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polishing the sear

4654 Views 7 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  SLCDave
A friend of mine was explaining to me how the trigger interacts with the sear, and that I could polish the sear to make the trigger pull smoother. Now, I have not found that the pull on the trigger is "rough" in anyway, but he tells me that polishing the sear will make a noticable difference. Have any of you tried this?

I am also not sure that what he was describing to me is how the trigger and the sear work together. I am looking in the diagram in the XD manual to see where the trigger "interlocks" with the sear, that causes the sear to "snap" and release the firing pin. I am just not seeing how all this works.

Any description from an XD owner would help.

Thanx,

Raymond
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This is the relation of the striker (top) and the sear (bottom) as they sit while the XD is cocked (but unlike the picture the two parts will be touching and under pressure). The firing pin wants to fly forward in the direction of the blue arrow but is held by the sear. The total contact of the sear and the striker is the same as the wedge shape in front of the blue arrow. There in a pin that holds the sear into place(the hole in the sear) when the trigger is pulled the trigger bar moves the striker saftey lever (not shown but would be next to the sear) a nub on the lever contacts the nub on the sear and moves in the direction of the red arrow. The sear rotates around the pin (where the hole is) so the back of the sear moves down and out of the way fo the firing pin which when released slides over the sear. The contact that you would feel in the trigger is that area where the small wedge is on the striker. By putting some grease on this area where the contact is will help no matter what you do. Then if you feel the need you can use something like flitz polish or jewlers polish and polish the face of the sear and striker where the contact is. To find out where the contact is use a permanant marker and mark the faces then put the slide on the frame pull the trigger then pull the slide back and pull the trigger again. Do this about 5-10 times. Take the slide off and see where the marker was rubbed off use the rubbed off area as a guide where you need to polish. A warning though you are smoothing out the metal not removing metal for no reason do not round off the edges or remove metal. As I said if you are not comfortable doing this use grease and you will get the same temporary effect.

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Did the exact thing Ajamesp51 describes there on my XD, and smoothed the trigger out a bit. Wasn't rough to begin with, but now its nice and clean. Also used his site for disassembly instructions back when I did it. I also put a little Blue Wonder Disotec in there, and overall while it didn't make a whole lot of difference, it did make some.

Matthew
I forgot to add, but will second msidner does not make a great impact...but some. Also lots of dry firing will have the contact points polish themselves.
That was very informative. Thank you both. When looking at the gun with the slide off, this all makes perfect sense now.


Raymond
I was going to pickup some Flitz polish, can that be had at the local walmart/auto parts? Should I get the regular one or liquid?

Also how to apply it? Regular polishing cloth, or what about a variable speed dremel using a polishing drum like this one the lowest speed? http://www.dremel.com/html/images/products/bits/large/414.gif

Can't really afford a $125 trigger job and then $75 extra to pay shipping :(
Anything would be a help to my gun at the moment :wink:

Thanks
I bought a Heatsink lapping kit (http://www.easypckits.com/products/premiumlk/) and wet sanded it along both the straight sides, just to make sure I didn't reshape the sear. Worked great and I think Mr. Brown's refill kits (just sandpaper, no glass) are only like $6. Best place I found for super fine grits at a good cost. Either way, after running through all the grits of sandpaper, I used a dremel on setting 5 (has 1 to 10) and used jewelers rouge to polish it the rest of the way, which was not much more at all as the 2000 grit paper is some pretty fine stuff.

Matthew
You can get the polishing wheels for a Dremel and put them in a drill, which doesn't rotate as fast.
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