colt titanium firing pin on the way for my colt 1911 govt 80
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colt titanium firing pin on the way for my colt 1911 govt 80
This place is getting more and more like TOS every day :(
I hate to break it to you, but a titanium anything isn't going to give you an advantage over the same steel part in a 1911. For the amount of money you're going to spend, there is no corresponding gain in anything.
In a 1911 without the firing pin block, a titanium firing pin might(not definitely) be less likely to cause a negligent discharge when dropping the weapon--because it weighs less than steel and thus has less inertia to overcome the firing pin spring. Play with your new pin. It may work well for you but the speed difference will be negligible. The experts claim that the ti pins are more likely to break or chip.
What's the reason for having or wanting to go with Ti for a pin?
It might be sort of interesting to take a 1911 - say an Heirloom Precision or a mint WWI collector piece - and put an extra power firing pin spring in it, load it with a piece of brass with a primer and no bullet or powder charge and drop it ten or twenty times nose first onto concrete, then do it again with a titanium firing pin, and see which is more effective at preventing ADs.
Obviously I'd really do it with a $200 norinco. I just wanted to see if I could make everybody's testicles actually physically retract into their abdomens with that suggestion.
To the OP, it's an issue of physics, nothing more. AFAIK the titanium parts available for the 1911 are the firing pin, hammer strut, and mainspring plunger. There might be a titanium 80 series firing pin plunger, but right now I don't remember. The issue is that once the primer goes off and the bullet starts it's way down the barrel, there is nothing you can do to alter the point of impact. The manufacturers all claim that you will reduce the lock time by 50% or some such number, but in reality the amount of time you 'save' doesn't have any effect on the flight of the bullet.
Where titanium does come into play is in pistols like the S&W 340PD. You can shave enough weight to the point where a pocket pistol weighs 13 ounces unloaded. Caspian used to makes a titanium 1911 frame that cut the weight of a full sized 1911 down to about 25 ounces.
Titanium 1911 internals are like full length guide rods, they are the answer to a question no one asked.
Wow, harsh responses to the OP.
Drake of Drakes's Gun Works did do some drop testing and in his test the steel FP was more likely to discharge when the pistol was dropped on the muzzle.
http://drakesgunworks.com/Drop_Testing.html
Short story is that the steel FP discharged regularly at 4 ft drop height onto concrete. The titanium FP went off intermittently at 6 ft. So there seems there might be some advantage of having a titanium firing pin.
There was a thread on Louder than Words, 1911Pro, or 1911forum if I recall where Drake chronicled his experience.