Testing the Impact of Trigger Upgrades

[Mccian]

I know this thread is getting long in the tooth, but excellent information and kudos for following a process, Well done......hat?s off

[Scarlett Pistol]

I know this thread is getting long in the tooth, but excellent information and kudos for following a process, Well done......hat?s off

Thanks, glad it still has some readers!

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[jameslovesjammie]

I'm trying to figure out how I missed this post!

Excellent write-up!  I just read the entire thing, beginning to end.

Thanks for the time you put into this!

[Scarlett Pistol]

I'm trying to figure out how I missed this post!

Excellent write-up!  I just read the entire thing, beginning to end.

Thanks for the time you put into this!

Thank you and it was my pleasure. I'm glad you found it in this little revival!

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[MatroskinT]

Wanted to jump on the "thank you" bang wagon.

Also, I haven't seen anyone describeing it before but I found a way to remove and and reassemble the flat magazine spring without clipping the hook from the bottom. The main part is that  hook is holding the hammer spring from jumping out.
Here is the process:
1. Assuming the grips are removed, as well as the bottom retention pin and top pin holding flat spring in place.
2. Depress the hammer spring all the way back up and wiggle the flat spring a little. It will come our without any pressure.
3. To reassemble : put the hammer spring back, push and hold it all the way in. Now insert the spring, hook part first. You will feel it catching up the hammer spring. Again, it will hold the hammer spring from flying out and you can re-install the pins now.

Hope that helps.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Scarlett Pistol]

Wanted to jump on the "thank you" bang wagon.

Also, I haven't seen anyone describeing it before but I found a way to remove and and reassemble the flat magazine spring without clipping the hook from the bottom. The main part is that  hook is holding the hammer spring from jumping out.
Here is the process:
1. Assuming the grips are removed, as well as the bottom retention pin and top pin holding flat spring in place.
2. Depress the hammer spring all the way back up and wiggle the flat spring a little. It will come our without any pressure.
3. To reassemble : put the hammer spring back, push and hold it all the way in. Now insert the spring, hook part first. You will feel it catching up the hammer spring. Again, it will hold the hammer spring from flying out and you can re-install the pins now.

Hope that helps.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Dang, I'm going to have to give this a try next time I have one with the hook. Thanks for sharing!

[Joe L]

Scarlett Pistol--I appreciate your contribution to the forum here.  Well done. 

I have been studying trigger pulls and "feel" ever since I started shooting bullseye a few years ago.  On both the 75B and the 97B"E", I started off with too light a trigger pull and have since found that, for me, I am most consistent at bullseye match speeds with 3 to 4 lb pulls that are not too crisp, but instead are very smooth.  I could shoot a Kadet with 2 lb pull frame parts just fine, but not with a 9mm slide and certainly not a .45.  I have to be able to put some pressure on the trigger without it going off unexpectedly, especially with the centerfire guns.  What I wound up doing was more sear engagement than most people like, with some strong sear springs and 17 lb hammer springs so that the triggers were predictable and felt "similar". 

My point being that precision shooters definitely have personal preferences.  We are blessed with having suppliers that can provide parts to do what we think we need and can guide us (and take our money!) as we home in on what we actually need.  Life is too short to become expert on more than one or two pistols.  And what works for me as a bullseye and long distance shooter probably won't work well for a run and gun shooter.

Thanks a bunch for your efforts.

Joe

[Scarlett Pistol]

Scarlett Pistol--I appreciate your contribution to the forum here.  Well done. 

I have been studying trigger pulls and "feel" ever since I started shooting bullseye a few years ago.  On both the 75B and the 97B"E", I started off with too light a trigger pull and have since found that, for me, I am most consistent at bullseye match speeds with 3 to 4 lb pulls that are not too crisp, but instead are very smooth.  I could shoot a Kadet with 2 lb pull frame parts just fine, but not with a 9mm slide and certainly not a .45.  I have to be able to put some pressure on the trigger without it going off unexpectedly, especially with the centerfire guns.  What I wound up doing was more sear engagement than most people like, with some strong sear springs and 17 lb hammer springs so that the triggers were predictable and felt "similar". 

My point being that precision shooters definitely have personal preferences.  We are blessed with having suppliers that can provide parts to do what we think we need and can guide us (and take our money!) as we home in on what we actually need.  Life is too short to become expert on more than one or two pistols.  And what works for me as a bullseye and long distance shooter probably won't work well for a run and gun shooter.

Thanks a bunch for your efforts.

