ScottQ

According to Wolff's website, the factory hammer spring is 16 lbs. That certainly seems to be in line with what I remember pulling out of my gun.

I definitely appreciate all of the feedback and thoughts. Ironically (or perhaps not so ironic) the open shooters at my regular club match all seem to feel like I'll progress much faster shooting open. The non-open shooters (production, mostly), feel pretty strongly that the open gun is not the way to go. At this point I think I'm leaning toward giving the open gun a shot for a while, as I think it may help me improve the weakest parts of my shooting. Some of my weaknesses are mostly just a matter of more practice (faster draw, faster reloads, continuing to improve footwork), but the biggest one that I seem to be stuck on is basically seeing and shooting faster, and calling my shots. I think the feedback from the open gun should help with that. We will see. Wish me luck!

Yes, I have a nice Hardy Mongoose (purchased from another shooter here on the forums), an STI Edge for Limited, and a Springfield 1911 for Single Stack, as well as the Tanfoglio for Production. I like shooting them all, but I need to pick one!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a bad habit of switching from one gun to another, one class to another, etc. from match to match, but I feel like that's been slowing down my progression, so I've determined to pick one gun and one class and stick with it for a while. The question is, which one? Initially I thought Production. So for the last few weeks I've been exclusively focusing on Production. I currently shoot an EAA Tanfoglio Stock 1, though I doubt if that's really relevant. Keep it simple, no race holsters, no need for high capacity mags, plenty of practice with mag changes, etc. Recently, though, two of the better shooters are our regular weekly match suggested that if I wanted to improve faster, I should switch to my Open gun. It was their opinion that I would make faster progress in Open for several reasons. Without having to worry so much about mag changes, I would be able to focus more on footwork, transitions, movement, and stage planning. With the dot providing near immediate feedback, things like good trigger press and a good grip would improve faster. Basically their logic was you can more quickly learn to shoot faster with an Open gun, and once you learn to shoot fast, moving back to Production, Limited, or Single Stack would be easier. Given that these two are both regular Open class shooters, though, I was hoping to get a broader array of thoughts and opinions. So if your goal is to learn, improve, and make progress the fastest, which class would you shoot? Or does it even matter? If it helps, I tend to fall much more on the "Slow but Accurate" side than the "Fast but Misses A Lot" side of things. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts! Scott

Single action is very nice. Perhaps a bit more take-up than I'd like, but it's very smooth, and breaks crisply at about 2.75 lbs.

I had the same thought about the hammer spring (those little guys have a nasty tendency to get mixed up sometimes), so I have already ordered a brand new 13# hammer spring from Wolff just to make absolutely sure I have the right spring in there. I'm pretty certain I do, but wanted to make absolutely certain.

I finally spent some time yesterday doing a trigger job on my Stock 1, and the results aren't quite what I expected, so I was hoping to see if you guys had any ideas. I started out with a Stock 1 which I have put maybe 3,000 rounds through, and when I started my (very basic) trigger gauge showed a double action trigger pull of about 8.5 pounds, and a single action pull of about 3.5 pounds. When I was done, my double action pull is now about 8 pounds, and single action pull is about 2.75 pounds. I'm quite happy with the single action - it's still got a fair amount of take-up but it breaks very nicely. I was honestly hoping for (and expecting) a double action pull down around 6.5 to 7 pounds, or even a bit less. Let me review exactly what I did. Took everything apart, and with the help of a few posts and videos polished all of the major areas that I understand need to be polished. Polished both sides of the trigger bar, and the inside of the frame where they ride, polished the top and sides of the plunger, the bottom of the trigger bar where the plunger rides, the top of the interruptor, and the bottom of the sear cage. I put a little polish on any other areas where 3,000 rounds worth of shooting indicated some wear or rubbing. I used a combination of my Dremel with Flitz, and some nice polishing cloths which run from 30 micron (400 grit equivalent) down to 1 micron (8000 grit equivalent). Some machine marks were obviously left behind (some of them are quite deep), but all in all most everything was polished to a mirror finish. It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that my polishing wasn't perfect, but it's hard for me to imagine any imperfect polishing would be affecting the trigger pull that much. Along the way I pulled out the original plunger spring, and replaced it with a pen spring (mine was from a Papermate), which seems to work perfectly. I also replaced the 14 pound hammer spring which was in there with a 13 pound hammer spring and Henning's extra long firing pin (the production legal version) which I got from Jim Bodkin. With the 13 pound spring and the stock firing pin I would sometimes get light primer strikes, so I'm hoping the longer firing pin will allow me to use the lighter hammer spring, though I've not tested that yet. Finally, and if there's an area where I messed up it seems likely to be here, I replaced the stock hammer with the Xtreme hammer (which I also got from Jim). With the new hammer installed, the safety did not work (I understand this isn't uncommon), so I followed Eric's directions and carefully removed just enough metal from the sear leg to allow the safety to engage. The safety now does what it's supposed to do at every hammer position. So now I'm perplexed. Eric's website says, as regards the Xtreme Hammer "the double action trigger pull weight has been dramatically reduced." I would have thought the combination of the new hammer, the lighter hammer spring, and all of the polishing would have reduced the DA pull by more than 1/2 pound, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Hoping you guys might have some ideas!

