[bronicadave]

Ok, my first detail strip on a S&W 1911. When I finished, well past my normal bedtime, the thing would be in autofire. I held the trigger and recocked and the hammer would drop right back. What did I miss? It must be something fairly simple. Also, what's the right way to reinstall the hammer, do you try and force it in against the main spring? That seemed impossible. I left the main spring housing part way out and then pushed it in against the spring pressure and put in the mainspring housing. Is that right? Appreciate any help or I'm off to a gunsmith Monday.

 

[bronicadave]

Can somebody point me to a detail picture of the sear spring to see if I have that installed correctly? The manual I was working from doesn't give much detail on assembly. It only says to assembly in the reverse of the disassembly and they have you remove the hammer before removing the mainspring housing. I clearly need a better manual, any web sources to point me to?

 

[bronicadave]

Things not to do

1. Never disassmble a 1911 without a good tutor or instruction book.
2. Never do anything for the first time on Friday night or after 11 PM (I don't think I would have my eldest daughter if I followed that advice, but I digress).
3. Never panic

Had I followed those bits of advice I would have not struggled with figuring out how to get the mainspring housing and hammer put back together. I would had gotten the job finished before midnight. I would have looked closer at the problem in the daylight before running off to the kids swim meet and fretting the whole time about whether I ruined my 1911.

If I hold the trigger down and manually pull the hammer back the hammer will fall again, right? The test I should have conducted was to rack the slide while holding the trigger down, then the hammer better not fall. Well it doesn't. Oh crap. I'm too old to be learning things the hard way.