Anybody ever do a trigger job on an AR???

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Petrovich
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Post by Petrovich »

Glock and dagger wrote:
Kinda like the old samauri swords where just the cutting edge was hardend and the bulk of the blade was left a bit softer so as to be more resilient.
Old Samurai swords were heated in ash to provide hardness AND flexibility, because if the sword is too hard, and does not give at all when striking, it will break. Their techniques concerning blade building also ensure that the blade was curved, and sharp on only one edge. The blade was not meant to stab, and to do so may break the tip.

But times change. Now, real swords are clay hardened. This is far superior to case hardeneing. The edge is harder, able to hold an edge better, able to be sharpened at a smaller degree (which is better than razor sharp's 23 degree angle, though not much better), can be made thinner (but usually not), and the blade flexes, despite being harder than case hardened steel. And, of course, the alloys change.

Wall ornaments do not fall in this category, obviously.
Yeah...I watched a show on the discovery channel one time that documented the clay process. It was extremely tedious as I recall. The clay was applied to the area of the sword that was to remain slightly soft, and the part that was to be hardened was left bare. Of course, there were many, many repititions of the procedure on the same blade to achieve the final result.

Damascus is cool too. It is a billet of steel that is heated, flattened and folded over on itself many many times until it is composed of hundreds of microscopically thin laminations. Then the blade is shaped from this piece of steel. What happens is that all of the different laminates are slightly different in hardness making the blade very tough. Also, the different hardnesses wear at different rates and the effect, when sharpening, are microscopic serrations that make the blade extremely sharp.
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Glock and dagger
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Post by Glock and dagger »

Yeah...I watched a show on the discovery channel one time that documented the clay process. It was extremely tedious as I recall.
It is. The final product is, however, well worth the effort.
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Post by TunnelRat »

Glock and dagger wrote:
Yeah...I watched a show on the discovery channel one time that documented the clay process. It was extremely tedious as I recall.
It is. The final product is, however, well worth the effort.
I just buy mine ready made from Cold Steel.... :wink:
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Post by Petrovich »

tommcnaughton wrote:
Glock and dagger wrote:
Yeah...I watched a show on the discovery channel one time that documented the clay process. It was extremely tedious as I recall.
It is. The final product is, however, well worth the effort.
I just buy mine ready made from Cold Steel.... :wink:
I've always judged a knife by how easy/hard it is to sharpen. Now that isn't always a fair judge I know, because some knife designs just aren't that easy; mainly because of blade thickness.

Toss out all they tell you and thin that blade down! Use the smallest angle possible and that usually means completely redoing the factory angle. Also....very important....use one of those gizmos that maintains a consistent angle. I also prefer diamond stones over any other DMT is my personal favorite.
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Post by Ring »

buy a match trigger.. the stock triggers blow... even with lots of work, you can only improve them to "suck"..
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Post by Petrovich »

Ring wrote:buy a match trigger.. the stock triggers blow... even with lots of work, you can only improve them to "suck"..
I'm sure a good match trigger is better. At a hundred bucks+ a pop I'll make do with what I have.
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Post by swingset »

Petrofergov wrote:
Ring wrote:buy a match trigger.. the stock triggers blow... even with lots of work, you can only improve them to "suck"..
I'm sure a good match trigger is better. At a hundred bucks+ a pop I'll make do with what I have.
You can get a RRA 2-stage for $89 from some dealers. That's the price of most good rifle triggers.

It's WELL worth it. The "15-minute" trigger job is ok, but still not crisp and light.
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Post by Glock and dagger »

Hmmmm.... I forgot to ask what this is for. Sure, I know, an AR-15, but what is its purpose? If all you plan on doing is punching holes in paper with it, or killing varmints, sure, go on ahead. If you are wanting to ward of bad guys with it, why bother?
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Petrovich
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Post by Petrovich »

swingset wrote:
Petrofergov wrote:
Ring wrote:buy a match trigger.. the stock triggers blow... even with lots of work, you can only improve them to "suck"..
I'm sure a good match trigger is better. At a hundred bucks+ a pop I'll make do with what I have.
You can get a RRA 2-stage for $89 from some dealers. That's the price of most good rifle triggers.

It's WELL worth it. The "15-minute" trigger job is ok, but still not crisp and light.
I guess comparing my polished trigger to what it was before I worked on it made such a huge difference I was overly impressed? There is still creep, but it isn't the slightest bit gritty. In fact it's as smooth as a well made dao pistol trigger. When the trigger breaks it breaks very clean. It also seems to have lightened the trigger pull, but that may be imagined and I don't have a guage to measure trigger pull weight.

Best of all a stock trigger group is easy and inexpensive to replace. As for two stage triggers I've never been a big fan.
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Post by Buckshot »

Glock and dagger wrote:
AR triggers are only surface hardened.
Case hardening is not a good idea when making gun parts. They rust, and quickly.

Every part I've ever seen for any AR (and most other firearms) are hardened, which is all the way through. If they are treated with something else to harden them additionally, that's one thing, but the part is still quite durable.
He didn't say case hardened, he said surface hardened. There IS as difference and he is right. They intentioally left the centers of the parts relatively mild to give them shock resistance for full auto action.

AR Lower internals don't rust becasue they are parkerized!

MANY people over the years have cut through the surface hardening on AR triggers and sears and had the softer metal slowly beat itself out of shape and the rifle either go full auto or quit working completely.

The problem is, if it goes full auto and you are seen and turned in, PROVE that you were doing a trigger job and screwed it up and NOT attempting to make a full auto firearm!

I am NOT against gunsmithing, I do some myself. I am against not knowing EXACTLY what you are doing and making yourself a one way ticket to Club Fed via stupidity!

