4# To 6# Trigger Wear?

[iweiny]

At this point the gun is going to a gunsmith to fix it. But I would really like to get opinions on what I did to make this trigger so bad.

The facts, I used a cheap fishing scale to measure the trigger. I have done this with many guns and it seems acurate enough. So there is probably a margin of error. So maybe my trigger is now 5# not 6 but still it came from Bear with 4# nice and clean. And now it is heavier and not clean.

Here is what I have done to the gun.

0) I have shot probably ~8K rounds through it and dry fired it maybe 2K times.

1) I put a short match trigger from Bear in it. After this everything seemed fine.

2) When I first stripped it to the frame I cleaned all the oil off of all the parts and put in a graphite lube.

3) put on alumigrips (yea I know has nothing to do with a trigger.)

4) put on a beveled mag well (again nothing to do with the trigger. But I have had the gun down to the frame a lot in the last couple of months.)

5) I decided I wanted to a) put a short trigger in my Kimber and b ) try an SV interchangable trigger "system" in the Bear.

6) took out the short trigger and put it in the Kimber.

7) installed the SV trigger. This is when problems started to happen.

8) I posted about some of my problems with the SV trigger and payed very close attention to what I was doing. Eventually at the range a friend who is much more experienced than I adjusted it "properly" for take up and overtravel. As I am a continued tinkerer I gave the trigger more over travel. I did this to practice my dry fires without "pinning" the trigger. I shot a match with the gun this way. It ran and dry fired fine during this period.

9) The last time was at the range the trigger seemed very hard to pull. I had a friend look at it and during this time the trigger started to drop to half cock when pulled! This freaked me out! He said that if I had too much over travel I could have caused the sear to "float" and it might have been hitting the half cock even when it was "working".

10) I now I have the Bear short trigger back in. That SV thing is in the scrap heap. It turns out that the short flat insert was too long for my liking anyway.

11) last night during dry fire I noticed my trigger on the Bear is way harder to pull than the Kimber. I measured it... 6#!

I have 3 direct questions and then am welcome to suggestions. Like I said at this point the gun is going to a smith to be "fixed" as soon as I can get it in. However, I want to learn. One of my "goals" is to build a 1911 from parts. I have an ME degree and know basic machine shop techniques so I think I can do it but I'm not doing so hot thus far...

A ) has anyone ever worn out a trigger job? If so how many rounds/dry fires did it take?

B ) I figure "normal" wear would cause the trigger to start to be "less crisp" but probably lighter. So I figure I did something to cause the hammer/sear combo to have pretty poor geometry?

C ) is "lubing" the hammer/sear with graphite or oil bad? I started to think that this stuff might be "sticking" after thinking about B?

Thanks,

Ira

[sfinney]

Assuming nothing else changed, no springs were replaced or tweaked, more than likely, you didn't wear it out. More likely, with incorrect take up/over travel adjustment, and the hammer hitting the half cock notch alot (either while firing, or dropping, you have changed the nose angle of the sear through battering. Just a guess, but you will probably need to have the trigger job redone, either recuttingthe sear hammer engagement angles, or replacing the sear, depending on how bad it is. Without seeing it , again, just a guess.

PM sent about the SV trigger.

[iweiny]

That is pretty much what I expected...

Thanks,

Ira

[ima45dv8]

A foot note about the graphite lube. I've always been led to believe it works because of the micro cutting action graphite has. That's why it smoothes out old mechanisms of various sorts (eg., rusty hinges). A very old and experienced locksmith told me to be very careful where I use it because it doesn't know when to stop cutting. Might be good to consider using something else.

[iweiny]

Any recomendations on lube?

Ira

[ima45dv8]

Well, being this is the BE forums, there are a lot of folks who swear by Slide Glide in one of it's various weights. Lots of people use it on their sear/hammer engagement. Any good grease should do for the job (oil runs off too quickly for me). I have been using TW25B from Mil-Comm for a while and have been happy with it.

What ever you use, you don't need much.