Hammer Follow

[dskinsler83]

So I have changed my recoil spring down to 14lbs from 15lbs in my P16. Now when I unload anh show clear, the hammer falls behind the slide upon slide drop from locked open on empty chamber. Any ideas fellas??

[Tyshoots]

I don't think it is your recoil spring. Have you done anything else to the gun. When was the last time the sear spring was adjusted.

[ParaGunner]

Repeadly dropping the slide on a empty chamber will cause hammer follow. Adjusting the sear spring would be the easy fix. If that don't work then there could be a problem with the angles on the sear/hammer.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Roy Hess

[dskinsler83]

Not sure I'd say it needs adjusting just not up on how to do it

[rooster]

trigger bounce?

[want2race]

trigger bounce?

To check if this is it, push on the side of the trigger which will keep it from moving. Now rack the slide hard a couple times. If the hammer falls, it's not trigger bounce.

[benny hill]

Do not drop a slide on an empty chamber. The gun was not built for it. Simply ease the slide down and your trigger job will last a lot longer.

[twodownzero]

Do not drop a slide on an empty chamber. The gun was not built for it. Simply ease the slide down and your trigger job will last a lot longer.

This is probably the best advice. The slide will never slam as hard as it does when you rack the slide hard, when it has to feed a round.

[glknineteen]

Definitely don't drop the slide on an empty chamber. It can wreak havoc on basically every tolerance in the gun. It will ruin your trigger if you do it often enough, but it can also damage your barrel to slide fit as well.

[Skydiver]

Definitely don't drop the slide on an empty chamber. It can wreak havoc on basically every tolerance in the gun. It will ruin your trigger if you do it often enough, but it can also damage your barrel to slide fit as well.

How does dropping the slide ruin the trigger?

[DWFAN]

It ruins the trigger job, by damaging the hammer/sear interface.

[feederic]

Do not drop a slide on an empty chamber. The gun was not built for it. Simply ease the slide down and your trigger job will last a lot longer.

This is probably the best advice. The slide will never slam as hard as it does when you rack the slide hard, when it has to feed a round.

I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. My question is, should a healthy 1911 have hammer follow even when dropping the slide from slide lock on an empty chamber? Is there a proper cure other than "don't do that"? How would this be remedied?

Edited November 15, 2011 by feederic

[rooster]

You can test hammer follow and trigger bounce by dropping a slide on an empty chamber. Gunsmiths do it all the time. I wouldn't do it on a regular basis but a couple of times won't hurt anything. There was a video on you tube where a guy did it for one thousand times took the gun apart and found no adverse effects on either hammer or sear. However the gun was not designed to be slammed on an empty chamber so now I check my trigger jobs with a dummy round and let the slide go home from slide lock. I do this a few times and if it doesn't follow, then I consider my trigger safe. I also make sure my halfcock notch works and I use nothing but the best ignition parts. Good trigger jobs are all in the geometry of the relationship of the hammer to sear. My triggers are all 2 lbs with 16 lb recoil springs and 19 lb hammer springs, and they do not follow. If when asked to show clear and hammer down I don't think I would let the slide slam forward, after all you just shot the stage with no follow, so either you have trigger bounce or your sear and hammer relationship are a little off.

[DWFAN]

I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. My question is, should a healthy 1911 have hammer follow even when dropping the slide from slide lock on an empty chamber? Is there a proper cure other than "don't do that"? How would this be remedied?

No it shouldnt. If it follows consistently now, I would have someone who is familiar with 1911 trigger jobs look it over, check for sear/hammer damage, might have to stone one or the other, might have to replace. Could also be something else causing the problem.

[Steve L]

I had a Para that once it was worn in, the thumb safety no longer worked. The thumb safety could be engaged but the hammer would still fall if I pulled the trigger. Para uses soft metals, the sear became so worn it did not align on the hammer hooks any more. That is when I became a fan of the EGW hard sear and have not seen the problem again.

[feederic]

No it shouldnt. If it follows consistently now, I would have someone who is familiar with 1911 trigger jobs look it over, check for sear/hammer damage, might have to stone one or the other, might have to replace. Could also be something else causing the problem.

Gotcha! I only ask because I remember reading somewhere else about someone's SUPER HIGH END 1911 hammer following in this fashion. The manufacturer told them not to do that as the fix, but that did not jive with me.

[benny hill]

Why would anyone abuse a gun in a manner that it was not designed to do? But alas, it keeps me in beer money on a regular basis.

[dskinsler83]

Why would anyone abuse a gun in a manner that it was not designed to do? But alas, it keeps me in beer money on a regular basis.

that's too funny....same goes for stupidity and bad weather keep me in my job as a Paramedic

[feederic]

Why would anyone abuse a gun in a manner that it was not designed to do? But alas, it keeps me in beer money on a regular basis.

There's a little bit of "Myth busters" in us. I know I do wrong things just to firsthand witness the effects.

[Skydiver]

It ruins the trigger job, by damaging the hammer/sear interface.

Sorry for being dense. I still don't understand.

To me it seems that the arc traveled by hammer from furthest back position with the slide back to when the sear engages the hammer hooks is the same whether the shooter does one of the following:

1. The gun cycles to eject the spent cartridge and feed the next bullet;

2. The shooter racks the slide back and just let go to feed the first bullet;

3. The shooter releases the slide stop to feed the first bullet; or

4. The shooter releases the slide stop on an empty chamber.

If it's not a matter of distance, then it must be the time it takes to travel that distance: speed.

