Tested!! 4 hammer springs in the same gun.

[MemphisMechanic]

HAMMER ... SPRING ... DEATH ... MATCH

"Four springs enter... one spring leaves."

"MasterBlaster run barter town"

 

Ahem. I'm not usually on my laptop, and felt like playing with the formatting options you get when you aren't on an iThingy. On to the technical stuff:

I polished up and tested four springs back to back in the same Stock 3 (with a digital Lyman trigger scale) without changing anything else in the gun. The results might surprise you!

First, I had to clean them all up so that it was a fair fight. Particularly since Tanfoglios catch fire and explode if you try to run unpolished parts - at least if you listen to some of the guys in this forum. 

1. Chucked them in my drill one by one and cleaned up the outside:

2. Polish half, then turn it around and shine the other half of the outside:

3. For the inside, I  roll 2,500-grit up, coat it in polish, and spin the spring in a drill again:

4. Polished 14lb Wolff next to the untouched EG Medium:

5. Here are our contestants:

(I left enough paint on the PD springs to identify them by color, but the inner and outer surfaces are bare metal)
Each spring was tested in DA and SA with three pulls each, after being racked & dryfired 10 times so that everything was set.

I'm writing it as pounds/ounces because that seems to be easiest to read quickly.

1. EG Medium Spring: (15-16ish per @johnbu's guess)

Double: 7/13 ... 7/14 ... 7/5
Single:  3/5 ... 3/6 ... 3/3

This spring stacked hard at the final 25% of the DA trigger pull. Being the longest, it was under the most preload and was the hardest to compress to get the hammer pin inserted.

2. Wolff 14 pound:

Double: 6/10 ... 6/12 ... 6/10
Single:   3/3 ... 3/2 ... 3/2

Less stacking than the EGD spring, nearly as good as the Patriot ones.

3. Patriot Defense 14 pound:

Double: 6/4 ... 6/2 ... 6/4
Single: 3/4 ... 3/2 ... 3/3

Ahh. Gun stopped stacking toward the rear of the trigger pull, Honestly it's hard to tell the difference between this spring and the Wolff 14. I'm not delicate enough to feel a half-pound difference in trigger weight. The difference between it and the EGD Medium spring was night and day, however.

4. Patriot Defense 13 pound:

Double: 6/1 ...6/5 ... 6/3
Single: 3/1 ... 3/2 ... 3/2

Felt pretty much identical to the PD 14 pound spring.

Moral of the story, while Tanfoglio guns vary widely (some guys are well over a pound lighter in DA with the exact same parts and a PD 14 pounder) I feel good about running the PD 14 in my gun.

If I ever find that I need to hit primers harder, I won't feel like I screwed myself if I decide to run the thicker & stiffer Wolff 14 pound spring.

Previously I had also hoped to get away with the 13 once the heavy firing pin came out, so that I could enjoy a 5.0ish pound DA on stronghand / weakhand classifiers. Now I know that it isn't worth pursuing - in my gun there's barely a difference.

I do wish that I had a PD 10 and 12 to install in this gun just to see what would happen to the DA weights... but I'm not going to buy them since my gun is on a strict "CCI primers only" diet.

The most interesting thing I learned was how little hammer spring weight matters in single action. Adding roughly 3-4 pounds to the hammer spring added - at most - a quarter of a pound to the SA pull.

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[johnbu]

Nice write up. Pretty much mirrors my experience.  you getting under 8# with the medium shows you paid attention polishing.  if you run each spring 1000 da cycles, they will drop a bit more. But the "stack" will stay.

When do you test live fire with your steel plated primers....er.... I mean CCI primers?

 

 

[MemphisMechanic]

Not questionable at best, ARy. Not at all.

Far from transferable from gun to gun as far as weight is concerned - for exactly the reasons you stated. Some of this information should carry over, however. Primarily, how little trigger pull weight is affected by the ammer spring's weight in single-action.

That said...

You should be happy. There's no doubt that PD springs were my favorites, and delivered the sexiest trigger pulls.

What I wish I'd had time to do... was put each one to the pencil test without changing anything except hammer springs.

When is Bevin going to start milling hammer spring holes?  Might as well send him the whole frame along with your barrel, right?

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[MemphisMechanic]

25 minutes ago, johnbu said:

When do you test live fire with your steel plated primers....er.... I mean CCI primers?

 

Probably get around to that next week.

[MemphisMechanic]

7 minutes ago, ARy said:

Actually, we should start a thread on hammer spring pocket depth - those that have a reverse caliper/mic or some instrument to accurately measure the hole can post their data.

Agreed.

Correlating that to hammer spring and trigger pull weights would be interesting. We'd know if that's one of the biggest contributors to the 2 pound variations you see from gun to gun in DA with the same hammer spring... or if it's not really a factor and it truly comes down to polishing meticulously.

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[johnbu]

Also the geometry of the hammer pivot pin. Changing it's location  up/down  & in/out will affect angle of hammer strike and things too.

An automated multi-axis coordinate measuring machine would be needed to really figure out how these things are varying.  