At my very first outdoor match some years ago, I was very excited to find I had been placed in the same squad with Dave Sevigny. He and I talked a bit before the first stage, and I was really looking forward to shooting with him and watching him shoot. I shoot the first stage, and Dave is the RO. There's no reason for it, really, but I was nervous shooting that day, probably because Dave and several other good shooters were in my squad. So I finished the stage, and did just like I always do - rack the slide, drop the magazine, and pull the trigger. I'm sure you can see the problem. Not sure where my head was at that day, but of course the gun went boom - safely pointed at the berm, as it should be - and my day was done. I rather doubt if Dave remembers this, but it's something I'll certainly never forget. Haven't had a DQ since, and I'm now MUCH more careful to slow down and take my time unloading and clearing when a stage is done.

That's pretty much what I figured, but it's about as clear as mud. An extra power striker spring obviously means the striker hits harder. An extra power firing pin spring means the firing pin hits more softly. Go figure.

The XL firing pin is also on my list to consider, but it's my understanding that Henning's firing pin isn't Production legal. Or at least the one he lists on his website. I've seen other posts that allude to a new Production legal XL firing pin, but I don't know if that is ready for prime time or not. Maybe some of you guys know. The other option obviously is to order Eric's from France, but that takes some time, unless someone is stocking these parts in the US that I don't know about.

My first step is to polish the firing pin and firing pin block. If that doesn't work, then I have a 14# hammer spring here which I'll drop in. I had the same thought.

I just picked up a Stock 1 a month or so ago, and so far I really like it. Compared to the plastic guns I've been shooting it's so much nicer. Accuracy seems better, and the sights recover faster (presumably due to that big cone barrel and the all around heavier frame). The only challenge I have run into was failures to feed and extract properly with my 130ish power factor loads. Out of the box it ran fine on factory ammo (though in truth I only put a small amount through it), but I had frequent issues with my reloads. Ultimately the solution was a lighter 8 lb recoil spring and a lighter 13 lb. hammer spring. Once I put those in my feeding and extracting issues went away and the gun barely recoils. Still working on my trigger, and I'm getting a few more light primer hits than I'd like, which I'm working on as well. Safe shooting!

I'm confused. Does the Wolff spring which comes with all the recoil springs improve primer strikes, or make light strikes easier? Which would I want in there?

Well, lesson learned I suppose. That's an awfully expensive die set to work as poorly as it seems to work. Buying an additional $147 dual ring sizing die to properly size a case seems a bit silly, especially when other manufacturers' die sets seem to work just fine without all the drama.

This is essentially all once fired brass, the vast majority being Winchester White Box fired from my HK USP Compact. I suppose I could certainly sort by headstamp and see if there's any pattern to be seen with certain brands of brass. I did stop by Redding's site, and checked their FAQ's. Their answer seems to be: Question: My Titanium Carbide Resizing Die is leaving a ring on the bottom of my case, is there something wrong with my Die? Answer: The size of the carbide ring inside a Titanium Carbide Sizing Die must be small enough to allow the case to accept a bullet with adequate neck tension. Thus, the bottom of a case may be sized a little more than it has to be. Usually, backing the Die away from the Shellholder to size approximately 1/2 of the case or enough of the case to hold the bullet with rectify the problem. I'm sure backing off the sizing die to only size the top half of the case would work, but it seems as though that defeats part of the reason to resize them in the first place. Other dies from other manufacturers don't have this problem, do they?