I’m glad people like you exist because I would never have the patience to make a computer model and then put together a video like this. Feels like a college math/physics/engineering class, which is beyond my capabilities as a lawyer. But I love the detail your channel provides.
Good shit brother! I hope some of these 1911 newbies that are buying up all the new budget 2011’s will watch your videos so they can actually learn about their tool. You don’t buy a 50,000 dollar car and NOT know how to check or change the oil, just like you don’t buy a new gun platform without knowing how it works 🤦🏻♂️ and yes! That does include knowing about your internal ignition parts and how they work. You’re truly a wealth of much needed knowledge. Nobody else gets down to the real nitty gritty like you do 💯
What I really hope with people getting into this platform is that they realize you cant just swap springs and components all willy nilly. You cant drop in a new sear spring, you cant drop in a trigger, you cant drop in a new sear and hammer. It all needs inspected and fit to the gun. If you don't, or dont do it correctly, then it may be dangerous. Not saying people shouldnt tinker on them and learn all that, but hopefully have a better idea what they are getting into on the front end, be ready to invest some time, ruin and replace some parts, and make sure to do safety and function checks before using the pistol again.
Great information! You have brought many skills into this presentation. I like to say. "i like learning something new every day" This is the same philosophy I look for in every Gun Smith that touches my 1911's. I find this another level to go to...Garage Smithing. I can detail strip replace springs and small parts. But doing heart surgery on a 1911.....Golf Clap.
I have been waiting for this. What you have is exactly what I found to be safe years ago. I have never in 45 years been able to make a safe and light 2 lb trigger pull without a very minute amount of creep. To make it 100% reliable it has to be there in the 1911. In addition to this and in order to maintain the hammer and sear angle you have carefully created the hammer must be stoned across its top as to not over cock when the slide come rearward. If there is an over cocking of the hammer it will beat that perfect sear angle away and batter the face of the sear. No one mentions or addresses this in any videos that I have seen.
@@five-oonsene545 I consistently make 1.5# triggers for competition pistols all the time. No hammer follow, and any “creep” is mitigated / ignored due to how light the trigger pull is. A 15 thou creep on a 3lb trigger feels entirely different than a 15 thou creep on a 1.5lb trigger.
safe engagement means there is overlap - or engagement distance of the hooks onto the sear face. This creates creep - a truly "zero creep" trigger is extremely unsafe. The 12.5 thou of creep on this one is not noticeable to me when shooting the pistol. Trigger feels very crisp and it is safe.
Dump your jig for final fitting. Mount hammer/sear on outside of your pistol frame and go from there for final fit on the actual pistol. Excellent video. I use gauge pins to pass through both sides of the frame for stability.
Yeah I will probably machine some right tolerance extra long sear and hammer pins. Will likely need another fixture to hold my microscope above the pistol frame.
Well done. I made scale models of the hammer and sear. I would like to see atlas does to get a safe under 2 lb trigger pull plus it has to be safe. I have seen the radius sear nose concept discussed. Haven't made up my mind on that one. I agree the kuenhausen books are excellent. Thanks for taking the time for this vid.
For referencing the actual sear and hammer hook engagement to the actual pistol, you can take the grips off and place the sear and hammer on top of the frame and use the actual sear and hammer holes and pins for the pistol, getting accurate engagement for that pistol vs a jig. Hope this makes sense.
Ah yeah I was thinking I may machine me an extra tight tolerance longer set of pins to make this easier. Little more difficult to use the microscope with but I could design a new fixture. Always room for learning and improvement!
@@EngineersArmory regardless of how tight a jig is, it most likely will never “match up” exactly to the actual pistol and pins for each trigger job. But, nothing like a good machined jig either, but using the actual pistol will get you the most accurate results. Having a super accurate jig to get you “close enough” would be more repeatable and efficient than messing with a pistol frame each time. Great video production. Thank you!
Excellent video. I've been watching a few in the past few weeks getting acquainted with the 1911 before starting on the MAC 9. Yes, you really got into the bushes on this one, but love the detail, explanation, and drawings. Thanks for sharing, Ken
I'm always trying to get more "creep" 😂 In the bullseye world we call it "roll," and "creep" is more like grittiness in that felt sear engagement. I did a trigger where I extended the hammer hooks out from .025" to .030 by essentially undercutting it with a safe edge file and not including the secondary angle on the sear and I have so much creep (roll) and feedback from the trigger, it's just about ideal. And I never did the math on it but it absolutely does feel like a 1:1 relationship between sear engagement and creep, or "roll" in my testing through very wide sear engagement to very narrow.
