Poor Man's AR-15 trigger job

[AmbulanceDriver]

So I've got a couple  AR's that, like other AR's have horrid stock triggers.  Gritty as hell.  Culprit is the tool marks on the face of the trigger and on the sear hooks on the hammer.

So I decided to try my hand at cleaning up those tool marks, see if I can improve the trigger a little bit at least.

Picked up some high grit wet/dry sandpaper and backed it with some flat aluminum stock to give me a nice flat working surface.

Started at 600 grit, worked the trigger face and the hammer sear hooks until I just couldn't see the tooling marks any more.  Since I didn't have a jig to ensure the angles stayed perfectly aligned,  I took it nice and easy and took my time to keep the angles aligned as best as I could.

Then went to 1000 grit to polish out the 600 grit marks.

And then went to 1500 grit to polish out the 1000 grit marks.

Ended up with a surprisingly mirrored finish on the trigger face and top, an almost knife like edge on the face/top edge, and while it didn't improve the trigger pull weight, *MAN* did it smooth out those trigger pulls. 

I also know that the hardening on those parts is just a little bit below the surface, so it's really important to only work this until you remove the tooling marks.  It takes a little bit of time, but it is well worth it if you don't want to drop a couple hundred bucks on an aftermarket Timney or similar trigger.

[Kingcreek]

I thought when I opened this I would read about cutting the hammer spring again. Glad to see its just a polish.
Even my 2 stage RRA match trigger benefited from similar polishing. In fact, very few of my guns have escaped the procedure.

[mtnbkr]

this works really well too:
http://junkyardgenius.com/firearms/ar-15/ar08.html

Chris

[AmbulanceDriver]

Kingcreek, I tried the cut hammer spring.  Once.   had about a 50% failure to fire rate.

Next upgrade for these rifles is going to be a set of JP springs, yellow trigger / red hammer