(Posted elsewhere a couple years ago):
While on hold for a bit on a project, I have a little time to take care of some of the other little things that need doing but normally might hang fire for..... a good long time. This is essentially a parts gun, you don't see that so much with the BHP. The barrel is a BarSto..... in 7.65 Parabellum. Ya gotta know this gives a recoil impulse that is somewhat "lesser" than that of a 9mm and indeed the action would barely open at first.
Brownings in my opinion are typically way overspring. Not to say they don't know what they're doing, but man! The hammer spring and firing pin spring are stout! I started tuning for the low impulse by reducing the hammer spring to "reasonable" levels.
Now mind you, the work on this gun is not and is not presented as high-end custom work. It's "can you put this together and make it work". I'm anxious to meet that requirement without making a weeks-long project out of it so, reducing that hammer spring was done by shortening it. It's fine. Except the expected misfires. Take out the firing pin spring.
By far the strongest in any pistol available today. At first I replaced it with a spring I made and misfires were greatly reduced.
Reduced but not gone. The hammer provided was a ring hammer. This thing was just.... giant. I cut off the ring and slotted it up the back. Misfires gone. Let there be no doubt that a lighter hammer, a lighter complete firing train, hits harder. I've proven this many times over the years. Not to include lightweight firing pins though. As these, like a 1911, have inertia firing pins, you get under a certain mass and the inertia is reduced so much that it can't hit hard enough.
After all this I found a Wolff FP spring for BHP, stronger than the one I made. I put that in and still no misfires, so, good.
As a parts gun it came with a C&S wide trigger. I'm not a fan of wide triggers but beside that this part was a little rough and took a bit of fitting, which-- having the trigger in and out of a BHP a bunch of times is not fun. Finally got it working OK.
One thing about the BHP is extreme trigger overtravel in some cases. This leads to binding on the bell crank mounted in the slide (OK, its official name is "sear lever".) Pull the trigger far enough to drop the hammer, and if it goes too far beyond, the trigger lever pins the sear lever up. You can feel this in hand cycling-- the slide won't move. Oh it moves when you fire it, but things are being stressed. Indeed, on this frame, you could see where the sear lever pusher (the real name escapes me just now) had deformed its place in the frame a little in previous use. Here's where it would have been nice in an aftermarket trigger if they'd leave extra metal on the forward extension of the trigger so a guy could file it to be an effective trigger OT stop. I added some metal there and all's well.
The RDIH extendo slide stop provided-- I think they're OK. I don't really have any high-mileage info on them. I find the factory part perfectly adequate but there's nothing really wrong with the RDIH.
The thumb safety used was off a Tisas, which had been fitted with a C&S safety. This was the original format safety and, not Tisas' fault, but they are just.... bloody.... awful. They give you about 3/8" of leverage which is practically below flush with the grips and frame. With the hammer pivoting on the safety shaft there can be considerable drag. The detent efforts can vary. Send lawyers, guns, and leverage! As with the safety in an above post, I did a quick-ish job of extending it. Using a broken 1911 safety, I took the paddle off, and silvered it into a slot filed into the original. Again not suitable for zoomed-in pics in a gun magazine but so..... much..... better. AND, yes, safer. I put a little silver on the part of it that blocks the sear, which it needed. Pulling the trigger with the safety on was resulting in about 20% of sear movement occurring. A guy could live with this if he had to-- many Brownings come from the factory with this condition. But now this one is solid. Is silver the ideal material for blocking the sear? Not in theory but in reality.... more than adequate.
What passes for a "tang" on these is pretty objectionable, and usually left sharp on the sides. They vary a lot. Well, I didn't really want to start filing on the guy's frame but I do know that if it's a problem he's good with a file himself and can take care of it.
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Originally Posted by Ned Christiansen
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