Joe

Thanks Joe! I was trying to do some more accuracy work after getting my Witness Hunter in 10mm and it had a very smooth 3 lb trigger pull with more sear engagement like the 75 oem hammers, but minus the cambing (camming?). I thought of spending more money on a hammer with shorter hooks, but I shot it pretty well with the smooth trigger. What stumped me even more is how many people loved it and said how nice it was, even next to the shorter breaking and lighter CZC and CGW hammers. If we lived close to each other I would have driven to your range to have you try it because I think it would have been just what you're describing.

[John1125]

Scarlett,

I just read this for the first time yesterday , great write up. Thanks for all your help with this platform.

I was playing with factory sear / hammer hooks by cutting the height and polishing and cutting a relief cut on the sear .

I could get the pull weight down to 1lbs 8 oz . with out any follows on quite a few rounds . But after a while the sear face began to deform and it turned loose. I'm sure others have run into that .

So my question is what are your thoughts on the need of an upgraded sear (all hard through - through tool steel) ?

Do you believe you can get just as good a trigger with the factory sear just polished and not cutting or changing the angle? This is with of course a race hammer or competition hammer .

Thanks , Kirk 

[Scarlett Pistol]

Scarlett,

I just read this for the first time yesterday , great write up. Thanks for all your help with this platform.

I was playing with factory sear / hammer hooks by cutting the height and polishing and cutting a relief cut on the sear .

I could get the pull weight down to 1lbs 8 oz . with out any follows on quite a few rounds . But after a while the sear face began to deform and it turned loose. I'm sure others have run into that .

So my question is what are your thoughts on the need of an upgraded sear (all hard through - through tool steel) ?

Thanks , Kirk

That's some interesting testing! Expected results at a point. I polish my face of my sears but I am super super careful to just polish so I don't reduce the life of the sears. I haven't had any problems yet and I can only guess that I have 10k of trigger pulls on my SP-01. That being said I have a third SP-01 Compact with a sear that got some work I don't recommend. I changed the angle of the face. It's my sisters and she doesn't shoot it much so I am seeing how it will last. The other mod I am going to try is work the OEM hammer hooks to remove the camming. That can also be taken too far so the sear face just slips away from the hammer hooks. So I don't recommend it so people don't mess their stuff up. I'll work the angle carefully and see how the sear and hammer hook engagement lasts and see if I can cut the hooks down a little. Not enough to try and replicate the Competition or Race Hammers, but a sort of balance that was like my Witness Hunter.

In playing around with my sears and hammer hooks there are to areas that cause rough triggers. The first is the bottom edge of the sear face. It is very acute and sometimes feels like it almost has a little lip. This really catches on the rough edges on the hammer hook faces. The second are the faces of the hammer hooks. Those are the biggest reason for rough feeling Single Action triggers on CZ's in my experiences.

All that being said... I would love a sear that is hard through and through! Is that how they make the CGW sear? I feel like some careful polishing on the sear face that does not remove material can help a great deal, but the biggest improvement would be for CZ to smooth the hammer hook faces before they install them to the pistols. Then we wouldn't need to really mess with the sear face or worry about the extra nice sear. While the extra nice sear would be awesome, I think it is the second worse offender of the Single Action trigger pulls.

Do you believe you can get just as good a trigger with the factory sear just polished and not cutting or changing the angle? This is with of course a race hammer or competition hammer .

I might have answered this as I rambled about some of my testing and playing around... but here it is. With the factory sears I have modified (maybe 20 of them now?) I believe just polishing them will generally be sufficient. The few that had those little lips on the bottom face of the sear were easy to fix and didn't require cutting or changing the angle. Now, I have had one pistol that had a weird tolerance difference and even with the Competition Hammer there was still major camming, but this is an outlier.

I polish with oiled sand paper that is 800, 1000 and 2000, then I hit it with Flitz. Yes, 800 can remove material, so I am very careful and soft. I have also started "seasoning" my trigger pull after I get the contact points polished. I basically assemble the pistol and cock the hammer. Then I drip Flitz in the action where the sear and hammer interact and make sure it is all up in the contact areas. I press against the hammer very firmly and pull the trigger (the slide is on). I repeat maybe 50 to 100 times. The flitz can dry and I keep going. Then I apply more Flitz. I do this in DA as well and get the Flitz down between the hammer and frame. It is a freaking mess and I have to break the entire thing down to parts and clean it very well. Doing this after polishing the contact areas but before the major deep clean to get all the Flitz off the parts is a good time. Not only does "seasoning" enhance the polishing that was done, but it is doing it exactly where the parts mate together for the pistol. It's like a super "break in". I'm running through the explanation and probably not doing it justice... but an old friend and gunsmith taught me this one and it is excellent. Did it to my pre-b restoration pistol. Even with a SA trigger pull that moves the sear cage so much that you can easily see the safety moving as the trigger is pulled it is still smooth and feels incredible. Yes, the sear cage is pinned and it still does this. This huge side note was just a way to further help smooth that Single Action trigger pull.