Its interesting that you want creep/roll for bullseye shooting but i guess that makes sense the more I think about it. It seems maybe the TR sear would be best for that? The more research I have done, and reading comments on this video, it seems the TR sear may produce more of a roll to the break which makes sense. For my purposes I like a nice distinct wall and crisp break - it seems my flat sear face cutting jig may be best for that.
Well done! People will be using this video as a reference for years to come. I took similar photos of my hammer and sear engagement after doing my first ever trigger job. I just had to see what the angles looked like. Although, I didn't do nearly the in-depth analysis that you did. I've been using the gun in competitions with excellent results.
As always, this is a really impressive, extremely well made and very thoughtful video. There's a ton of information to gleam from here. Thanks for the video!
Buy a Junk frame or 80% frame and machine a Cut-away window to view Hammer to Sear engagement. That's what I did and that frame has been invaluable over the past 25 years.
That is certainly one way to do it. Valuable for seeing the whole system working together. My $30 sear and hammer jig is good enough for me. That one frame will vary from every other frame in terms of pin hole location and parallelism just slightly. And that will vary between jigs used as well. If I cant see the exact relationship in every individual pistol, a representation of that relationship is the next best thing. Whether that's in a jig like I have, or another pistol frame. I went with the cheaper route that doesnt require machining a hole in a frame (I didnt have the machining capabilities I have now when I got this sear jig). To each their own though!
This is an absolutely wonderful video. I am amazed at how deeply and rigorously you examined this. I too use a microscope (an inexpensive Amscope digital student scope) and will be ordering a calibration slide, which had never occurred to me. I'm a child of the '50s and have been in love with the 1911 ever since I first saw one in John Wayne's hand in an old World War II movie. I bought my first one in about the mid 1970s but I didn't start tinkering with it until the mid 1980s. My understanding of the relationship between the hammer and sear was rudimentary, and my skills were less than that, and the appropriateness of the tools I had available as a car mechanic was nonexistent, resulting in a hammer that would stay back when the slide was racked by hand, but would follow the slide on recoil. I only fired it one time like that. In recent years both my skills and tools have improved and I've given a lot of thought to, and played around a lot with, the 1911 hammer and sear. Most recently, up until I discovered how good the Atlas ignition kits are, I had tried narrowing the sear tip to about .018", so it sat a couple of thousandths below the edge of .020" hammer hooks, and this gave a trigger with minimal creep, and that seems logically safe and passes the safety checks. With the better understanding I have after watching this video, I will be revisiting this on the guns that I have set up this way. I have to say, since I purchased my first Atlas ignition kit I have not hand-tuned anything that I've installed one in. Under magnification the fit and finish of the parts is just too good to mess with. The most I've ever had to do is tweak the sear spring to get the desired trigger pull weight. Thanks for the video.
Thank you for making this! Excellent video. I am learning to do my own triggers and love the nerdy detail. I went with a TR jig to start with and I feel very vindicated in my choice. If you ever wanted to borrow the jig for a couple weeks to fit some long sears and play around with it, I'd send you mine if you cover shipping round trip.
You need a small optical comparator. Its used in a machine shop. Ive seen some used on a computer screen where you can measure with different angles and click the image to mark lines
There is a big ass one of those at my work used to compare large diameter thread pitches. Its pretty cool. I have used it to analyze the dimensions of buttress threads which are kinda neat. Not so sure they would be keen on me using it for gun parts haha.
@EngineersArmory we had one that was small and used a computer called a smartscope. Im sure there is a camera system now that incorporates a digital radical on screen for cheap
@@vettepicking Likely! thats pretty cool. I have used relatively cheap USB cameras on microscopes with software installed. You use a calibration slide (as I have shown here) to calibrate the measurement in the software, then for a given zoom level can take whatever measurements you need. Kind of similar to the method I showed here with my image processing software. I should actually try that. just use my calibration slide at 20X to set a calibration in my image processing software so i can just upload the picture then direcly measure what I want with more accuracy. Thanks for the good idea! haha
By the way the information here can be used to apply to pretty much any trigger job and it's interesting how many hammer/sear relationships in different models you notice have sear angles from the factory that actually cock the hammer back as the sear slips off the hammer hooks, which in my opinion, creates the worst feeling in the trigger of any sear angle. It also makes the trigger weight very dependent on hammer spring weight which imois not ideal, but they probably do this more for safety than anything when producing so much volume. Berettas are a great example of this. Anyways sorry to triple post but this is something I'm always trying to explain to people in a way that gets through to them and you've shown it with actually moving visuals
I appreciate the comments, you're contributing good information! I have looked at all the CZ hammer fired trigger systems in detail and they pretty much all have a parallel relationship in the fully cocked position and lift the hammer slightly as they release it. Same with the Beretta and you mentioned. As far as I can tell after all this research is that a trigger *must* have creep to be safe - some creep. creep is the inherent result of hammer to sear engagement depth which is needed for a safe trigger. I am curious to do some more modeling and calculations of trigger creep based on enagement and the trigger mechanism of hinged trigger pistols. With a hinged trigger and its pivot in relation to the triggger bar movement does it produce more or less creep that a 1911? I have a SAO CZ Shadow 2 and that trigger feels better than any 1911 i have felt which is insane to me.
