If you’re trying to do a cheap trigger job. Go for JP springs. They help. You want to polish harden metal. What is your time and materials worth. There is a number of other things to do also. Best one of all is find a drop in. they can be had for around 100 ish.
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Garage Gunsmithing - The 15 minute AR trigger Job
- Thread starter danc46
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Ol'dan is bout right,
he's old, not full on dementia or alzhemers old.....yet hahaha.
but he knows bout a bit of ar stuff, iirc we started using jp yellows back in 04 or 05.
bout same time we was buying demilled amd65 "kits" from brigadoons for $25 & $28 each and we made our gear to bend recievers & smash rivets.
Course my first one I used a press brake to bend the receiver.
and a good old dremel, file, hammer, pliers, 1x2 furing strip, tap & button head screws, red locktite and the approprite tapco & other vedors parts to be legal.
Man, it’s not that difficult. I’m the king of the tards and I can usually swap out a trigger in a couple of minutes. For years I was hesitant to do more than pull out the BCG and buffer. I prefer the non-cartridge type trigger for simplicity. They don’t require stabilizing screws generally to anchor themselves. Only problem with learning how simple ARs are is then you keep shuffling stuff and buying parts just to play with.
No way I get that installed without jacking something up. I'm not 100% on getting a drop in done correctly. The next one I put in will be the first. I've only taken the upper off the 6920 once to clean it before I put it up. I suk.
In 1998 I introduced John Gangle (you would know him as J.P.) to Ron Phillips who owned ISMI at the time. I met John in 1994 at the S.O.F. world championship 3-Gun match. John wanted a spring company to special bend his springs so he didn't have to remake them in his barn, and yes it did involve cutting and bending GI springs. ISMI was happy to get the business, John was happy to get lighter springs and I was happy to hook them up. In 1999 John started sponsoring me and I am his longest running sponsored shooter.
Was that the SOF community match or Major Browns mayhem in Vegas? I always wanted to go the Soldier of Fortune shoot when I was a kid but my mom said no. She wasn’t willing to let her baby hang around a bunch of G&T soaked miscreants with guns.
The pugil stick matches over the hotel pool looked like a blast! 
Col. Brown's mayhem! Bob was a very different guy. I could tell lots of stories about Robert K. My brother, Jimmie Holdsworth, Blain West, and me put on the last 2 SOF World Championship matches with Bob at the Whittington center when he got tired of Vegas "screwing him". Got to know him fairly well. Def as a post, lounder than straight pipes, and had absolutely no filter! A buddy of mine's wife has his original Safari Arms 1911, which is another tail in and of it's self.
BTW I got to the finals in the pugil stick competition on the board over the pool, when the guy who won stepped onto "the plank" it sagged and started cracking, yep! Wild times!!
BTW I got to the finals in the pugil stick competition on the board over the pool, when the guy who won stepped onto "the plank" it sagged and started cracking, yep! Wild times!!
Hey CS, the competitors and conventioniers really didn't mix. The convention goers were mostly posser wanna be,s and old time vets. You would have been just fine with the shooters. I only ended up at the pugil stick competition because to win was 10,000 and I had a pretty good knack with them at Paris. I did end up making 750 for semi finals and a gigantic bruise under my left arm from the winner. Made a lot more shooting.
It’s funny how much a relic of the times that whole SOF endeavor was. I used to read it cover to cover after my uncle got me started on it. It’s just what we did while we were waiting for the internet to be invented. LOL
I always wondered how much of that was a misadventure for overly energetic and underutilized veterans of the SE Asian games and how much was a straight up honeypot. The end of the Cold War was an interesting time.
I got a short sharp reality check with pugil sticks when I was a spot. Kind of like knife fighting, if I still have one cartridge it ain’t gonna happen. I learned about the Dunning Krueger Effect before I knew the name of it.
I always wondered how much of that was a misadventure for overly energetic and underutilized veterans of the SE Asian games and how much was a straight up honeypot. The end of the Cold War was an interesting time.
I got a short sharp reality check with pugil sticks when I was a spot. Kind of like knife fighting, if I still have one cartridge it ain’t gonna happen. I learned about the Dunning Krueger Effect before I knew the name of it.
For the key board sniper who commented I didn’t know anything about JP springs, the saMe one that says there are no barrel harmonics on a AR until the bolt closes, I guess he doesn’t know shit about the pulse that goes ahead of the bullet and behind as it goes down the barrel. I guess he doesn’t know about a thing called a trigger gauge, the best the one with actual weights.
Try pulling the triggers on ARs with the same colored JP springs with a trigger gauge and see how much variance there is between the spring kits - even in the same gun using the same spring kits. Don’t take my word for it, do it yourself.
As far as “shade tree gunsmiths” cutting springs, I think that is what most here are. Places like Cylinder and Slide, John Clark, etc cut springs for years.
Or how many PPC guns had springs altered. If any of you know what PPC guns are.
And some of you seem to forget springs are damn sure cheaper to relpace that paying $100 for a drop in trigger. Some people flat can’t afford it.
