Can someone help guide me to DIY Action Work on a 22/45?

[bigfatdave]

I am beginning to suspect that you need to hand the pistol to another shooter (after you make sure it is safe) and get their opinion on the trigger before you get in there removing more material.

Is it possible that you are chasing an impossible goal here?

[HEADKNOCKER]

Could be your feeling the play the sear pin has in the frame or the hammer bushing to the pin..
I staked my Sear pin on both sides in three spots around each pin, this realy tightened up the creap I was feeling in the mechanism..
You may also need to add a bit more overtravel..
Some people are "TOO PICKY" but I'm like that & know what your after..

Good Luck!!

BTW The new sear that Nic Volquartzen sent me has a much better trigger pull than the one that came with the trigger kit..

[blue68f100]

The situation now is that the left half of the sear is showing contact very near and slightly over the edge. The right half shows wear on top along most of its length (the 25 thousandths mentioned), but does not show wear right at or over the edge. The hammer slot face shows surprisingly even wear along its whole edge, but the area matching the extra contact on the sear, shows wear down into the face of the hammer slot.

Now considering the top of the sear is flat what your seeing is contact with the hammer/sear at rest. If you put pressure on the hammer as it releases it should scrape the sears top all the way across before releasing. This can vary a little due to play but in the most part it should contact all the way across. If you touched the hammer you may no longer have the notch edge square/flat. Otherwise you may have got the sear where it's no longer flat. You did a little rocking creating an uneven plane.

I know what your talking about on how the trigger feels, mine was the same way before I did the work. This is best done on a jig. Let me give you a little insight on the mechanics involved. Are you using a Clark MK Bushing or a VQ/Ruger Bushing? The reason I ask is on RFC it came up a guy wanted to make his own bushing and used the dem bullseye gave him from measuring a factory MKII one. I discovered that the Clark had a different dem on the larger OD, next to the disc. What this does is limit the amount of sear engagement into the hammer notch. And may keep the sear from contacting the hammer in the over run area. This shortens the amount of travel the sear needs to move forward before the release. The Clark restricts the engagement to around <0.020 normally in the 0.015" range. You do not want less than 0.012", below this the gun can be unsafe. Now if your seeing marks on the hammer overrun area your post travel is set to tight, which can damage the sear's face if it is not back cut.

Once the sear's top is flat and polished you need to take the stone to the leading edge to do a back cut. You want just enough to clean up the edge. Normaly it only takes a few strokes to do. You want the edge to be sharp. ( This is way the 1911 is setup if you have trigger work.). You want to mainly contact the sears body not the top edge. This is a curved area on the sear so it one point it will change the contour. This is where the tuning of the trigger comes in and where you get the clean sharp release. If you go to far (steep angle) here, you will not have enough engagement to ensure reliability and the gun could go into FULL AUTO. UNSAFE CONDITION. As with any hammer/sear work you start testing with 1 round and work up. So by chance it starts shooting double or full auto you a bare minimum in the magazine.

I hope this explains how the hammer/sear work together as a whole. A clean crisp break accours when the sear releases the hammer completely at once. Does not drag the edge. If you have back cut the sear and still feel creep, the hammer may have a sharp edge which can be cleaned off with only a few (2-3) strokes of the stone. Be very carefully not to rock when you do this.

You may need to buy the sear jig where you can flatten the sear back out if you no longer have it flat. Or have rolled the edge to far so it will not clean up. It would be cheaper to just buy a new hammer and sear from VQ than to buy the jig. But what fun would that be...

[Bullseye]

I have been under the weather the last few days and away from my computer. I have not followed this thread over the last couple of posts but I have to defer back to what I said earlier about not "free-handing" hammer and sear parts. It takes skill, patience and the proper tools to do this kind of precision work and is not something to "talk" someone through who is not practiced in this technique. I'm sorry but I cannot examine the dynamic parts for their tolerances and therefore have no positive control over the outcome, which is why I do not as a policy give advice on stoning trigger components.

It does sound, from your description, that there is something other than the hammer and sear engagement affecting your trigger pull but I can not determine it from the descriptions.

R,
Bullseye

[FourCornerm'n]

Bullseye - hope you're feeling well again.

Thanks to both of you. And Bullseye, I understand and respect your position entirely. Any fix that I try is my responsibility alone and I can live with that. I've been willing to attempt very cautious experimentation, but admittedly it is experimental and the caution during the testing phase will follow the 'one round rule' recently given by blue 68. I touched up lightly once without proper support, going after a small section. All my attempts have been on parts of parts, and have had fairly meager affects.

I'm out of the matches this week. One was a Regional Match I'd expected to be ready for with a match gun later this season. Not going to waste any more time and ammo with this set up and traveling 800 miles to be there.

