gun is so much fun ... :banghead:

Chuck Roger's comment about making a radius at the top corner of the hooks (hammer held upside down) interested me because for a time Colt assemblers (or at least some of them) did somewhat the same thing, but I think in a different context. If anyone is interested I can post a picture of this. They however didn't use a break-away angle on the sear, and the radius or bevel was slightly larger. I always thought they're way was an open invatation for the sear to catch the half-cock notch, but so far as I know this never happened. The hook's depth by the way, wasn't lowered.