tomcatt51
Member
Dial caliper and 0-1" vernier micrometer. I can only reference the ones I've measured which has been over a period of years, vs just one firing pin.
Apex J Frame Firing Pins
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Flork
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If you're dissatisfied with our products, you can send them back for a full product refund as long as the parts have not been modified.
We have gone through one revision of firing pins in the last year since the release of the J-Frame kit, but that change was only to the back end geometry of the pin.
OP
ogilvyspecial
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Post retracted due to confusion on my part......
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Flork
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As I said in my previous post, there is no coating on these pins.
Our firing pins are 17-4 Stainless steel through hardened to maximum. The polishing you did could not have removed any level of hardness because the pins are heat treated throughout. Which means the metal on the outside and at the core is the same hardness. The polishing you've done removed the oxide on the pin produced by the heat treat process, nothing more.
We created the J-Frame kit as a Drop-in, not an experiment with springs kit, if it were intended for experimentation, we would have included a multitude of springs including a list of spring rates and recommendations.
OP
ogilvyspecial
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Excellent, thanks for clearing up my confusion Scott!!
When it comes to experimentation you didn't reduce it in my case, but expanded it.
Now I have to experiment in order to try and determine what weights are in my gun
so I can dial it in the way I feel the most comfortable with.
Some like options, others don't, to each his own.
I had the option of not ordering your kit's, I choose to and that's that.
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Would that have affected, the problem I am having? I don't know exactly what you mean by back end geometry?
Flork
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The back end geometry referrs to the back end that the hammer strikes. It's a possibility that a bad pin got through QA, but I can't say for sure.
If the firing pin retaining pin were to be poorly located in your gun, that could cause a burr to raise up but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Scott
If the firing pin retaining pin were to be poorly located in your gun, that could cause a burr to raise up but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Scott
tomcatt51
Member
After going back and re-reading this thread there's an old phrase that comes to mind:
"Much to do about nothing."
"Much to do about nothing."
tomcatt51
Member
Must be, I do seem to have trouble seeing imaginary problems.
Tyrod
Member
Here are the pin lengths of my recent J frame purchases:
Model 642-1 (2011) FP=.485”
Model 60-15 (2011) FP=.489”
Model 637-2 (2010) FP=.485”
I might add that each of these guns (as well as many other J frames) have been test fired with 200 rounds of my special selection of known hard to ignite ammo/primers which includes:
50 Rounds of Blazer Brass 125 Grain FMJ
50 Rounds of Remington 130 Grain FMJ
50 Rounds of Winchester 125 Grain JFN
50 Rounds of CCI 500 primed 110 Grain JHP handloads
All with the stock firing pin & firing pin spring, in addition to the Wilson J frame sping kit. NOT 1 MISFIRE! 2000 rounds of ammo through J frames of various vintage from 1981 to 2011 and still NOT 1 MISFIRE!
My feelings about the APEX kit should be well known. But if you're not, here they are. You pay 2.5 times as much for a kit with a firing pin you don't need and a rebound spring that just plain sux. The rebound spring is very weak. While the weak rebound spring may give you a lighter DA pull (although it doesn't compared to the other kits) it feels terrible with hardly any forward push of the trigger at all and it gives a dangerously low SA pull in the neighborhood of 1 to 1.5lbs.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I complete my testing of the 3 commonly available J frame spring kits part 2. 10 iterations of various J frames. Believe me that http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-smithing/217864-great-american-j-frame-spring-test.html#post136202849 Part 1 was just a taste of what follows.
Oh, I almost forgot. If you must have a longer firing pin/spring then you can buy the APEX firing pin/spring separately along with a Wolff or Wilson spring kit and still end up $1.00 cheaper than the APEX kit. Then you'd have a choice of rebound springs best suited to you individual taste.
Model 642-1 (2011) FP=.485”
Model 60-15 (2011) FP=.489”
Model 637-2 (2010) FP=.485”
I might add that each of these guns (as well as many other J frames) have been test fired with 200 rounds of my special selection of known hard to ignite ammo/primers which includes:
50 Rounds of Blazer Brass 125 Grain FMJ
50 Rounds of Remington 130 Grain FMJ
50 Rounds of Winchester 125 Grain JFN
50 Rounds of CCI 500 primed 110 Grain JHP handloads
All with the stock firing pin & firing pin spring, in addition to the Wilson J frame sping kit. NOT 1 MISFIRE! 2000 rounds of ammo through J frames of various vintage from 1981 to 2011 and still NOT 1 MISFIRE!