I know I'm in over my head in a sense, but expect the worst outcomes to be safe ones in any case. Nothing's been hurtful, so far, but nothing has solved the problem of the double hitch in the pull. It seems so obvious when looking at the top of the sear and the face of the hammer slot both before and after Red Dykem has been applied that it's this area of messy over-contact where the initial "grabbing" is taking place.

blue68 - you seem to be saying that my trigger over-travel might be too tight and causing the problem. Is that what you mean by post-travel? I use a hard rubber eraser glued inside the trigger guard behind the trigger. I'll loosen it and take it out. I'm going to have to give this one more careful run in spots mentioned here, though I expect I won't be willing to do much that will help.

It's only the double pull that I want to eliminate here and now. I'm way too antsy to try to get a clean, light, crisp break as you describe. I can see your thought behind the how-to's, but that's for another level of technician and equipment than resides here. It's also not what I most need. From my POV, that's the kind of work only a few professionals are expert in.

[Bullseye]

Thanks, unfortunately it is very painful for me to sit for any length of time. One of the gifts from my service days is a serious back problem that occasionally flares up. Right now it is raging and I can barely sit or walk without extreme discomfort. Fortunately it will pass but can take quite sometime to do so. Had plans to go to the range this weekend but those got canceled because of my back. I'm looking forward to everything getting back to normal soon.

R,
Bullseye

[blue68f100]

Bullseye, Sorry to hear about your health issues. As far as the back I can relate to that and feel your pain. I have had 4 surgeries on mine with the last one installing a neuro stimulator to help block the pain along with meds. Mine has been flared up for the last couple of weeks, too. The best thing I have found is the use of an inversion table. I only go over about 45deg but it's enough to unload my back. If I go all the way over it seams to cause problems. I stay in it for 5-10 min at a time. When I'm hurting it's hard to stay in it long enough for the mussels to unload and give me relief. But once they do it feel good.

FourCornerm'n , I hope you get it straightened out. As you fully understand the mechanics and engineering design it will come to you. But like we have said it is best done with a jig to maintain angles. Doing things by hand do require a special set of skill sets. As you have found out it is difficult keeping everything flat when done by hand. Harden steel makes it more difficult since it does not get cut down very fast, but it also helps you too. The biggest mistake made is trying to force the stone to cut.

Safety first and foremost. Good Luck

[FourCornerm'n]

I took it further last night, working on top of the sear just behind the edge - where the hammer grabs the top of the sear on most of one side. Worked it harder than ever. The horizontal line etched into the part of the sear furthest from the edge started to become blurred and the striated surface somewhat smooth. On reassembly, the action seemed to have lost almost all of the first stage I've been objecting to. What was there was no longer a dip (in finger pressure) followed by a new resistance. It was just a little fairly smooth lead to the break, which was clean enough and light enough. It seemed workable, even good (finally). Checking with Red Dykem, almost all the grabbing area atop the sear - the unwanted first stage - showed no contact with the hammer. Figured I had finally gotten something worth practicing with and able to be shooting everyday matches with until my match gun comes back from Clark.

Wrong. Took it out, worrying about doubles. The action soon began to stiffen up and the pull became very heavy. Only fired about 200 rounds. No sign of any doubles or the gun going auto. And I could hit a lot better without fighting the two stage affect (most of the time). But the trigger pull became heavier than ever before.

I don't know what's wrong and am not even confident getting a third sear from VQ (un-flawed like the first, and one that doesn't freeze the gun up like the second one). Maybe I should get a Clark hammer in case the original is now marred from use with the sear or my working it. If money weren't an issue, I'd get an action job from Clark's on the practice gun. That shouldn't be necessary with the reputation of Volquartzen.

This whole thread should have ended up as a success story. Instead I'm going to have to give up. Bummer. I've got to travel to the area where I was going to shoot (to meet a partner), but I'm not even sure I can shoot the relaxed evening matches with this gun. The kind of shooting I do eats up ammo and takes a fair amount of logistics to keep going, and a while before any skill at all appears. I just started to feel a little confident in some aspects of my sight acquisition and bullet delivery. And now I can't practice for almost three weeks.

Like one of the survivors of the Donner party later advised a relative: "Go quickly along .... and don't take no short cuts". Advice I didn't follow and it's messed up a large part of this competition season.

[blue68f100]

Is the plunger(detent)/spring in the safety lever?

[FourCornerm'n]

The safety plunger and detent spring are intact and working normally.


From an earlier post by Bullseye:

"Your line on the sear face sounds from your description like the contact mark between the sear and hammer hook. You can place some marking compound on the sear face and see. ..... Color the sear face and work the hammer a few times, then check out the marker to see if the engagement is even."



The area I was (and am) talking about is on top of the sear, above the curve and behind the edge making final contact with the hammer hook. It extends back behind the sear edge about 25 thousandths of an inch, though that measurement is part guesstimate. About 5/9ths of the whole sear length (using Dykem layout fluid) showed complete contact with the hammer hook leading from the horizontal line (at 25/1000s) you described as hammer hook contact mark, to the edge of the sear. This occurred in about 3 different places along the top, with one major one on the right side.