Buckshot
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Post by Petrovich »

Buckshot wrote:
AR Lower internals don't rust becasue they are parkerized!

MANY people over the years have cut through the surface hardening on AR triggers and sears and had the softer metal slowly beat itself out of shape and the rifle either go full auto or quit working completely.

The problem is, if it goes full auto and you are seen and turned in, PROVE that you were doing a trigger job and screwed it up and NOT attempting to make a full auto firearm!

I am NOT against gunsmithing, I do some myself. I am against not knowing EXACTLY what you are doing and making yourself a one way ticket to Club Fed via stupidity!

Buckshot
Answer this for me.

If the trigger parts are parkerized and surface hardened WHY do the mating surfaces appear freshly machined?

Making those cuts AFTER parkerizing and hardening would remove these treatments. Making these cuts BEFORE parkerizing and hardening would make the cuts appear differently than freshly done.

My GUESS is that the parts are made from an alloy that has been developed with the right balance of hardness and resilience and the parts are the same hardness all the way through. This, of course, is done for maximum effiency and economy during production.
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Post by Buckshot »

P4G,

Note my wording carefully, we don't want to get into constructive possession here!

It sounds like you got hold of non-mil-spec parts.

The civilian legal mis-spec parts that I got when I built my rifles were relatively smooth on the engagement surfaces, buth they were parkerized.

The reason I said be careful of my wording is the BATF says that the ownership of an AR15 and ANY M16 fire control parts is constructive possession (intent to assemble a machine gun) and we don't want that.

Buckshot
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Post by Petrovich »

Buckshot wrote:P4G,

Note my wording carefully, we don't want to get into constructive possession here!

It sounds like you got hold of non-mil-spec parts.

The civilian legal mis-spec parts that I got when I built my rifles were relatively smooth on the engagement surfaces, buth they were parkerized.

The reason I said be careful of my wording is the BATF says that the ownership of an AR15 and ANY M16 fire control parts is constructive possession (intent to assemble a machine gun) and we don't want that.

Buckshot
The first rifle I worked on is a Colt. The second rifle I worked on has a DPMS parts kit in it. According to their respective manufacturers both are mil-spec.

I dunno dude....I'm kinda new at this.

Both had engagement surfaces that had been formed by some kind of grinding process that was clearly done after the pieces had the finish applied.

They appeared smooth, but when I began polishing them the perpindicular lines from the grinding process became visible. Polishing out those lines made the trigger lose it gritty feeling.

I've looked at pictures of the select fire trigger groups and they are very different from the semi auto's. Particularly the three shot burst. There are even extra cuts that the semiauto sears don't have.

Any ATF agent that can't tell the difference between the two prolly needs to go back to college.

I'm thinking any skilled observer can easily tell the difference between a botched trigger job and and a deliberate attempt to illegally convert a weapon.
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Post by Buckshot »

P4G,

The ATF doesn't have to be able to tell them apart.

They just have to walk in with their experts and testify to the jury that you were trying to make a full auto firearm.

These are the same guys that will duct tape, glue and wire together a receiver off of a full auto firearm demilled to their specifications and bust you for asselbling an illegal machine gun if they can get 1 round to fire when fired remotely with them under cover. Even if the "firearm" totally and destructively dis-assembles itself at the first shot!

Remember these are also the people that invented constructive possession! Own an AR15 and 1 part of the fire control system that is specific to an M16 and you are guilty of "making a machine gun"!

You don't have to make any mods to your AR15. You don't even have to try to assemble the prohibited part. Just having a prohibited part and an AR15 in your possession at the same time means you are guilty of attempting to construct a machine gun!

These are the same people that treated the wife of a part time police officein Bucyrus, Ohio so roughly while busting him for machine guns that were perfectly legal for him to own becasue he had all the paper for them FROM the BATF that they made his wife mis-carry and loose a chile.

It would take a little research, but if you want deatils of this I can dig them out in a few days. It was a famous case and a Federal judge in Cleveland ordered the return of ALL of his firearms including the machine guns and they got a MAJOR settlement for the lost baby.

Buckshot
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Re: Anybody ever do a trigger job on an AR???

Post by Rob-Black99RT »

Petrofergov wrote: Then I saw a post....maybe on here...that linked to a website that showed a procedure where you cut off part of the hammer spring and bend the trigger spring. I didn't want to try that.
15-minute trigger job... cut the right side spring leg on the hammer spring and bend the trigger spring legs up... doing this greatly reduces the trigger pull, but it also lessens the force being enacted on the hammer since you only have one leg of the spring (left) acting on the hammer. When I did this I was getting lots of light strikes, and that's not good in a rifle which could be used for defensive purposes... What I did was lighten up the hammer... a LOT... I cut the tail of the hammer off as seen in these pics: http://www.ps127.com/Bushmaster/hammer/index.html

This got the hammer speed back up and eliminated the light strikes... Now, I have around a 5# trigger (it feels around the same as my G30's which has a 5 lb connector), have no problems with light strikes, and since I did this about 8 months ago (pics above were taken long after I did it) I have had no misfires due to light strikes... the only bad round I've had since then was one round of Poly Wolf that wouldn't go off no matter how many times I hit it... I've shot XM193, Wolf Poly and the old laquer stuff, and Winchester 45 grain HP ammo through it without a hitch.

I also used white rouge buffing compound and an 8" buffer to polish up all mating surfaces to as close as I could get to a mirror. It takes some time, sure, but the results are very nice. I'm sure a Jewell trigger would be nicer in that it'd be adjustable and such, but I've got no real costs in this and I'm plenty satisfied with it.
- Rob
G30
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