[cuba]

EGW oversize firing pin stop installed on PT 1911

I remember that when I was reading all the instruction from Tuner1911 concerning the over size firing pin stop one of the first thing said was to make sure that the radius was done straight and even because if not it would eventually wobble out the hammer pin and ruin the frame and that’s a big deal because that’s not a matter of replacing the pin but probably welding material back around the hole and drilling a new straight hole, probably not a DIY job.

I filed the smallest radius on my EGW FPS to achieve the most resistance from my hammer and after about 1,500 rounds of 200gr @ about 860 fps I noticed an un even wear pattern on the surface of my hammer, I mean the EGW FPS was doing exactly what Tuner1911 had warned against allowing to happen, I think I caught it in time where the hammer pin had not wobbled my frame.

I have a Taurus PT 1911 and even though I have fired close to 6K from my PT with out one FTF or FTE and it’s allot more accurate then I am the hammer is MIM, and under close inspection it was not 100% parallel with my slide and that’s what the wear pattern was also telling me. I also smeared a bit of lithium grease on the hammer and cocked the slide and it showed me that the FPS was only contacting half of the right side of the hammer (NOT GOOD).

I had two immediate decisions to make if I was going to keep using the small radius FPS. One was file the bottom of the FPS to compensate for the Taurus hammer, but it fit perfectly flush with the bottom of my slide. The other would be more work but would fix the imperfection of the culprit, and it entailed disassembling the pistol and removing the hammer maybe two or three times and stoning the high side which was at most was1/64” higher, or until it contacted the FPS evenly which is what I opted to do.

I started by blackening the flat surface of the hammer with a sharpie and stoning the high side using a medium Arkansas stone, after the first two times that I removed the black on the high side I assembled my hammer and smeared lithium grease on the surface and racked my slide to see how much more I needed to remove I noticed a crown in the middle so I knew I was about there, so I removed my hammer and blackened the surface and carefully stoned the crown off until all the black was evenly removed, I reassembled my hammer and smeared grease again and this time the FPS swiped it off evenly, then I reassembled the pistol and shot 50 rounds and it had a more profound reduction of muzzle flip, and when racking the slide also more resistance.

I don’t know if this situation is only prevalent to the PT 1911, but I would recommend that if you have installed the EGW over size FPS on your 1911 that you check it with some lithium grease and see if you are getting even contact which is critical to the longevity of your frame.

I did have two other options, one remove the EGW FPS and install back the stock system which didn’t apply any harmful battering to the hammer pin, and two buy a different hammer from Brownell which I would still have checked if I wanted to keep the 1911 with the benefits that the EGW small radius firing pin stop offers. I chose to rectify the Taurus hammer because I feel its robust and has the safety feature which is a plus with all the grandchildren coming over I use it every night and I haven’t had any problems with it.


Cuba