Shooter Induced Sear Bounce

[BallisticExpansion]

Let me preface all of this with a little explanation of how I shoot. I am NOT a "slapper" I am a "rider" when it comes to pulling the trigger. What I mean is that my finger NEVER completely loses contact with the trigger shoe except when I am finished shooting and moving to the next array, etc. When I intentionally slap the trigger on my gun the problem doesn't happen. This post will be to educate and perhaps someone can share a similar experience and provide answers.

 

Gun In Question STI Edge in 40sw

 

The original problem. During rapid fire (targets 10yds and closer) my hammer was falling to the half cock intermittently with no explanation or consistency. Original assumption was this was simply something incorrect with the sear/hammer. Keep in mind these were factory STI internals. To give you an idea of my shooting level I am in upper B class and can shoot a bill drill under 2 sec everytime. 

 

I have a smith install an extreme engineering sear and hammer, disco,  along with SVI safeties. I also installed a JEM grip safety myself and blended it to the gun in this same time period. After this I am thinking the hammer problem will be gone. The trigger job is excellent and I am very happy with everything.

 

The gun starts doing the same thing before, hammer to half cock under rapid fire. I take the gun to another smith under recommendation from a friend. He fits and installs a complete new SVI trigger group along with a new trigger bow and realizes the gun is doing the same thing. Note here that I am able to replicate the hammer follow with a dry gun and when I show him how I do it he is able to test it himself in the same way. After the smith is fighting to get the gun working for 3 months I go to pick it up from him. 

 

Here is how he describes the problem. As soon as the shot breaks I am letting the trigger out to prep the next shot before the slide can even make it to the rear completely. Because of this I am unloading the tension on the center leg of the sear spring by holding the trigger in just the right spot. When the slide reaches its stopping point the only thing holding the sear in place is the left leg of the sear spring. The inertia from the slide bottoming out is enough to unload the left leg of the sear spring. Therefore, the sear "bounces" just enough to allow the hammer to fall and it catches on the half cock as the slide returns to battery. 

 

His solution. First step remove all and I mean ALL pretravel so that when I rest my finger on the trigger there is no way for me to prep it and unload the tension on the center leaf. There was so little pre travel that the hammer was falling from half cock when I squeezed the trigger. Not good so I did give the trigger a little pretravel to fix that and because it was quite odd/difficult shooting a trigger that had zero take up and I was able to do so without causing the original problem to re surface. Second step set a very positive angle on the sear (see picture below). This was to keep the sear from being as likely to bounce out of the hammer hooks from what I remember.   Next step was to adjust the sear spring so the majority of tension was on the sear and very little on the center leg for pretravel/reset. Now I give kudos to the smith because he did what I asked and this fixed the issue. The result however, was the oppostie of what I would call a glass rod break trigger. 

 

After I shot the gun a little I decided I just couldn't shoot smoothly like this. I removed the sear spring the smith installed and left it as is in case I needed to go back. As I mentioned I also put a little pretravel back into the trigger so I could time the break better. I tweaked the other spring to the way it was with the first trigger job. Roughly just over 2lbs I would guess. I shoot the gun and still no hammer follow issue. However, now it seems I am stuck with a trigger with terrible creep and a snappy break. I am literally having to jerk the trigger to get it to break all at once. I only put 20rds through it before I decided I would not be able to shoot it this way. Does this mean I am doomed from shooting 1911/2011s with lighter triggers? Or at least until I completely change how I shoot?

 

OR has anyone ever experienced this and found a way to solve it? Would an open gun 2011 have the same problem??

 

I am thinking have a normal factory trigger job (3-4lbs) and leave most of the pretravel out. Maybe that will be reliable and still allow a decent trigger. 

Another option to try is maybe a much lighter slide and lighter recoil springs, but that is expensive and who knows if it will work.

 

The last option is to sell the gun and switch to another gun type. I really don't want to do this as I really enjoy shooting hi cap divisions and the 2011s shoot the smoothest/flattest easily for me. Also I would be taking quite a loss after what all I have invested into the 2011 game. 

 

I don't really expect any solid answers as this seems to not be a very common problem. Hopefully someone out there is at the beginning of my same problem and this helps them. 

 

I will add that every 1911 I have picked up so far I can cause this hammer follow issue in dry fire. I haven't shot enough in live fire to see if that's the case. I even did it to my gun while I was standing in the smith's shop, albeit it isn't something I could do everytime and can't do at all in live fire with my gun.

[M1A4ME]

I've never had that problem and I'm a trigger rider, too.  Then again, I don't shoot competition or have competition guns so mine aren't highly modified.

 

I do like your diagrams and "borrowed" it to saver for future reference, if that's okay.

[yoshidaex]

if the sear, hammer, disconnector interface/relation is sound, sear spring tuning is where you'll find your remedy. 

