2011 Frame Hammer/Sear Hole Issues

[MikeRush]

I have 7 2011 frames and have traditionally used EGW pin sets for my builds.

I have 2 sets of EGW pins on hand.

5 of the 7 frames have pin holes that are too tight for the EGW hammer/sear pins to fit. The two produced most recently take the EGW pins with ease.

I have pins from a Kimber, and pins from a Springfield on hand. These will fit in all of the 2011 frames.

EGW pins will fit in Kimber frame.

I know I can buy the hammer and sear pin hole reamers from Brownells- would this be the preferred method of getting the pins to fit? Is there another make of pins I should look at that tend to run smaller?

I can measure the pins/holes, but due to the number of guns I will complete I would like a better solution than get a bunch of pins and hope they work.

[zzt]

I bought all the required reamers from Brownell's. They were not that expensive. Be thankful the holes are too small. That is easily corrected. Too big and you have to go with oversized parts. Use good billet or bar stock parts and bring the frames up to spec.

[lppd4]

Is it possible that the frame hole is on the small side of the acceptable tolerances and the pin is on the large side? I think its a good problem to have

[MikeRush]

I bought all the required reamers from Brownell's. They were not that expensive. Be thankful the holes are too small. That is easily corrected. Too big and you have to go with oversized parts. Use good billet or bar stock parts and bring the frames up to spec.

This is what I am thinking- should be straightforward to correct. I think it is around 35 for the pair I need. Likely cheaper than buying stacks of pins until I find enough to fill 5 frames.

Is it possible that the frame hole is on the small side of the acceptable tolerances and the pin is on the large side? I think its a good problem to have

This appears to be the case, as pins from factory guns are fitting very well. Unfortunately, my nice EGW pins (2 kits purchased so far) do not fit. So either I need to find some (slightly) smaller pins, or open up the hole a bit. I don't have a pin gauge set to measure the frame holes, so it is unclear where my frames fall in terms of tolerances.

[zzt]

Mike, if these are new frames you'll have to degrudify them anyway. The cheap way to do this is to order the appropriate drill sizes from Brownell's. You can use the back end to push through the holes to clean out any crud or blasting material that got stuck. You can also wipe them with a little 600 grit non-embedding bore lap compound and polish the holes a bit. You can also use them as pin gauges, or the bit end as crud scrapers. Buy extras of the .156". When you use the back end as the pin when you are lapping grip safeties to the radius, they wear.

The reamer set is nice to have anyway, but you can check the pins before hand to see if they are large or the holes are small. The holes are supposed to be .157" for the hammer pin and .110" for the sear pin. The link pin is .154" and the thumb safety is .156". I've never found EGW pin sets to be oversized, but it could happen.

[DougCarden]

That is a good problem to have. I have bought the oversize pin sets from Cylinder and Slide and have found on ALL of my STI frame I can push the hammer pin in snuggly, and the sear pin is a tighter fit. I am able to have much better, lower trigger weights using these pin sets and put them in all of my 1911/2011s now. Oversized pins are almost always a good thing on these frames....
Good luck!

DougC