Why disable grip safety?

[josh smith]

I know lots of IPSC shooters disable their grip safety, but I dont know why. Can somebody tell me why plz?

Also, do shooters disable half-cock safety too? I'm just wondering because most shooters I know have almost zero pre-travel. I tried to do this to my gun and everytime I get the pre-travel to almost zero then the half-cock safety stop working. Is it okey to disable the half cock safety? Do shooters actually do this?

thanks,

JOSH

[38supPat]

The grip safety is pinned for two reasons, to prevent failure to activate from the high grip positions and for a more consistant grip, I hate having a part of the grip moving around while I try to get a hold of it.

I don't think you'll see many IPSC shooters with zero travel. No one removes the half cock notch. The 1911 needs some pre travel and a bit of overtravel to work properly. On my guns these are backed off entirely and the trigger has full motion.

[tpcdvc]

Also, the 1911 has two safties. The thumb and the grip. The half cock should never be used as a safety. It is there only to prevent a hammer follow discharge.

[Jeff686]

Yes, that's why I pinned mine. After a few stages where the gun doesn't work, you'll realize the grip safety is a pain. I grip high, and have a small hand, and can't consistently get the grip safety depressed. It'll cost you 5-8 seconds when it happens. I don't need that headache.

I used to tape my down on particularly bad days, but then just got fed up and pinned it.

[josh smith]

thanks for the responses guys.

Also, the 1911 has two safties. The thumb and the grip. The half cock should never be used as a safety. It is there only to prevent a hammer follow discharge.

So, lets say I want almost zero pre-travel. I done this before but when I pull back the hammer to half-cock and if and only if I press the trigger, the hammer goes down and hit the firing pin. Is this still ok/safe? Is it okey if I do this and disable the grip safety too? Just left with the thumb safety.

JOSH

Edited April 3, 2009 by josh smith

[38supPat]

Why do you want zero pre-travel?

[josh smith]

Why do you want zero pre-travel?

Just a theory of mine, I want to improve my double tap. I'm new so I want to experiment for improvement, but I want to do it safely. I thought maybe if I have almost zero pre-travel and almost zero over-travel I can have faster reset and therefore shorter split(time).

[bkeeler]

thanks for the responses guys.

Also, the 1911 has two safties. The thumb and the grip. The half cock should never be used as a safety. It is there only to prevent a hammer follow discharge.

So, lets say I want almost zero pre-travel. I done this before but when I pull back the hammer to half-cock and if and only if I press the trigger, the hammer goes down and hit the firing pin. Is this still ok/safe? Is it okey if I do this and disable the grip safety too? Just left with the thumb safety.

JOSH

With the hammer at half-cock and you pull the trigger the hammer should not fall. You need at least .025 of pre-travel maybe more for the gun to function correctly.

No pre-travel is not going to help you shoot 2 shots get away from the term"double tap".

BK

[38supPat]

Go here: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=82125

With full overtravel and full pretravel I have gotten down to .09 splits. Typical if I am on real close targets is .13 - .15 but for any real stage nothing quicker than a .18 - .19

In reality the time difference made up from a long trigger travel (1911) to a short trgger travel cannot be measured by the coarse times our timers show.

[38supPat]

I pulled this from another post you made, put the two together and ask yourself again if this is a good idea.

hi guys, my name is josh(newbie) and i have a question about adjusting the sear spring of my STI edge. I dont know any local gunsmith so I decided to play with the trigger system of my gun. I really like the pre-travel and overtravel of my trigger now. Also, I really like it now because it so easy to squeeze the trigger(maybe less than two pounds). But the problem is if the slide is open and if i use the slide-stop to bring the slide back, the hammer follows the slide to a half-cock. I dont know what to do. Should i play with the left leg of the sear-spring? or the middle leg? I really like the trigger now but hammer following the slide to half-cock is the problem. Can somebody help me with this please.

thanks a lot in advance.

Josh

[Flexmoney]

Josh,

You've asked good questions...and, smart of you to ask them. The folks here have the experience to answer them (most here have tried, or seen, just about every crazy idea).

- Most here don't use the term "double tap" any more. The Air Force taught me "double tap" back in the day...aim once and pull the trigger twice. Later, when I got into competition shooting, I found that Uncle Sam's AF had me doing wrong.

Any shot that is not aimed...we call that a "hoper". As in, you "hope" it will hit the target. Further compounding that...is the fact that you just don't know if you hit the target or not. This uncertainty will chip away at your mindset...causing doubt. Doubt is slow.

So, every shot is aimed. Even the fastest shots made by the best shooters in the world. They are seeing what they need to see for each individual shot. In fact, they are "seeing constantly"...which is really key.

- Grip safety... I use a stance that has my shoulders squared up to the target, high grip, thumbs forward. My strong hand just doesn't always activate the grip safety on many 1911's. The grip safety was an add on...back in the day when these guns were designed. We can see all kinds of debates on deactivating the grip safety. No need for us to do that here (try a search on any forum if you want).

One thing, I would not want to deactivate a grip safety on any gun that was pushing the limits on the tolerances of it trigger work.

- The drop safety. It needs to work. It is not a half-cock notch...and shouldn't be used as such. If your's isn't working, it could be broken/chipped off. Or, you could be out of adjustment (add more over-travel and find out). The drop safety is there in case the hammer follows when it's not supposed to. Search here and on the 1911forum.com and read up on proper functionality and testing of such.