[zzt]

I've never experienced that problem, and I am a trigger rider.  My problem is I occasionally do not release far enough and the trigger doesn't reset.

[Racinready300ex]

I think I'm struggling with a similar problem. But, only with one gun so I'd say there is hope.

 

For me, my gun ran 100% then the hammer broke. I fit a new hammer, sear, dis, and saftey. Tweaked the pre and over travel. Nice 2lbs trigger, Then a problem similar to what you describe pooped up. I added tension to the sear, but it didn't help. This happened right before a level 3 match last year. No time to fix it, so I met a well known smith at the match, had him fit a new trigger group and safety. Gun ran great that match. He did great work, especially considering he did it at the match and couldn't even test fire the gun.

 

Then a few weeks later in practice it happened again. So I added a little tension to the center leg of the Dis. but stopped shooting the gun over the winter. I fit a new top end on the gun and did some grip work, and had it cerakoted etc to freshen it up for this season. I just started to shoot it again recently. Problem came back

 

Trigger was under 2 lbs from the smith. I added pretravel, didn't help. Bumped trigger up to 2.5 lbs didn't help. Bumped it up to 3 lbs seemed to help but hated the trigger. Now what? Broke it down, sanded out inside the dis-connector hole to make sure it was clear. I had done this once already, just wanted to do a little extra. Then I added some extra over travel and bent the sear spring so I ended up with a 2.5 lbs trigger.

 

250 rounds through it last night with no problem. But, I don't know which part fixed it. I'm thinking it was adding the over travel that got it for me. I'll run another 600-800 rounds through it. If it keeps running I may try to lower the trigger pull back down to the 2 lbs range and see what happens leaving the extra over travel and see how that does. But, I can probably live with it like this.

 

I do believe it is something I am doing when shooting. And something about this gun must be different then my other guns. I'll post updates as I get more rounds down the pipe.

[kimberacp]

Am no expert but the first thing I would do....is mark the sear point with a blue sharpie and dry the gun a few times and see where how the hammer is swiping off the sear nose.

Along with many other things to look for, this is the major part of the trigger job.    How is the hammer swiping??  Is it on both hooks?  Is it evenly swiping?

Then I would look at what other interfere there is with the dico?    Something is moving the pads of the disco away from the feet of the sear.   

Look at the position of the disco head in relation with the slide cutout as the slide is moving back?    Use the sharpie and mark the cutout, rack the slide a few times and see how it swiping in the cutout and where in the cutout?     

 

Thats where I would start...

 

BTW, removing ALL the pre travel, will make the hammer go to half cock.    By doing so, you are pushing the trigger all the back into the disco and putting pressure on the disco, not allowing it to move up and down freely.  Thus, the feet of the sear,  do not catch on the disco pads because it is being held up by the pressure trigger bow.

 

Good luck but problems like these are best solved but actually look at the parts.    

[Racinready300ex]

I can't speak of the OP, but with my gun I know the smith was checking the hammer sear contact. He told me my pin hole was off and it took some tweaking to get good contact. I saw the sear in his hand at the time covered in sharpie.

 

Now checking how the dis-connector interacts with the slide and the cut out may be worth looking at. Next time I break the gun down I'll look at that along with the hammer/sear contact, I never checked that myself. Although honestly I'm hoping it will keep running as is and it was just a issue with to little over travel.

[MrPostman]

Actually it sounds as if you are not letting the trigger out far enough past the reset point to allow the sear to catch the hammer on the full cock hooks, so instead it falls to half cock.
You are not the first person to post this problem, seen some other posts just like yours.

As far as trigger goes, if you want a light trigger then adjust the reset leg (middle leaf) to 8 oz or just a tad over and then adjust the left leg to 1.5 lb for a 2lb trigger pull. A heavier mainspring weight will help keep it from following by putting more pressure on the sear/hammer interface so it doesn't go to half cock from a "sear bounce" issue or slam fire from lack of enough pretravel, which is why you need some pretravel to ensure the halfcock works.


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[TONY BARONE]

The diagrams are incorrect . If you want to see the correct hammer sear relationship go to 1911.com forum the experts are there. My race guns have 14-16oz. triggers with 26,000 rounds thru them without an issue. It's a long learning curve doing trigger jobs. Extreme sear,Keonig hammer, Extreme lite disco, Colt sear spring,ISMI 17# ms. However everything needs massaging. When it's done correctly you can not do anything with your finger to not make it work unless you are Rob Leatham or Matt McLearn.

 

[357SIG]

58 minutes ago, TONY BARONE said:

The diagrams are incorrect . If you want to see the correct hammer sear relationship go to 1911.com forum the experts are there. My race guns have 14-16oz. triggers with 26,000 rounds thru them without an issue. It's a long learning curve doing trigger jobs. Extreme sear,Keonig hammer, Extreme lite disco, Colt sear spring,ISMI 17# ms. However everything needs massaging. When it's done correctly you can not do anything with your finger to not make it work unless you are Rob Leatham or Matt McLearn.