@@EngineersArmory Agree 👍 I have heard of some bullseye smiths who will reduce the hammer hooks as far down as .018". Once they're done with the sear there's probably no more than .005" of sear engagement. I'm of the belief that the only way to get a true crisp trigger on what I would consider "simple" triggers like a 1911 is with that very low, very unsafe amount of sear engagement. But if its only use is bullseye that's mostly not a problem from a safety standpoint. An interesting trigger system is on the SIG P210. My military version must have almost .100" of sear engagement but the act of pulling the trigger through the first stage takes up 98% of that, cocking the hammer back noticeably as you do. From there you only really feel the second stage. It does this by way of a "double pull lever" (direct translation from some indecipherable german word). If you back off the trigger, the hammer goes back and you get full sear engagement again. That double pull lever essentially creates mechanical advantage against the sear engagement so you don't really feel it as you pull through the first stage, then as the DPLever reaches the end of its travel the 2nd stage feels to me like a 1:1 ratio between trigger travel and sear engagement. I wonder if something like that could be reverse engineered into a 1911. The closest I can get is by maxing out spring pressure on the pre travel.
@@JaredAF oh that's awesome! There are so many guns I wish I could get my hands on to do inspection and analysis like that. Thanks for the great description of that system!
Lay the pistol on its side. Lay hammer and sear on the side of the pistol - on the exterior of the frame. Insert hammer and sear pins through the hammer and sear, into the pin holes in the frame. Voila! You now have a jig.
Thats one way to do it. Problem with that is now your hammer and sear pins are only engaged in one side of the frame holes - meaning they will be looser and the view of the sear and hammer engagement less accurate. Still a good method. At some point I may just machine a tight tolerance set of extra long pins. Then of course I would need to design and 3D print a fixture to hold my new microscope over the frame in the perfect spot haha.
excellent video!!! a couple of tools that might help... Brownells makes BROWNELLS - TRIGGER ADJUSTMENT PINS so you can check the sear engagement on your specific frame... and Brownells/Yavapai 1911 Sear Tool for a microscope but seems your microscope got a good detailed picture of engagement. you can also use a .020 feeler gauge for the hammer hook height... that little screw on the bottom of the ed brown sear jig is related to the angle of the primary sear angle in relation to the 90* hammer hooks...(good to know)
Special pins to check the engagement relationship are the next step if I need more accuracy with my trigger jobs (after I fix my hammer and sear jig). I would just machine my own on the lathe. It would be pretty easy to design and 3d print a fixture to hold my microscope over the sear and hammer in the pistol frame with the extended pins. The microscope I got is more than adequate for my needs. And it was only $13 haha. The fixtures really make the difference though. Which were.... some of my time and maybe $1 in filament. The sear jig I use has more than enough adjustment on the screw to cut sear primary faces to angles what would work with original or modern hammer hook geometry. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@EngineersArmory harrison designs sells a true radius sear jig if you want the “roll “ trigger break instead of the wall …you could start out with a EGW long sear… having a microscope to check engagement really is key .. awesome channel I’m watching the polishing video right now
@@strangisproductions I am curious about the true radius sear geometry and how it feels. Might have to buy one in the name of science! Haha. Thanks for watching and commenting. I appreciate the kind words as discussion!
@@strangisproductions that's one of those thing that would take way too much time and effort to do accurately on the manual machines I have access to. And I am an engineer not a machinist haha. I know enough about machining to get the simple tasks I want to do done but that's about it.
Thank you for this great video. I too will be re-watching this & some of your other videos. BTW, I noticed no one in the comments referred to you as a "fukin' idiot"!