- Fast splits...come from technique. While cool and all...they don't win. The best practical shooter in history, Rob Leatham, comes all the way off the trigger and his finger even goes so far as to hit the front of the trigger guard. Me, I can stand and shoot with the vast majority of the better shooters in the world...with a stock Glock. It has about a mile of over-travel in it. I'm not giving anything up because of that.

The road to better splits isn't through gear manipulation. You are in the right place to find the answers.

[Flexmoney]

Yikes. Pat got some posts in since I last read.

Josh, you will need to get your gun back within proper specifications. It's not safe for you, or for those around you to be around a gun that has the trigger workings out of spec.

[38supPat]

Yeah, I checked his other posts since he's new. The math is bad when you put those two posts together.

[uscbigdawg]

IMHO, you can't have too much pre-travel. It's a non-factor on the speed at which you can pull the trigger. I frankly hate pistols that are setup with no pre-travel and being right on the sear is dangerous (again IMHO).

As for the safety...well...the pistol came that way.

Rich

[Duane Thomas]

Josh,

Consider having a good pistolsmith "sensitize" the grip safety, i.e. take enough metal off the underside of the grip safety tongue inside the gun that it's still perfectly functional but will disengage with little inward movement. Thus you can have a functional grip safety but if you have any sort of real grip on the gun it'll go bang.

[lugnut]

Yes, that's why I pinned mine. After a few stages where the gun doesn't work, you'll realize the grip safety is a pain. I grip high, and have a small hand, and can't consistently get the grip safety depressed. It'll cost you 5-8 seconds when it happens. I don't need that headache.

I used to tape my down on particularly bad days, but then just got fed up and pinned it.

Unfortunately this is why I stopped shooting the 1911 in IDPA. IDPA doesn't allow you to diable the grip safety but USPSA does. This is why I would never carry a 1911 as well. I switched to a Glock 21SF for CDP fwiw.

[G-ManBart]

Lots of us can't consistently activate the grip safety (even the kind with the big bump) with our thumbs on the thumb safety. No matter how well I sensitize them I'll still fail to activate it from time to time...so mine are all pinned.

Nobody should ever, ever, ever deactivate the half-cock and I've never heard of anytone doing so intentionally. Grip safeties don't offer much additional safety, but the half-cock is a huge increase in safety. R,

[Duane Thomas]

No matter how well I sensitize them I'll still fail to activate it from time to time...so mine are all pinned.

In my experience there are actually two parts to sensitizing a grip safety. The first is the aforementioned removal of metal from the underside of the grip safety tongue. The second is to reshape the rightmost prong on the sear spring so that it still pushes the grip safety out but it will disengage with very little pressure. The key is making most of the bend at the top of the prong, so the outward pressure at top is very easy to overcome by pressing on the built-up pad at bottom.

The effort required to sensitize a grip safety so it's (1) fully functional but (2) will disengage every time can vary from gun to gun. Sometimes it's easily accomplished in minutes. Sometimes it takes hours of removing the grip safety, taking off a little more metal, sticking it back in the gun, removing it, taking off a bit more metal, tweaking the sear spring, sticking it back in, trying everything, removing the sear spring, reshaping it some more, etc. But eventually I've managed to get every one of my 1911s so well sensitized that I'd trust my life to the fact they'll always disengage with any sort of hold on the gun.

[josh smith]

WOW, thanks a lot for taking the time responding my questions, I really appreciate them.

Lots of critical informations above and I will consider them all. I think what I'm gonna do is disables the

grip safety, adjust the pretravel just enough so that if I pull the hammer to half cock and pull the trigger, the hammer wont fall. This is safe for me and also to people around me. I had lots of practise with the sear spring I know how to do this now.

YOU RIGHT GUYS THIS IS THE RIGHT PLACE TO ASK QUESTIONS...

Thanks again,

JOSH

Edited April 4, 2009 by josh smith

[Dave Gundry]

Josh - I wouldn't advise deactivating any safeties in your position. The few bits of info I can reiterate:

1. Half cock notch - only meant as a backup to hammer follow. Don't test it out, as it can wreck a trigger job in a hurry. It is only meant to catch the hammer in the case of trigger follow. While it is generally considered bad for a 1911, doing the test you described (drop the slide on an empty chamber, seeing if the hammer falls), is an accepted method of testing a finely tuned trigger. Only do this occasionally - after it has been setup correctly. If the hammer falls, something is wrong - ge tit fixed before proceeding.

2. Trigger setup - the overtravel screw should be set so that the sear doesn't drag on the hammer throughout it's travel when the trigger is fully depressed. Pretravel - don't worry about it. In a 1911, there isn't much to worry about at all. Less is not always a good thing. Retune the trigger bar so that you've got more than you need (about 1/8th of an inch should be fine).

3. Split times are all about technique. Lots if us can pull the trigger fast - only those who know better can get the sights back on target, realize and confirm this, and pull the trigger again in a quick manner.

4. Pinning the grip safety - ask yourself why? Has it ever given you a problem? If not - don't fix what ain't broke. While it seems like lots of the top local guys may do it - even more don't. Like said above - have a gunsmith tune it so only a little travel is needed to disengage it.

Always keep in mind - it is not all about the equipment. Lots of the top shooters run heavy triggers. Hell, Jerry Miculek can run a revolver faster with a long 6lb trigger than I'd ever dream of running a short, crisp 1911 trigger. More than a few of us have ruined a perfectly good stock trigger system figuring it out, but it is VERY important you don't risk the safety of others while doing it - a match is no place to experiment with gunsmithing skills.

Concentrate on what you're doing at a match - not what your equipment is doing - after all, it will only do what you tell it to.

Edited April 4, 2009 by Dave Gundry