This thread isn’t meant to be about drop in triggers but how some can get trigger improvement for a little bit of cash, not hundreds
As far as gunsmith knowledge on this board, talk to Ndenway. That man was building an AK for 45ACP over 10 years ago. Never followed up with him. But knowing him, he got it running.
Cant wait to meet a certain world champion key board sniper individual at the gun range. We’ll see if he’ll make comments on my sexual orientation to my face.
But it won’t be on the Boy Scout range. After he fucked up a Scout 22 training class, pissing off the other instructors and even the scouts and scout leaders, they won’t let him near it again.
Try pulling the triggers on ARs with the same colored JP springs with a trigger gauge and see how much variance there is between the spring kits - even in the same gun using the same spring kits. Don’t take my word for it, do it yourself.
As far as “shade tree gunsmiths” cutting springs, I think that is what most here are. Places like Cylinder and Slide, John Clark, etc cut springs for years.
Or how many PPC guns had springs altered. If any of you know what PPC guns are.
And some of you seem to forget springs are damn sure cheaper to relpace that paying $100 for a drop in trigger. Some people flat can’t afford it.
This thread isn’t meant to be about drop in triggers but how some can get trigger improvement for a little bit of cash, not hundreds
As far as gunsmith knowledge on this board, talk to Ndenway. That man was building an AK for 45ACP over 10 years ago. Never followed up with him. But knowing him, he got it running.
Cant wait to meet a certain world champion key board sniper individual at the gun range. We’ll see if he’ll make comments on my sexual orientation to my face.
But it won’t be on the Boy Scout range. After he fucked up a Scout 22 training class, pissing off the other instructors and even the scouts and scout leaders, they won’t let him near it again.
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We get it man. It's cold outside and you are stuck inside bored with a keyboard and love to argue. I figured the last time you went all crazy posting bullshit here and left, you were done. I guess not. Knock the nonsense off, or that week will turn to indefinite.
Axis holes locations can vary from one receiver to another by a few 10,000ths which can cause trigger pull to vary from the same trigger/sear set up.
I’ve seen Dan Simington (OKARNG armorer) turn down custom trigger pins for M1 and M14 to get the tight fit on the trigger group, little or no play of the pin in the axis holes locations. On a lot of revolvers they use shims (washers) to lessen the play of trigger and hammer on the pins, to get more consistent trigger sear engagement.
If I remember right you can buy “match” axis pins for the AR that are .001 larger than normal.
Location of axis holes can affect Sear hammer engagement. slop of the hammer and trigger on axis pins also can cause variations in trigger pull.
Keep the keyboard sniper of my back with his continual jabs and insults, and I will try to be an asset. If you don’t think I will be, cut me loose. It ain’t no skin off my nose.
ETA FYI I’m inside a deer blind watching does come into the feeder, I’m killing time. Don’t want to kill anymore. I’ve got two bucks and a doe inthe freezer, have facilitated several kids getting deer this season , and several grown men.
I’m s stump sitter from the old school. You probably don’t know the origins of that group.
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I was talking about their spring kits. After seeing the wide variance in the same sku number of their spring kits, I’m not going to buy their other products my “ predisposed bias” came from my experience with their spring kits going back over 20 years.
Sounds like you're sensitive, lol.
You're in here advising to do mods to triggers that can end up making them dangerous or cause malfunctions and you don't expect blowback? You're saying companies bends springs as an example? Companies have people that know what they're doing and test and qualify everything, except maybe BCA. And the keyboard Sniper probably has more world competition wins than you have actually ever seen. Just sayin.
You're in here advising to do mods to triggers that can end up making them dangerous or cause malfunctions and you don't expect blowback? You're saying companies bends springs as an example? Companies have people that know what they're doing and test and qualify everything, except maybe BCA. And the keyboard Sniper probably has more world competition wins than you have actually ever seen. Just sayin.
You don’t read very well. I showed a AR trigger mod that has been used by 10s of thousands of shooter successfully but recommended using the Kaw spring kit and posted a link.
Even military NM armorers cutsprings on the 1911, such as the recoil spring if they used wadcutters. .i.e, Clark was a commercial builder that did.
PPC guns, S&W revolvers didn’t have the main spring cut, they were filed. FYI they are flat springs not coils. The rebound spring was almost always cut.
Cylinder and Slide was notorious for cutting springs. Wilson was known to have $10 an hour hands working on guns and they cut springs. It’s been done since the center fire guns have been around.
I don’t care how many world championships he has. Never said he wasn’t a great marksman, as an individual he couldn’t even train a Boy Scout troop when he substituted for me without pissing everybody off. I have several good friends that are world championships several times over and they don’t pprofess to know everything about everything.
As far as quality, what are your quals? I’ve been deep into manufacturing quality since the 90s, everything about 9001.
I know jigs are made to test the spring quality, the more per 100 units the higher the quality.
I think the JP spring kits are poor quality FROM EXPERIENCE.
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