During normal operation, if the slide is coming forward, it is stripping a round from the magazine and chambering it. This slows down the slide. Without that round there being chambered the slide slams forward much harder, and overtime can batter parts. In the case of a 1911 it will put more stress on the barrel and slide locking lugs, the lower barrel lug, the slide stop cross pin, and barrel link.
Ive got a few videos on p320s already. I like working on hammer fired guns much better. I would recommend the Sig Guy, and SIG MECHANICS youtube channels. They have awesome super technical content on the P320.
The jig instructions will get you there for sure. They have a sear angle adjustment screw standard position called out. It is of course on the conservative side and prioritizes safety. It would cut a positive angle on most sears somewhere between 6-10 degrees more positive than a parallel relationship based on some quick calculations (the standard position is about .020" different than what usually gets me close to a parallel realtionship).
Be careful measuring from pictures and those calibration slides. It's the viewing angles that are a problem. The camera is never perfectly perpendicular and the thickness of the slide causes the same problem. It's very easy to get something very different from reality.
I was showing the pictures just for the video. I dont take pictures then measure from those. I get what you're saying tho. You're thinking of the nitty gritty details which I like! I am very careful to focus on the scale on the galss, and that allows me to see the edge of whatever face is on the glass surface (in contact with the scale) in focus. This way the scale, and whatever I am measuring are in the same focal plane so their scale with respect to eachother wont get skewed. I can't measure the face across its whole length this way obviously, I am making the assumption its width is relatively uniform (atleast within my measurement error) across the length of the face. I can flip the sear or hammer over and measure the width of the opposite edge and assume the width varies linearly across the length of the face. No the scope will never be completely square, but very close. All of this I considered and its why I included that +/- .002" measurement error. Reporting measurement undercertainty as half the smallest division is standard practice in terms of ethical data collection and reporting. I feel its conservative in this case and I am comfortable targeting .002" over my desired minimum value. Since this video I have developed a better way to measure. Take the nice clear picture of the sear and hammer engagement in the jig, with both edges in focus (in the same focal plane), and put that into my image processing software and use a calibration I developed to measure the face widths that way. I feel this is more accurate, yet I still target .002" above my minimum for safety reasons.
Out of curiosity, what would happen if the sear was perfectly round instead of a parallel flat engagement and secondary angle (enhanced TR/Warner)? You could change the size of the sear circumference to get enough engagement where the sear contacts both the hammer hook and where the secondary angle would make contact with the hammer
I think I understand what you're asking. As I have it shown here the TR/Warner sear does not have a secondary angle. I omitted that for clarity. Usually that sear tip profile would also have the secondary angle cut to adjust hammer hook engagement. You would want the arc of the primary face to always be part of the circle made by the tip if it circled around its pivot pin. If that radius was different (that arc was part of a different sized circle) that would result in the hammer being lifted or dropped as the sear pivoted forward. This would no longer be a "true neutral" relationship. I hope that answers your question. If I misunderstood it please feel free to correct me.
@@EngineersArmory That makes sense thanks for elaborating! I love learning about tuning handguns, I'm a gunsmith that runs a private shop in my spare time and I have the personal range to test modifications on firearms so live fire testing is free lol. I got bored tuning/troubleshooting glock platform handguns so I'm switching to series 70 1911/2011s. Another question, what affect does notching the hammer hook or sear have? I see that in some of the handguns I service. That modification keeps the same contact angle and engagement but lessens the amount of material to contact the hammer hook.
@@EngineersArmory if you use the picture of the sear in the top left at 3:09 and the picture of the hammer in the top right of 3:28 as a reference, that vertical line down the middle of both parts is where a notch is made at the hammer hook tip and sear tip using a file, dremel or similar tool. The engagement angle and amount of engagement remains the same with less surface area contact.
@@SuspiciousGanymede Still unclear what you're asking. The notch out of the center of the hammer and sear? The sear is split like that because the disconnector rides in it. The hammer is split so the hammer hooks contact the outside 1/3rd of the sear face, if it falls to the safety catch, the safety catch will damage the sear face. The safety catch hook generally only contacts the center of the sear face so it doesn't damage the area the hammer hooks contact. If the sear has a notch in the center of its engagement face, that is usually because the hammer has dropped to its safety catch and damaged that area. Not sure if thats what you're referring to?
No I do not. No way to measure these when loaded. Also that is such a light loading for the material any change in geometry would be too small for me to be able to measure.
Excellent video. I have an idea for you that may improve your results, and prove to be a marketable tool using your methods here. Any way I can email you?
Dont have a "public email" associated with the channel that I can share here. Best way is to DM me on reddit. U/rrppdd4. Can chat/exchange email there.