Higher speed means more momentum which then means more force on the sear/hammer interface. When there is a bullet to feed, the slide is travelling slower than when there is an empty chamber. Is this difference in speed sufficient to damage a trigger job? Is true considering the ratio of number of times the slide cycles with a round vs without a round? Isn't there a going to be a point were the cumulative impact of the hammer on the sear in cases 1-3 have as much damage as one incident of dropping the slide on an empty chamber?

[DWFAN]

Yes, the feeding of the bullet slows it down enough to not do any damage. Then there is also the bbl feet, hood, slide stop etc..

lots of threads here, and elsewhere. This one is good. http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=14039

[Ronnie j]

Well when the hammer follows it falls to the half cock notch and that's what beats up up the sear.

[Skydiver]

Yes, the feeding of the bullet slows it down enough to not do any damage. Then there is also the bbl feet, hood, slide stop etc..

lots of threads here, and elsewhere. This one is good. http://forums.1911fo...ead.php?t=14039

[sorry for dragging this thread off topic from hammer follow.]

Thanks that was a very interesting thread.

If I understand correctly (and assuming a proper functioning gun with no hammer follow): In page 1 of the thread, dropping the slide actually don't damage the trigger job, but rather the barrel feet linkage is what takes the abuse. So based on page 1, the trigger job should be safe and the claim that dropping the slide ruins a trigger job seems to be false. It's only on page 2 that it says that the shock of the slide/barrel coming into a home position would also cause the hammer to bounce away from the sear and come back down again against the sear. It is this bouncing that damages the sear/hammer interface and hence ruins the trigger job. (Oh yeah, and that the Mythbusters are wrong about their conclusion for the hammer against hammer myth.) Did I understand that correctly?

I'm just wondering if the shock of a slide closing on a empty chamber is sufficient to bounce the hammer off the sear, then wouldn't the "tap" in a "tap-rack" malfunction drill also be sufficient to cause the hammer to bounce? My reasoning is the deceleration of the slide due to the slide having been forced close by a 16 pound recoil spring is enough to beat up the hammer, I think that tapping the gun should also cause the same effect, assuming that a typical human punch can be about 178 pounds for a short range jab. I know that I don't do a full force tap on my gun when it jams, but I suspect that it's somewhere over 16 pounds because sometimes I see the slide back first before going forward into battery.

[rooster]

There are so many variables that come into play that it is really hard to pinpoint the cause of your follow. There are three kinds of hammer sear relationship that come into play. the sear is positive, negative and neutral. If your sear is positive then pulling of the trigger actually raises the hammer a little, the hammer hooks are actually pulling the sear in. In this case your would have to have a great deal of force to knock the sear out from under the hooks. If your angle is negative then the hammer is actually helping the sear away from the hammer. In neutral the hammer doesn't move. Now add in the fact that your sear spring can have a lot of pressure or very little you have all kinds of scenarios. Such as I have a neutral sear angle but 6 lbs. of sear spring pressure and the hammer spring and it won't follow. Now I take the same set up change sear spring to 2 lbs. and have follow. There is a ton of info over at 1911 forums. Log Man has posted a great deal of info and pictures. I guess what it boils down to is dropping a slide on an empty chamber once in a while to check for hammer follow or trigger bounce is not going to hurt anything. I don't know of any other way to check for this condition. If it turns out to be trigger bounce you can get a lighter trigger or increase sear spring pressure. If it is not trigger bounce you can also increase sear spring pressure or make sure your fire control parts are good or get a trigger job by a good smith. Just don't forget that you are checking for something that may not be a problem when the gun is used as designed. If your hammer will not follow when you drop it on an empty chamber it is probably not going to follow when shooting.

[Roadrider18]

I agree with most comments...

1. Never drop (via releasing the slide stop or rack/release) the slide on an empty chamber. As others have stated, many undesirable things happen. Browning designed the weapon to allow the breach face of the slide to impact a brass cartridge. Brass is much softer than steel and absorbs shock and dissipates kinetic energy of the slide's forward movement.

2. A hammer should never fall, unless the trigger is pulled. As a 1911 'smith, if I find I can get the hammer to fall without pulling the trigger, a failure of a part (parts) is occurring and needs to be corrected. As already mentioned, a battered sear face or hammer hooks (or hammer hooks too short) will most likely cause the hammer to fall or follow to the half cock position. If either of these are not the issue, then a close look for trigger bounce is in order. With all the light weight triggers on the after market and OEM these days, I don't see too many trigger bounce problems anymore. Trigger bounce was a problem associated with the heavier triggers of the 1970's and earlier. Even then, trigger bounce wasn't an issue until guys figured out that reducing the length of trigger hooks was a good thing (sort of).

3. While I say never release a slide on an empty chamber, when going through all the safety checks of the 1911, one will need to drop the slide on an empty chamber. I only do this when checking a customer's 1911 or looking at a used pistol for possible purchase. But, I always ask the owner if I may drop the slide on the empty chamber before doing so; and explain my reason if necessary.

A hammer that follows (for any reason) is an invitation for a negligent discharge some time in the future. Please have a qualified 1911 'smith take a look at your pistol.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Roadrider18