 

But, I'm happy to just polish, swap in PD parts and shoot.  lol.

[MemphisMechanic]

1 hour ago, johnbu said:

But, I'm happy to just polish, swap in PD parts and shoot.  lol.

Who are you, and what did you do with our "designated tinkerer?!"  

[PatriotDefense]

nice write up, good to see 3rd party testing of products currently on the market. If we dont continue to push the envelope we become stagnant with the status quo in parts. Your SA is truly affected by the hooks on the hammer and the sear face that engages into them. Maybe if we could move away from a "cast" sear and had a CNC'd part you would see more consistent pull weights in SA. Of course there are some more moving parts involved but on the Tanfo platform its mainly dictated by the depth and how much of the sear engages into the hammer hooks, and to what angle the sear face is cut. I do agree that it would be interesting to see where things end up with a 10lb and 12lb spring.......

[B_RAD]

1 hour ago, PatriotDefense said:

nice write up, good to see 3rd party testing of products currently on the market. If we dont continue to push the envelope we become stagnant with the status quo in parts. Your SA is truly affected by the hooks on the hammer and the sear face that engages into them. Maybe if we could move away from a "cast" sear and had a CNC'd part you would see more consistent pull weights in SA. Of course there are some more moving parts involved but on the Tanfo platform its mainly dictated by the depth and how much of the sear engages into the hammer hooks, and to what angle the sear face is cut. I do agree that it would be interesting to see where things end up with a 10lb and 12lb spring.......

^^^This makes sense!

 

My LP with a very minimal polish job and the following:

 

Reduced power trigger return and sear spring

titan hammer

bolo

12# hammer spring

 

Last night I was getting just over 8# DA and just over 3# SA. 

 

I left the hammer cocked over night and tested the pulls again this morning.  

 

Just under DA 8# (7lbs 10 oz 5 pull average)

 

Right at 3# SA (can't remember 5 pull average want to say around 3lbs 1 oz)

 

So, it's not apples to apples since these weren't done in MM's S3 with the polishing.  

 

Seems to me the polishing makes the most difference.  Springs may lower the DA pull a little but just slightly lower the SA(if at all)  

 

Am I on the right track?

 

Edited December 28, 2016 by B_RAD

[PatriotDefense]

30 minutes ago, B_RAD said:

^^^This makes sense!

 

My LP with a very minimal polish job and the following:

 

Reduced power trigger return and sear spring

titan hammer

bolo

12# hammer spring

 

Last night I was getting just over 8# DA and just over 3# SA. 

 

I left the hammer cocked over night and tested the pulls again this morning.  

 

Just under DA 8# (7lbs 10 oz 5 pull average)

 

Right at 3# SA (can't remember 5 pull average want to say around 3lbs 1 oz)

 

So, it's not apples to apples since these weren't done in MM's S3 with the polishing.  

 

Seems to me the polishing makes the most difference.  Springs may lower the DA pull a little but just slightly lower the SA(if at all)  

 

Am I on the right track?

 

polishing makes a huge difference, what drove me to create new hammer springs was to get rid of the stacking towards the end of the pull........ Dont get me wrong, hammer springs will affect pull weights in both DA/SA but your big difference comes from polishing. Friction can be fun; but not in a tanfo........

[MemphisMechanic]

39 minutes ago, B_RAD said:

LP with a very minimal polish job...

12# hammer spring...

Last night I was getting just over 8# DA...

Seems to me the polishing makes the most difference.  Springs may lower the DA pull a little but just slightly lower the SA(if at all)  

Am I on the right track?

You are on the right track. Put a few hundred rounds through it, clean it, and look at where things wear.

I did a "light polishing job" like you at first. When it takes all night to learn to take it apart and reassemble, you don't want to dremel for three hours. Gun was around 8lbs with a 14# PD hammer spring.

I put a few hundred rounds through it in practice and shot two matches, then polished the pins and springs and holes like mirrors mainly to improve my light strike issues.

Cleaned the gun well then polished all of the places I saw wear marks on the internals (sear, cage, hammer, bolo, and trigger bar) MUCH more throughly.

Now it's 6.2 lbs and 3.2lbs consistently and I'm happy with it because it's such an amazingly smooth trigger pull.

Some guys wind up around 5 pounds DA with a 14 pound hammer spring. Some guys wind up around 6 while running a 12 or 13. The more you polish everything, the lower that number will be... but Tanfoglio guns vary widely from frame to frame.

I will definitely say that the 6 pound pull on a Tanfo feels vastly lighter than a 6 pound pull on a Glock. The trigger doesn't stack and it's so much smoother than a well-polished striker gun.

My M&P has a 2.75 trigger, the Tanfo is 3.2. The Tanfoglio is vastly easier to use to clean a row of 10yd steel poppers  because the trigger is smoother, crisper, and ridiculously short once that hammer is back.

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[MemphisMechanic]

25 minutes ago, ARy said:

So without a tool to measure collapse or compression, it's kind of hard to compare hammer springs. And I say that across the board, not just with PD springs. 

That's why I didn't discuss how effectively each spring fires primer brand X, and only compared the way they feel to the shooter and my trigger gauge.

