Target Triggers: Delivering Top Work for Top-Notch Shooters

Because trigger pulls of less than 4-1/2 pounds are never recommended for defensive handguns, only a portion of what you will read in this article applies to them. Consider, for example, the full-cock notch. It’s factory established at a little less than 90 degrees on the M1911, which is the target pistol I’m dealing with here. The M1911? A target pistol? You bet.

As standard military issue for so many years, the classic .45 ACP frustrated thousands of basic trainees who attempted to hit a moderately distant target with it once, let alone often. Fortunately, people like the late Jim Clark realized the potential of the weapon as a target gun. Because he’ along with a few others before him and many others since’d evised ways to greatly improve the mechanical repeatability and trigger of John Browning’s warhorse, it has become the favorite among bull’s-eye busters.

The more competent and experienced among these shooters represent your market for the techniques that will be covered here. Most of these techniques do not apply to defensive hardware intended to be carried by civilians or law-enforcement agencies. What Does "Prepping" Mean? In this case, prepping refers to using an appropriate fixture and putting the best possible finish you can on hammer and sear angles with a white ceramic stone.

That stone, plus India and black ceramic stones and a hammer-squaring file, are included in an all-in-one kit sold by Brownells. Each stone is 1/2 x 1/2 x 6 inches and perfectly square. The file has safe surfaces on two sides. With the ceramic stones, distilled water is used as the clean-up and cutting fluid. An M1911 hammer intended for personal defense comes from the factory with its full-cock notch under 90 degrees.

If targets are to be the gun’s sole point of aim (forever), the notch is altered to be exactly 90 degrees. This enhances sear disengagement. To accomplish the alteration, the hammer is secured in a smooth-jawed vise or a fixture with the hammer shelf facing upward. One safe edge of the squaring file is placed on the shelf.

Taking extreme care to keep the file’s cutting side parallel with the hammer-pin hole, the face of the full-cock notch is lightly filed until it is perfectly square to the shelf along the full width of the notch base. After squaring, any file marks on the hooks are polished out with a fine stone and honing oil, then the shelf is polished. Using the fixture, the India stone and a feeler gauge, begin lowering the hammer full-cock hooks to .018 inch in height.

Both hooks must be identical in height when you’re finished. Continue lowering with the black, then the white ceramic stones, but don’t lower the hooks below .018 inches. In doing this prepping, use a straight forward and back motion. Each completed motion equals two

Above left and It includes six grits of adhesive-backed paper and two precision-ground steel honing bars. When mounting a grit paper to a honing bar, the author leaves a gap between the paper and the metal edges (left) as extra assurance against contamination from sweat or skin oils that could lessen the effectiveness of the honing process. strokes. The aim is to polish out all marks left by the previous stone. Then confirm the absence of those marks under magnification.

Clean off any stone or metal residue with alcohol between stones. And’one more time’d on’t lower the hammer hooks below .018 inch. Some hammer fixtures, like one of those shown here, also accommodate the sear for prepping. Other fixtures are dedicated. One is for the hammer, the other for the sear. A fixture should be employed since cutting perfect primary sear-engagement surfaces can’t be done by eyeball. A .030 or .020 feeler gauge is used to cut engagement angles on target sears.

For prepping a relief angle, however, a sear may be taken from the fixture, placed on a square stone as pictured, and stroked away from the back of the stone to remove about .010 inch of material. The feeler gauge is used for this to both limit the abrasion and protect the lower hooks of the sear. Now check your prep. This is best done with external hammer and sear pins (from Brownells), because pin locations can vary some from frame to frame.

Therefore, the hammer/sear you’ve just prepped might check out on a hammer/sear engagement jig whose pin locations don’t quite match those of the frame in hand. As a result, those vital components could fail to operate as they should when finally installed. They might even produce a rotten trigger pull. Realizing this, the folks from Brownells have come up with an adjustable engagement jig that can position hammer and sear pins exactly to where their holes are located on the frame with which you’re working.

Regardless of whether you use external pins in existing holes or the adjustable jig just mentioned, coat the hammer/sear mating surfaces with a black permanent marker or Dykem blue, and hand function the two parts. Perfect contact and escape, meaning identical, at both of the hammers’ sear-engagement hooks means you’ve made a marriage. Install the parts and check the pull. It ought to be under 4 pounds and feel smooth with no creep.

