Thanks for the positive feedback. These are probably a month out. I got a handful heat treated, the rest will go to heat treat this week, but then still need to go out to get NiB coating, which is an additional 2 weeks.
Good news is that what Tony got for evaluation was heat treated, but not yet coated, so the final product should be even better.
I'm very excited by this project for several reasons:
First is that by machining these triggers from solid billet tool steel, rather than casting them, the metallurgical quality will be as good, or better than anything USGI, and likely better than any commercial parts made today. I can't speak for all commercial parts out there, but I know a bunch of them are either investment cast or MIM, neither of which can match the grain structure of billet.
Second is that I'm taking advantage of the capabilities of a CNC machine to improve the USGI design. There are several small things I do, and I won't go into all of them, but some are design changes that add material to the trigger to make it stronger. This was never before possible in tuning, as you started with USGI, and could only ever remove material, adding was simply not possible. The other changes are to add complex curves, a change that was very difficult to do in the age of manual machining that was available in the 50's when these triggers were last made, but is easy to program in CNC.
So, expect these will hit the market in about a month. Naturally, I'll post on this forum as soon as they are.
Good news is that what Tony got for evaluation was heat treated, but not yet coated, so the final product should be even better.
I'm very excited by this project for several reasons:
First is that by machining these triggers from solid billet tool steel, rather than casting them, the metallurgical quality will be as good, or better than anything USGI, and likely better than any commercial parts made today. I can't speak for all commercial parts out there, but I know a bunch of them are either investment cast or MIM, neither of which can match the grain structure of billet.
Second is that I'm taking advantage of the capabilities of a CNC machine to improve the USGI design. There are several small things I do, and I won't go into all of them, but some are design changes that add material to the trigger to make it stronger. This was never before possible in tuning, as you started with USGI, and could only ever remove material, adding was simply not possible. The other changes are to add complex curves, a change that was very difficult to do in the age of manual machining that was available in the 50's when these triggers were last made, but is easy to program in CNC.
So, expect these will hit the market in about a month. Naturally, I'll post on this forum as soon as they are.