My feelings about the APEX kit should be well known. But if you're not, here they are. You pay 2.5 times as much for a kit with a firing pin you don't need and a rebound spring that just plain sux. The rebound spring is very weak. While the weak rebound spring may give you a lighter DA pull (although it doesn't compared to the other kits) it feels terrible with hardly any forward push of the trigger at all and it gives a dangerously low SA pull in the neighborhood of 1 to 1.5lbs.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I complete my testing of the 3 commonly available J frame spring kits part 2. 10 iterations of various J frames. Believe me that http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-smithing/217864-great-american-j-frame-spring-test.html#post136202849 Part 1 was just a taste of what follows.
Oh, I almost forgot. If you must have a longer firing pin/spring then you can buy the APEX firing pin/spring separately along with a Wolff or Wilson spring kit and still end up $1.00 cheaper than the APEX kit. Then you'd have a choice of rebound springs best suited to you individual taste.
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OK... a big gouge in a firing pin, causing it to bind in its bore is not a problem...............
Maximumbob54
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Well crud. The mushy return bugs me but works just fine in my 640. Now I'm all concernacus about if my firing pin is falling apart. I will go home and see what mine looks like and do my best to take pics. I don't shoot the heck out of my 640, but I have shot it several times since installing the kit. No issues, but now the interwebz worry disease has me in its grasp.
tomcatt51
Member
The text and "the big gouge", which I don't think you've even established to be what made the firing pin hard to remove.
If you want you can come over to my house to see it in person..... since pictures and my word mean nothing to you.........SHEESH..............Get over yourself!
This forum is here for people to help each other, and discuss things in a rational way. That being said, I dont know why you continue to harass me and it seems as though you dont believe what I say?
I will continue to try to help the good people of this forum! As I would hope they would help me!
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OP
ogilvyspecial
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Some people get more out of certain information than others, that's the nature of life. Me, I learned something. Back in my Quality Days we had a saying "When in doubt, check it out," so that's what I did.
I must admit that I did use the wrong word in the title of this thread when I chose "coating." Here's the line of thought I was following at that time. My van has a paint finish on it and when I go down a muddy or dusty road it usually picks up a coating of mud or dust. It's not something in the design, but it's there nonetheless.
I had a feeling that the copper color wasn't a "finish" but a "coating" (see above) and while I may have used the wrong word, technically speaking it's an oxide, at least my train of thought was on track.
With that said, I did learn that the oxide that I had seen flake off when testing it's adhesion to the part is simply a by-product of the manufacturing process, which begs the question, why is it left on there afterwards?
The main thing I learned, and I thank Scott for this, is that by me removing that copper colored oxide I didn't harm my parts. I probably enhanced them by making them slicker and removing any possibilty of this oxide coming off in my firing pin channels like I had seen it come off on a paper towel.
You can say what you will, allglock's photo of his firing pin has me wondering about long term durability, especially since he says it's on more than one pin. "When in doubt, check it out."
There is always varieation in any manufacturing process and no matter how hard a company tries, the best they can hope for is what's called a "Stable & Predictable Process." This doesn't mean a process is perfect, none are, it simply means that you know what to expect along the way and once you understand & accept the fact that you will generate some bad parts from time to time, you can deal with it more effectively. When it's a visual defect they are usually easy to remove from the process, in the case of metallurgical issues things are much tougher to detect and it might just be a case of allglock getting parts from a "bad batch." It happens, I don't care what anybody tells you.
One good way to learn for sure what's going on would be for Apex to get those pins back from allglock and do a little testing, which should generate data that could help their product in the long run.
tomcatt51, just so you don't come away from this thread empty handed, the old phrase goes,
"Much ado about nothing."
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Maximumbob54
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As soon as I can find my bit set I will be opening mine for examination and pics. Now if I could just learn to put things back in the same place...
Flork
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The offer to send the pins back to us for inspection and analysis is out there.
OP
ogilvyspecial
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