Hammer falling to half cock damaging sear

[thouston406]

On occasion, not everytime, when I manually rack the slide the hammer will fall into half cock and is damaging my sear. What could be the cause of this? Does not happen in live fire on manually racking the slide on occasion.

 

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[Steve in Allentown PA]

Are you dropping the slide on an empty chamber? 

 

If so then this is a common test used after finishing a trigger job to determine if the sear/hammer engagement surfaces are properly fit AND/OR to determine if the sear leg of the leaf spring needs to be adjusted.

 

Hammer follow is very often fixed by increasing the pressure applied against the sear by the leaf spring.

[RJH]

Could be your trigger is too heavy for your toon job

[Posvar]

I had this once on a gun and it needed a new sear to be fitted to the trigger after swapping triggers. Are all the parts original or have you changed something?

 

[GBertolet]

How light is the trigger pull?  Unless your sear is boogered up,  bending the left leaf of the sear spring downward, as suggested previously, will increase pressure on the sear. This will usually fix this issue. Try it and see. Been there, done that.

 

If the sear nose is damaged, one possible cause, is your trigger stop adjustment is not allowing the sear to disengage the hammer far enough, and is bumping the halfcock notch on the way down, damaging the sear. If so back off the trigger stop a little more. Been there, done that, also too. Just a thought for something to look at.

[pskys2]

I never drop the slide on an empty chamber on purpose.  

Used to be done as a final check for the trigger job.  But even when a 2011 with no lock back action if the slide drops on an empty chamber your finger will be holding the trigger back.

So if that is why you are doing it, at least try it with the trigger held back.  Better use a dummy round to do it.

Whenever the slide drops like that there can be a bounce of the hammer/sear even if it doesn't drop and I will notice afterwards the trigger will lose the crispness.

The lower the trigger pull the more likely it will happen.

The cause is too light springs, too little sear engagement or improper angle on the sear.

[Salsantini]

On 3/16/2019 at 4:27 PM, Steve in Allentown PA said:

Hammer follow is very often fixed by increasing the pressure applied against the sear by the leaf spring.

Agree with this.  Have you tried doing this yet?  What is the result?

[muncie21]

8 hours ago, Salsantini said:

Agree with this.  Have you tried doing this yet?  What is the result?

I second this motion

[konkapot]

Third. Spent 2000-2003 fighting this thing on multiple guns. 

 

Another issue could be that, in the case of a plastic grip that might also be cracked, that he's causing it to happen. Gripping just tightly enough that the grip is flexing. 

[CHA-LEE]

I hate to be "That Guy" but this exact topic has already been beat to death 8972394274274 times on this forum. Use the search function as all of your answers already exist in other threads on this exact same topic.