 

Exactly, you may want to get that to someone with a little more knowledge on 1911 triggers. Something is wrong with what you have....simple as that.

[Racinready300ex]

So the answer for him is try a 3rd smith? 3rd time is the charm I guess

 

Edited February 10, 2017 by Racinready300ex

[BallisticExpansion]

8 hours ago, M1A4ME said:

I've never had that problem and I'm a trigger rider, too.  Then again, I don't shoot competition or have competition guns so mine aren't highly modified.

 

I do like your diagrams and "borrowed" it to saver for future reference, if that's okay.

Yeah it was still doing it with stock parts though. Just more evidence pointing to the fact it's something I am causing as a shooter. 

 

I just pulled the diagram off the web. Go ahead.

[BallisticExpansion]

8 hours ago, yoshidaex said:

if the sear, hammer, disconnector interface/relation is sound, sear spring tuning is where you'll find your remedy. 

Yeah either that or in the pretravel and overtravel adjustment. 

[BallisticExpansion]

9 hours ago, Racinready300ex said:

 

 

250 rounds through it last night with no problem. But, I don't know which part fixed it. I'm thinking it was adding the over travel that got it for me. I'll run another 600-800 rounds through it. If it keeps running I may try to lower the trigger pull back down to the 2 lbs range and see what happens leaving the extra over travel and see how that does. But, I can probably live with it like this.

 

I do believe it is something I am doing when shooting. And something about this gun must be different then my other guns. I'll post updates as I get more rounds down the pipe.

I also thought it must be something with the disconnector. I put in a new XL EGW ball head disco in hopes it would take longer for it to connect with the sear. It didn't fix the problem but its still in the gun. So you have other 2011 limited guns that don't do this? Interesting. It gives me a little hope. 

[MrPostman]

You should try adding more over travel to see if it fixes your problem.

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[BallisticExpansion]

9 hours ago, kimberacp said:

Am no expert but the first thing I would do....is mark the sear point with a blue sharpie and dry the gun a few times and see where how the hammer is swiping off the sear nose.

Along with many other things to look for, this is the major part of the trigger job.    How is the hammer swiping??  Is it on both hooks?  Is it evenly swiping?

Then I would look at what other interfere there is with the dico?    Something is moving the pads of the disco away from the feet of the sear.   

Look at the position of the disco head in relation with the slide cutout as the slide is moving back?    Use the sharpie and mark the cutout, rack the slide a few times and see how it swiping in the cutout and where in the cutout?     

 

Thats where I would start...

 

BTW, removing ALL the pre travel, will make the hammer go to half cock.    By doing so, you are pushing the trigger all the back into the disco and putting pressure on the disco, not allowing it to move up and down freely.  Thus, the feet of the sear,  do not catch on the disco pads because it is being held up by the pressure trigger bow.

 

Good luck but problems like these are best solved but actually look at the parts.    

Well it doesn't do it now in live fire, but the gun is unshootable. The break is so tough that I have to jerk the trigger to get the gun to shoot at any decent speed. All the things you mention about how the sear swipes and etc are problems that I am not able to fix. I will mark everything up with dykem and see what happens though. 

 

Yes the smith had ALL the pre travel out. So I did put a little pre travel to keep that from happening. 

[BallisticExpansion]

4 hours ago, TONY BARONE said:

The diagrams are incorrect . If you want to see the correct hammer sear relationship go to 1911.com forum the experts are there. My race guns have 14-16oz. triggers with 26,000 rounds thru them without an issue. It's a long learning curve doing trigger jobs. Extreme sear,Keonig hammer, Extreme lite disco, Colt sear spring,ISMI 17# ms. However everything needs massaging. When it's done correctly you can not do anything with your finger to not make it work unless you are Rob Leatham or Matt McLearn.

 

The diagrams are not mine. Some I pulled off the web. It does give a good idea of what my sear looks like. The positive one. One long flat angle. Which is obviously what is causing the horrible trigger break. The guy who did the trigger job on my first gun has done all the triggers on my friends gun and he has put a high round count through his guns like you. That trigger job had all extreme parts and a 17# mainspring. So you are saying the factory trigger job, the first smiths trigger job and the last smith I tried were all wrong? The last smith fit all SVI ignition parts and the problem was still the same. This is when he told me that it wasn't the gun, but me and how I shoot. So that is when he cut my current sear and took out the pretravel to "fix" it. I really hope he was wrong, because I don't want to change how I shoot. I would rather shoot a different gun. I made a post about all this on the 1911 forum right after the first trigger job and I realized nothing had changed. Here is that post. https://www.1911forum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=625993

[BallisticExpansion]

3 hours ago, Racinready300ex said:

So the answer for him is try a 3rd smith? 3rd time is the charm I guess

 

Haha I guess. But who knows if that will even work. And is it worth the cost? I am already $500 into this gun for trigger parts and smiths. Now it seems I would be better selling the gun and having someone build me one who is top notch. Brazos, Atlas gun works, etc. Although I will say I really do like this gun. It was a factory edge when I got it and I have got the sights and the grip work fit perfectly to my hand. If it was still in mostly factory configuration I would be much more likely to sell it.