Some stone work eliminated all but the widest right side contact which I more recently dealt with. The heavy pressure work was done recently and eliminated all but about 1/9th of the contact on top of the right side from the remaining horizontal line which is now a shadow of its former self. I say 'self', though the sucker seems almost inhuman, yet devilishly animate to me.

Early on I 'd worked down the fingernail catching ridges rising up in two places from the sear edge. Later, and unreported, I worked two smaller raised ridges from the edge of the hammer. Whichever came first, if they were related, I don't know. The gun's had thousands of rounds through it.

Questions: What kind of phenomenon results in the hammer hook contact on top of parts of the sear? With an etched line at the furthest point back from the edge? And, as for evenness, shouldn't this whole etched line and Dykem tested contact areas on top, be absent? The replacement VQ sear I received but couldn't use because the trigger often froze, had no such marks on its top. The only contact on that, otherwise oversized, sear, only showed, using the Dykem, contact very near the edge of the sear, none above the edge at all. Is this the more normal pattern?

The partial improvements I've been able to make have come from work on top of the sear, but using considerable pressure and repeated swipes. The gun does not seem close to going full auto, by the way. And it appears to me that if I was a Peshawar gunsmith with few resources, I'd keep working in this way until things got better, then good.

[greener]

I've been following this thread with some interest. It's even had me pulling out my Rugers to check triggers. Is the problem coming from somewhere other than the sear/hammer interface?

I have several Rugers including a MKIII 22/45 and a MKII 22/45 with installed VQ sears and VQ triggers. The MKIII's have the Bullseye/Sam Lam bushing to eliminate the mag safeties. All have pretty much the same trigger feel: a little pretravel followed by a pretty crisp release. None get heavier triggers after a couple hundred rounds.

All the polishing should have solved any problems at the sear/hammer interface.

[blue68f100]

Your going to be an expert pistol smith on MK's by the time you get this one working as you like..

Sounds like your all most there......

Yes, the top of the sear should be perfectly flat all the away across. If it's high in the middle that needs to be taken down so it will clear the safety.

Once you get away from the hammer interface on the Sear the only thing that can contact the sear is the safety. If the safety is dropping down due to use (some free play), it could still be contacting a high spot on the sear. Use a marker and check to see if the sear is still high from center back. Compare against your factory sear. Now the VQ sear has a more neutral angle so it should be slightly higher, only a few degrees of angle difference.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe the when the hammer is full forward that it's (over run area) is contacting the sear. This normally only contacts the sear's edge and has nothing to do with the top of the sear's face.

Remember that the sear does not contact the hammer all the way across, it runs into the bushing on once side. Which is about 1/8" if you take the small part of the bushing before the flange. And the safety on the other side.

[FourCornerm'n]

Thanks for your interest. The double pumping, two stage effect that's made the trigger difficult has the quality of breaking twice. It's an early resistance, then a release to another resistance that is more or less normal. It's not simply 'creep', which I could tolerate - it's the falling into the divot between the two stages that makes it difficult.

It may be a problem somewhere else, but it only happens with this one sear. There's no hint of it using the original Ruger sear which I again installed yesterday to confirm that fact. The last VQ sear, which freezes up the trigger with some frequency, also was absent this two staging affect.

And the work I've tried by polishing the top of the offending VQ sear, has reduced this dip between the two stages, making it more of a fairly smooth creep, until trigger finger pressure increased yesterday. But, then on some pulls the divot seems to be back. I exchanged the Clark hammer bushing for the original yesterday to retest it. The dip was much more pronounced with the original hammer bushing than the Clark.

The original sear appears to have a similarly etched top surface as the long used VQ sear does. But there's no two stage dip in that extremely heavy trigger pull. I'm wondering if something amiss in the hammer has caused both etched lines on top of two sears parallel to their edges, but with different results in the pull.

I'll be traveling in the next day or two and will look at everything again when I settle in. Because so many people have looked at this long thread I would like to eventually offer the reason for this anomaly, for the sake of those Ruger people who would profit from the knowledge.

[FourCornerm'n]

Thanks, blue68, I'll use this information to make further inquiry in a couple of days when I should have the time to look again. You seem to have intimate knowledge of these workings, and that ought to be a help. For the first time in my life, I'm traveling with Red Dykem!

Four Cornerm'n

[Bullseye]

That etching mark is the contact point between the hammer and sear. Having one on the top of a Ruger Mark sear edge is a fairly normal indication of a moderate to well used sear. Contact friction between the hammer and sear polishes this area and makes it more visible. Excessive contact will make this area highly visible and may even gouge a slight ledge the sear face. The two-stage effect could also mean the hammer is over clocking and when the trigger is pulled the sear has to move the hammer back slightly before release. This is an engagement angle issue and light polishing generally will not fix it. Could be that your hammer is the cause and different sears have greater or lesser experiences with it. This is where a close inspection can determine the root cause.

R,
Bullseye