Hopefully I'll never know how effectively the Wolff and EGD springs are at firing off rock hard CCI primers. I'd be totally okay with that.  

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[waktasz]

Interesting. The Wolf 14 feels terrible to me. I have to cut a coil to get it not feeling like it stacks horribly, and even then it still does. I wish you'd have tested the EG light spring too. 

[PatriotDefense]

46 minutes ago, waktasz said:

Interesting. The Wolf 14 feels terrible to me. I have to cut a coil to get it not feeling like it stacks horribly, and even then it still does. I wish you'd have tested the EG light spring too. 

I think the issue with Wolff are they tend to vary in OD and length slightly. This may not be a cause for concern when looking at it with the naked eye it does however cause issues when the spring is under compression and the OD grows enough to contact the pocket wall. Hence why when you cut a coil or two the stacking goes away some because your releasing some of the pre-load from the spring. 

 

2 hours ago, ARy said:

I've been thinking how to better explain this - 

You can pull two different brand springs. They can pull the exact same weight in DA and SA... but the strike force will be different. Ie. a PD 12# will hit harder with a similar or lower pull weight than a different brand. Because the PD does not colapse, allowing the actually spring weight to be transfered to the release of the hammer, resulting in a better strike. 

So without a tool to measure collapse or compression, it's kind of hard to compare hammer springs. And I say that across the board, not just with PD springs. 

To elaborate a little more on this, we choose a material that has a higher natural frequency which in turn gives you a faster response (spring returning to its normal state). This is why the majority of guys could drop down 1lb or more with our springs, they just want to return home faster which in turns gets that hammer moving quicker......

[MemphisMechanic]

1 hour ago, waktasz said:

Interesting. The Wolf 14 feels terrible to me. I have to cut a coil to get it not feeling like it stacks horribly, and even then it still does. I wish you'd have tested the EG light spring too. 

If the Wolff hammer springs vary like their recoil springs do... that could explain this. I very much agree with @PatriotDefense above. They're far from identical.

Hell. Mail me an EG Light and I'll run it through the same gun, post the results, and mail it back to you.

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[waktasz]

28 minutes ago, PatriotDefense said:

I think the issue with Wolff are they tend to vary in OD and length slightly. This may not be a cause for concern when looking at it with the naked eye it does however cause issues when the spring is under compression and the OD grows enough to contact the pocket wall. Hence why when you cut a coil or two the stacking goes away some because your releasing some of the pre-load from the spring. 

 

To elaborate a little more on this, we choose a material that has a higher natural frequency which in turn gives you a faster response (spring returning to its normal state). This is why the majority of guys could drop down 1lb or more with our springs, they just want to return home faster which in turns gets that hammer moving quicker......

This is interesting. I tried the PD 14# but it the trigger felt too much lighter than the EG medium so I went back to the medium, assuming it would be more reliable. 

[MemphisMechanic]

9 minutes ago, waktasz said:

This is interesting. I tried the PD 14# but it the trigger felt too much lighter than the EG medium so I went back to the medium, assuming it would be more reliable. 

You're making me want to do a "pencil launch test" with those two side by side...

[waktasz]

I did it too and they were too close to call IIRC. I'll do it again tonight

[PatriotDefense]

39 minutes ago, MemphisMechanic said:

You're making me want to do a "pencil launch test" with those two side by side...

Remember the EG medium is marketed as a 15.5lb spring as well........ I need to find the sample pack of 15lb springs i did up........ It seems like there may be a market for 15lb PDO hammer springs.

[MemphisMechanic]

I certainly think so!

I'd order one in a heartbeat if my gun isn't 100% on erratically-seated CCIs with the addition of the heavy firing pin.

A lot of us want to be able to just pull the handle on whatever press with whatever primers and to shoot a gun that runs 100% for thousands of rounds while dirty. Without having to take a micrometer to our primers.

We aren't chasing 4 pound triggers, nor are we willing to deal with Federal primer scavenger hunts.

Edited December 28, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[B_RAD]

6 minutes ago, MemphisMechanic said:

 

We aren't chasing 4 pound triggers

I am!

 

At least until I run out of the 8k Feds I've got!

 

Though, really I'll end up keeping the Feds for matches and use S&B's for everything else. 

 

I'd like a 4# DA but you're right.  

 

Maybe Fed SPP will be readily available in the near future?!.....

Edited December 28, 2016 by B_RAD

[B_RAD]

12 minutes ago, ARy said:

Nope. They're phasing out of non-commercial sales... what's in the wild has now become endangered, soon to become extinct. Win is the new Fed, now...

Really?! Hadn't heard that.  Wow!

 

Kinda pisses me off!

[Nathanb]

55 minutes ago, ARy said:

Nope. They're phasing out of non-commercial sales... what's in the wild has now become endangered, soon to become extinct. Win is the new Fed, now...

Don't play with my emotions. Where'd you hear this at 

[ryridesmotox]

Nathan, he means they are the next lightest now... Order now. 

[emjei]

PENCIL TEST ....PENCIL TEST !!!!!!

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