Troubleshoot an old Ithaca.

J

John Travis

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Back in the dear, dead days before the 1968 Gun Control Act, local gun shows were a veritable bazaar for anyone hoping to score a USGI 1911 or 1911A1. Often stacked on tabletops like so much cordwood, the good ones sold for about 35 dollars and a rough example could be had for as little as 15 bucks. Those were the ones my salty old pappy and his hooligan brother snapped up. A tool and die maker turned engineer and a retired Navy armorer respectively, they knew the ropes.

The adjacent tables sold new old stock/surplus parts for the guns. Sears and disconnects were sold in packages of 12 for three dollars. Barrels wrapped in the vapor paper cost a five spot.

These two bought up all the pistols and rebuild parts their budget would allow...brought'em home to rebuild and blue...and sold'em for 50-60 dollars. the profits, of course, were turned into more pistols and the cycle continued. This is where I learned the ins and outs and the nuances of the gun.

Now, 99% of the repair parts were genuine USGI and within spec...but every so often, we'd get hold of a pack that was part of a government reject lot. Sometimes, it was nothing more than the finish. Sometimes, it was...something more.

I rebuilt my first pistol in 1965 under their guidance and watchful eyes...the subject of this thread...doing all that it needed to make it right, including peening the frame rails and squeezing the slide. When it was finished, I was rightly proud and couldn't wait to put it to the test. This one was to be mine.

I slapped a loaded magazine in the well...tripped the slide to chamber the top round...brought my prize up...touched the trigger, and BANG! Touched it. Didn't pull it. A little shaken, I tried again, and it worked like it should have, the trigger breaking clean at about 6 pounds.

Slide locked...slapped in a fresh magazine...tripped the slide...brought it up...touched the trigger...BANG! The next six went without a hitch...again. I stopped and reported back to base. My uncle laughed and had the gun fixed in five minutes.

Get your thinkin' caps on, ladies and laddies. What caused that trigger to stage at about 8 ounces on the first shot?
 
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Out of spec disconnector perhaps? Just a WAG. The trigger was not to the rear when you tripped the slide for the first round but was when the slide went forward for the other rounds.
 
John,

I have a theory but one detail would derail it.

When it misbehaved the second time had you hand cycled the action in between firing sessions? or was it still locked back from the first magazine?

I think the sear was dragging on the middle leg of the spring but... maybe not.
 
Catfish said:
When it misbehaved the second time had you hand cycled the action in between firing sessions? or was it still locked back from the first magazine
Click to expand...

Nope It was still locked from the first magazine.

Almost forgot. The sear doesn't touch the center leg of the sear spring.
 
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not supposed to... that was my theory.
 
The answer to this riddle lies in Newton 1a.

Objects at rest tend to remain at rest.

I did two things that created this situation. I didn't pay attention to details and I substituted a part that wasn't actually wrong, but was just a little different.

The sear spring wasn't to spec. I trusted that it would be a simple drop-in as all parts from all vendors and all pistol manufacturers were intended to be...and were with a 99.5% certainty...so I didn't look closely at it to see that the positioning of the legs were at least close to spec. They weren't.

Because this one was gonna be my pistol, I wanted a milled trigger for it and I found one on the same table where the rest of the parts came from. The one-piece milled short triggers were a tic heavier than the two-piece triggers that were correct to the gun.

The mechanics are no more than good, old fashioned inertial trigger to disconnect bump.

When the slide slammed home, its momentum jerked the frame sharply forward. The trigger...obeying Newton...tried to stand still, and its inertial mass overcame the center leg of the sear spring that was trying to keep it from contacting the disconnect, but couldn't due to the incorrect bend in the leg. The disconnect crashed into the trigger, which caused the sear to roll away from the hammer. We always prepped the hammer hooks by equalizing their length at .027 inch and boosted the hammer a few times to seat and burnish them, then stoned a light breakaway angle on the backside of the sear crown, which made the break cleaner and smoother...and the result was the very tips of the hammer hooks standing on the sear crown. From there, you could nearly release the hammer by breathing on the trigger.

If the hammer hooks had been a couple thousandths shorter, the hammer would have followed the slide to half cock. Instead of correcting the spring, Ralph just dropped another one in and my pistol behaved itself from that day until I replaced the spring again 20 years later during its second and last rebuild.

I retired the gun and it occupies a place in a safe deposit box at my credit union along with the Union Switch Twins, a 1913 commercial Colt Government Model, and the pre-war Smith & Wesson .44 Hand Ejector that my uncle killed himself with.

The devil's in the details. It's the little things that getcha.
 
If the sear spring wasn't correct why was the trigger pull normal at any time? I'd expect it to be light all the time in that situation. Why is that not the case?
 
Catfish said:
If the sear spring wasn't correct why was the trigger pull normal at any time?
Click to expand...

Three reasons. Because the center leg wasn't that far off. Just enough to let the trigger bump the disconnect and because the far left leg was sitting a little too far forward, which placed more tension on the sear itself. The third reason was that we left the hammer hooks undersquare. A habit that I've never broken with a correct spec hammer.
 
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