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Hammer follow? Hammer falls to half cock doing dry slide lock reloads


ArrDave

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I changed out my sear spring for a Cylinder & Slide Light Pull sear spring and the pull weight is now about 3.75#. It has passed every function test I've thrown at it, all safeties are working, sear, disco, etc. When I use that gun for dry fire practice specifically on slide lock reloads using snap caps, every blue moon the hammer falls to half cock. I cannot get it to happen in a "sterile" environment, only when running slide lock reloads with snap caps. As this is my back up gun for my main competition gun, I've only put about 60 rounds testing it since I've changed the sear spring out. That said, it never had an issue in test firing, but as it is I'm kind of afraid to run it at my weekly if it does that every so often. I've noticed it about 3 times in 3 weeks and this morning I saw it 3 times in 5 minutes of practice.

Before I run it again i will definitely get it looked at by my smith but I'd like to at least understand the problem and attempt to fix it on my own. Thoughts?

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I had the same problem with my Sig. I recut the hammer hooks (which were very worn) and refaced the sear. I now have a perfect 2.5lb trigger. You may have to do the same. Even though your hammer has .020" hooks, they may not be cut square to the pin axis.

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Add a little tension to the center sear spring leaf, most likely getting trigger bounce.

Center leaf is the trigger return spring. Left leaf is the sear spring.

I'm guessing it's not trigger bounce since it's happening in dry fire. If it was bounce, it would make sense to increase tension on the center trigger return leaf. Could be several potential issues: sear nose is short, poor engagement of sear to hammer hooks, or there's not enough tension on the sear spring. I'd mark up the sear face with a sharpie to see how the engagement looks. If it looks like you've got good, even engagement with the hammer hooks, I'd add a little tension to the sear spring and see if it fixes the issue.

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He says it only happens when he does slide lock reloads during dry fire, the trigger can bounce during that. The slide slamming shut can cause the trigger to bounce back.

He also says that he replaced the sear spring recently.

I changed out my sear spring for a Cylinder & Slide Light Pull sear spring and the pull weight is now about 3.75#. (Snip) I cannot get it to happen in a "sterile" environment, only when running slide lock reloads with snap caps . As this is my back up gun for my main competition gun, I've only put about 60 rounds testing it since I've changed the sear spring out.

Edited by Quack
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I agree with Quack. Recently had a customers gun go down because a bad sear spring. Center leaf wouldn't hold correct tension regardless of how it was tuned. Installed a new spring, re-tuned and works flawless.

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With the heavy factory sear spring I never noticed any issues on trigger bounce with slide lock reloads. The reset is a LOT less with this lighter pull spring so it very well is likely the middle leaf needs a bit of tuning.

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Two things can cause hammer follow that is caused by trigger bounce when dropping the slide,

1. Not enough tension on the center leg of the sear spring.
2. Not enough pre-travel in the trigger. (You need a minimum ammount for your half-cock notch to work, but even that may not be enough to prevent bounce from tripping the sear when you have a light trigger pull. Increasing it will increase takeup, but decrease the risk or trigger bounce.)

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Two things can cause hammer follow that is caused by trigger bounce when dropping the slide,

1. Not enough tension on the center leg of the sear spring.

2. Not enough pre-travel in the trigger. (You need a minimum ammount for your half-cock notch to work, but even that may not be enough to prevent bounce from tripping the sear when you have a light trigger pull. Increasing it will increase takeup, but decrease the risk or trigger bounce.)

Gotcha. Sadly I've not found the time to take the thing apart and give it a whirl. The pre-travel seems pretty generous to the point I don't think that's what the issue is. I'm pretty sure it's the middle leaf.

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Increasing sear spring tension will usually stop hammer follow but it may be masking the real problem. The sear face cuts have to be the correct angles (and square), the hammer hooks have to be square. If you have a gun that was OK and gradually starts to follow, it's typically from wear (rounding) on the sear face cuts or the hammer hook or both. Any gunsmith can fix this with a light stoning.

Edited by bountyhunter
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I added center leaf spring tension and added some pretravel, and even used a lighter recoil spring. All was well in practice... until. the very. last. reload of the session where it fell to half cock. At this point, I'm going to throw the stock sear spring back in and see if I can get it happen, if which case It's going to make a trip back to S&W.

Ugh. This e-series falls in "just another gun" category.

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*** UPDATE**** I replaced the Hammer and Cylinder Light Pull sear spring with the stock one, that I adjusted the center leaf tension on (was pulling at 6+lbs). No hammer follow. Probably closer to a 4.5# pull now, as opposed to the 3#12oz pull it was with the C&S spring, but no trigger bounce in drills this morning. A friend tried to put one of these very same sear springs on his Para 2011 and was having issues with the left leaf being too short, and I also had issues with getting it installed so the hammer would stay cocked once it was seated, so I'm starting to think that it either needs serious adjusting or is intended to work with the other C&S parts.

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I'm no 1911 expert, but I can't imagine a "drop in" sear spring that could possibly be set correctly.

I used a Wilson heavy duty spring and probably spent a good hour or two tweaking it and checking the leaf tensions with a Lyman gauge to get it where I wanted it.

Edit: I just Googled "1911 sear spring adjustment" and there is quite a bit of info out there. It may be worth looking at for a number of reasons.

I see that there is one from Brownell's written by Jack Weigand that may be quite helpful.

Edited by TDA
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I'm no 1911 expert, but I can't imagine a "drop in" sear spring that could possibly be set correctly.

I used a Wilson heavy duty spring and probably spent a good hour or two tweaking it and checking the leaf tensions with a Lyman gauge to get it where I wanted it.

Edit: I just Googled "1911 sear spring adjustment" and there is quite a bit of info out there. It may be worth looking at for a number of reasons.

I see that there is one from Brownell's written by Jack Weigand that may be quite helpful.

I don't doubt it, but The C&S spring fit as is so I let it roll as I'm not a gunsmith, it passed function checks on all the safeties and didn't go full auto when i tested it. This whole exercise has shown me that .25 trigger jobs on Glocks and the world of 1911 triggers is pretty much a world apart. For what this gun is (back up / training gun), it's "good enough" for now. If I ever take the next step and get the quality tool steel hammer, disco, sear then I'll open up the wallet and pay a legit gunsmith to take care of it for me.

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have you tried adjustING the left spring to reduce the weight on the stock spring?

I replaced my sear, disco, hammer and safety with svi parts. 500 rounds in and no issues yet. The only filing was on the safety. 2.5Lb trigger pull using the stock sear spring.

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Depending on the Sear/Hammer setup you have, if the hammer has fallen to half cock a bunch of times its likely that the sear lip is pretty beat up and needs to be resurfaced. Take the sear out and look at the leading edge of the sear lip. If it looks beat up then you need to resurface it.

The more beat up the sear lip gets, due to half cock drops, the more prone its going to be to hammer follow issues. If the leading edge of the sear lip is beat up its not going to engage the mating surface of the hammer hooks consistently.

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