But this is still not good enough for Both must be prepped and honed, but to avoid hammer follow, the hooks should not be taken down below .018 inches. those highly competitive, highly experienced target shooters. Finishing the Job You should have been using some magnification right along to check engagement, release, and the 90-degree angles. If not, equip yourself with at least 10-power magnification from here on out. An Optivisor would work and so would a jeweler’s or engraver’s loupe.

Why emphasize the need for magnification? Let’s do some math. Ameter is 39.7 inches. A millimeter is one thousandth of that. A micron is one millionth of ameter. The particles in cigarette smoke equal 5 microns. The particle size of the honing grit you’ll be using to finally polish off the trigger job you thought you’d finished is 3 microns. Before starting to hone, prepare a "mini clean room" in your working area. Clear off and clean up an area on A B

One part in the Wilson set is dedicated to M1911 hammers; the other to their sears. The Series I handles both. your bench. It has to be large enough so you can work without creating dust or allowing any extraneous grit to contact the honing papers you’ll be using. Wash your hands, wash the Powers hammer/sear stoning fixture with denatured alcohol, and do the same to the parts themselves. Finally cover your work area with an old bed sheet. No, I don’t get a cut.

But here, as often in the past, I recommend the Powers Series 1 fixture (from Brownells). Unless I missed it, though, this extremely fine product for precision honing wasn’t in their latest catalog. I’ve called that omission to our friends from Iowa. The product was developed by Bill Laughridge of Cylinder & Slide, Inc. His Micro Lap Honing System comes with 6 different grits of honing paper. The finest grit measures a minuscule 3 microns, but you’ll be using all the grits one at a time.

Grits are numbered on the adhesive backing of each paper, with #1 being the coarsest. (Actually, this is as fine or finer than the surface of crocus cloth, which was my old reliable standby for final polishing before turning up the system. Included with the six 8-1/2- by 11inch papers are two steel honing bars. One is 1/2 x 1/2 x 6 inches’exactly. The other is exactly 1/2 x 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches. Wash them both with the alcohol.

Starting with the #1 grit, use an X-Acto knife and a straightedge to cut a 1/2-inch-wide strip across the shorter dimension of the paper. Peel off the backing and press the strip accurately onto the long bar. You should have a 1/2- x 2-1/2-inch strip remaining. Press it with equal accuracy onto the short bar. The long bar will be used to hone the sear; the short bar to hone the hammer hooks. With a permanent marker, identify the number of the grit on the backing you have removed.

You’ll be able to reapply the backing to a strip after you’ve finished with it. I’ve found I can get two uses from each strip, but instructions must be faithfully followed. Be patient! There are no shortcuts to be discovered here. And don’t press down on the steel bars as you hone, or you might strip off the grit and wreck the paper before it has done its job. Pour a couple of ounces of distilled water in a clean cup or alcoholwashed cereal bowl. Wet your finger in the water and wet the paper on the honing bar.

After every hundred strokes, wet and wipe off the honing paper with tissue paper that has been dipped in the distilled water. This rids the grit of any residue. When you’re through with one paper, wash your hands, dump out the contaminated water and replace it with fresh water before moving on to the next grit.

The honing motion in every case differs from the stoning motion, and you still must use the alcohol-washed .018 gauge or its equivalent. (The gauge and the fixture should be cleaned with the alcohol between each grit.) To hone, move the bar in a figure-8 pattern. After every hundred figure-8s, wipe off the sear or hammer with alcohol, and check your progress under magnification. If you see any marks remaining from the preceding grit, wash with water and keep using the current grit paper until they disappear.

Then it’s okay to move on to the next finer grit. When you reach the final two grits, it will be almost impossible to see any marks without a very strong incandescent light to assist your magnified inspection. By the time you’re done, you’ll have racked up 1,000 back and forth stoning strokes plus 1000 figure-8 honing strokes and considerable time spent doing it.

You’ll need a heck of a lot more than 10X magnification to find even a slight scuff on hammer/ sear engagement surfaces and you’ll probably have the trigger pull down around 2 pounds with no hammer follow. Of course, stoning fixtures and the honing kit can be used to put a precision finish on any trigger job. By doing so, you’ll begin to understand why some custom-built M1911 pistols go for upwards of $3,000. I