Secondary Project: the old frame

Couple of days ago finally got in the last part I needed to complete the Kimber frame.  Most of it dropped right in.  Not completely stripped, but here's (most of)the parts:

Clockwise from the top: disconnector, pin, sear; hammer, strut pin, strut, hammer pivot pin; thumb safety; grip safety; sear/disconnector/grip safety spring.  The trigger, magazine latch, thumb safety & slide lock plungers & spring are in place in the frame.  And yes, I forgot to put the mainspring housing in the picture.

If you're wondering how these all work, I point you to this marvelous illustration thanks to STI and M1911.org.  You can hide or show different parts so as to see just how others function.  Which brings me to the one part that actually required fitting: the disconnector.

One pin fits through the disconnector and sear, holding them in place in the frame.  That three-finger spring bears on them with different arms: one causes the sear to pivot against the hammer, one bears on the angled face at the bottom of the disconnector and forces it up.  The third pushes the grip safety out and doesn't bear on the matter at hand.

Sear holds hammer in cocked position, top of the sear fits in a recess in the bottom of the slide.  Pull trigger, it actually pushes on the front face of the disconnector which pivots the sear, releasing the hammer.  Cartridge fires, and slide cycles back, cocking the hammer and pushing the disconnector down, which means the sear cannot be moved by the trigger.  As the slide moves back into battery, the top of the sear moves back up into that recess, which puts that bottom part in place between trigger and sear, allowing the trigger to trip the process again.

If the disconnector were too short, that could allow the hammer to follow the slide down instead of being caught at full-cock; that could allow the gun to double, or could cause an out-of-battery fire; Bad.  If it's too long?  That can prevent the sear from being able to pivot far enough; it'll let the hammer fall, but the sear nose will catch in the half-cock notch and prevent the piece from firing.  Which is what was happening.

Two fixes for this.  The preferred is to use a special scraper and scrape some steel out of that recess, so the disconnector can move far enough up.  Problem is, this is going to be working with the Ciener .22 upper, and the slide is aluminum with a hard coating to prevent wear; scrape that depression and you'll get rid of the coating, not a good thing to do.  Careful measuring found the new piece was .020" long, some careful cutting was able to shorten it that much, including polishing the surfaces.  Assembled everything and worked the action, all now cycled as it should.  This morning went to the range and tried it, and all worked as should.

One more thing I want to do.  The frame rails are badly worn, I want to work them in the proper places to get a better fit to the slide, then have the frame hard anodized to cut down on future wear.