Swinging back around to the sear face being cut. There is a balance of the angles. The caming is a result of that balance. Shorter hammer hooks and no cam could result in slipping. The cam can be eliminated via the hammer hooks or the sear face. With the CGW and CZC hammers there is such a smaller contact face that it is hard to say we would want to remove much. Scott removed just a little for me on a CGW hammer. They have shorter hooks, but I think they leave a little more angle for more cam than the CZC Competition hammers. My theory is that they can ever so slightly work the hooks to drop the hammer pull weight if requested, thus giving them a little more flexibility for modifications. After Scott did his thing and then I pinned my sear cage the trigger pull weight is consistently 1 lb 14 ounces. I've never had a hammer follow. That is in the 1911 killer SP-01 Compact. When 1911 lovers shoot that and I tell them I was trying to compete with 1911's  they get strange looks on their faces. Then I realize that most of them have 1911's with triggers that don't even compare to how nice this one has become. Scott was right that there would be hurt feelings on the range and I've have quite a few offers on that pistol . That is all to explain what was accomplished without changing angles on the sear face, but rather a little touch up on the angle of the hammer hooks.

Whew, I way over explained this whole conversation. I just don't know if there is a right or wrong answer, there are just different ways of getting to an end result. I've done it without cutting the angle on the sear, but rather the angle on the hammer hooks. If the OEM hammers had smooth hammer hooks and I could get a sear that was hardened all the way through then I may just get the sear and cut the angle on the sear, like you were experimenting with. The part may be cheaper... But cutting the hammer hooks down has a mechanical limit and the aftermarket hammers raise the bed on the hammer where the sear wrests so they avoid the issues with cutting hammer hooks down too far. All that being said, a little cutting the hammer hooks down and then smoothing their faces and then changing the angle on a sear face that is hardnened all the way through would produce an incredible SA trigger pull! My guess is that the market for that level of work would be small, as people would rather just get the nice CZC or CGW hammers and the CGW sear for fitting.

Dang, gotta run back to work. I'll proof this tonight since I got carried away. This is a lot of "thinking out loud", as if I was chatting with you (the only problem is you're not here in person to interject and stop my rambling). Can't wait to hear your (and everyone elses) thoughts since I know there are lots of members who have tested and played around.

[John1125]

Well I guess that I would assume that the CGW sears are tool steel and hardened to certain number . They appear to me to be of an angle that eliminates any camming and of course the hammer hooks are cut to a minimum.

I was copying those dimensions as best I could with a set of factory sear/ hammer. The first thing that I noticed was the factory sear ledge on the hammer was a bit different than the race hammer , therefore the cut of the relief angle (of course as you know 1911 guy here) so that is where I got that idea.

I kept on cutting the relief angle and the hooks down to where I had a very minimal sear engagement . And everything was fine with no follow but the sear nose rounded off and then did not hold. I have ran into this on 1911 parts that were MIM , they would be Ok for a while then the trigger would begin to show up with creep. It is my understanding that MIM parts are only hard on the surface , not well enough informed to know for sure but that seems to be true from my experience.

Now all that was simply playing with my own gun and not anything I was going to carry or use any where but at my own little range and even then with extreme caution and loading single rounds then moving on up from there.

One of the truths that I apply to the cz platform is the sear cage and sear spring is not effected by slide inertia as is the 1911 or hi power platform that both have a long leaf spring . Or at least not nearly as much as those platforms . 

[John1125]

Oh and this was confirmed by the boys at CGW , in the same way a 1911 sear / hook engagement is set up is the same with the cz 's - the very edge or top point of the hammer hooks ride on the face of the sear. Thats important to remember when setting these up.

Kirk

[Scarlett Pistol]

I've never gotten a CGW sear, so am I understanding that the angle of the sear face that engages the hammer hooks is slightly less than the OEM sears? I knew this about the hammer hooks but this is new news about the sear if that is correct.

I can't remember if I shared this with you when we were messaging a while back... But it is worth posting all the same. Such a cool conversation with Schmeky and Stuart with so much problem solving and great information about this same subject.


EDIT: Here's the link I meant to insert last night.
http://www.czfirearms.us/index.php?topic=37364.msg204992#msg204992

[John1125]

I don't have a comparitor or any way of knowing for sure on their sear/ hammer geometry, but I would say that the angle is in fact a neutral engagement, since nothing moves (hammer) .

Maybe some others here will add to this.

Kirk 

[Kronut_King]

I've been lurking on these forums for a few months now, but I made an account to thank you for doing all this work. Keep it up!