[BallisticExpansion]

46 minutes ago, MrPostman said:

You should try adding more over travel to see if it fixes your problem.

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That was something I tried before, but not with reduced pretravel. Very little pre travel and generous over travel may be a solution. Others have also said it could be a fault in the grip of the gun. That is literally the only part that I have not eliminated as a variable. I am trying to get with a friend of mine and put his grip on my gun to see if it changes anything. I have checked the grip for cracks or flex when assembled on the gun, but can't find evidence of either. Until I fix it, get another gun, or sell it I guess I will be shooting my glock 34 in production.... yaaaaa.... not. Thanks for all the insight guys. I will put the factory sear back in this weekend and see what this does with the "right" pre travel/over travel adjustments. I will report back. 

[MrPostman]

Check out this link, it describes how to set up the trigger so it will be reliable and safe.

http://www.brazoscustom.com/magart/0407.htm

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[BallisticExpansion]

46 minutes ago, MrPostman said:

Check out this link, it describes how to set up the trigger so it will be reliable and safe.

http://www.brazoscustom.com/magart/0407.htm

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 

Yep Bob has some great articles. I have read through that and many of his other articles several times and learned a lot. After the first trigger job when I realized I still had the same problem I checked a lot of things referencing his articles. That has been the most frustrating part. The gun passed all checks. Thats part of the reason I sent it back to a smith. Because I knew had to be something in the sear angles. Someone did recommend I try one of john harrisons true radius sears. 

[MrPostman]

Since it has done it with the stock parts and the new ones replacing the sear again probably won't fix it. It may be an issue with the frame itself, like burrs in the disconnector channel. I would check that if you haven't already. If the disconnector is dragging you can pull the disconnector out and polish the channel with a Qtip chucked up in a drill with polishing compound, then polish around the ball and or shaft on the disconnector with a felt dremel attachment until it slides smoothly.

Check this link out on the function of the disconnector. He gives a good explanation.

http://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?1011-Function-of-the-Disconnector

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[konkapot]

I had similar problems with multiple 2011 guns and in trying to solve it I went through multiple gunsmiths.

 

Problems all went away....completely away....when I went to a Caspian. It turned out that my grip was tight enough that it impacted the internal dimensions...or at least that's what the group consensus was. At any rate, a steel framed gun solved the problem.

[BallisticExpansion]

22 hours ago, MrPostman said:

Since it has done it with the stock parts and the new ones replacing the sear again probably won't fix it. It may be an issue with the frame itself, like burrs in the disconnector channel. I would check that if you haven't already. If the disconnector is dragging you can pull the disconnector out and polish the channel with a Qtip chucked up in a drill with polishing compound, then polish around the ball and or shaft on the disconnector with a felt dremel attachment until it slides smoothly.

Check this link out on the function of the disconnector. He gives a good explanation.

http://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?1011-Function-of-the-Disconnector

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 

 

Back when I was trying to solve it myself I checked the channel and didn't see any obvious burrs. Just because I didn't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. I will try your qtip idea and a little valve polishing compound?

 

Thats a great article. The most tinkering I did myself trying to fix it was modifying the disco. I even shortened the vertical length of the disco pad as well as the thickness of it. I was thinking that I was pinning the disco under the sear before the slide closed and it was jostling the sear loose when the slide came completely out of battery thus causing hammer follow. As I mentioned I can pick up my friends stock 1911 and make his hammer do the same exact thing in dry fire anyway. So it may be just getting the parts setup for the way I shoot. Either way I am tired of dealing with the thing. Its getting sold if I don't get it shootable for me. Thanks for the help, I will report back. Might even tinker with it tonight some.

[BallisticExpansion]

1 hour ago, konkapot said:

I had similar problems with multiple 2011 guns and in trying to solve it I went through multiple gunsmiths.

 

Problems all went away....completely away....when I went to a Caspian. It turned out that my grip was tight enough that it impacted the internal dimensions...or at least that's what the group consensus was. At any rate, a steel framed gun solved the problem.

Wow that is some grip strength. You could always go with a steel grip 2011. I am by no means a built guy lol look at my profile pic. I don't think that is my problem, but I could see that happening with a polymer grip, especially if it was reduced.