Should I harden my AR trigger?

Cutiegirlracing

I did some work on my stock AR trigger, removed some of the material off the hammer and trigger. Will I need to harden the pieces now?
If so, does anyone know what material these pieces are made of, so I get an idea of which process I will need to do to harden them. They are stock Colt pieces.

Thanks.

brier-49

If you used a grinding wheel and let the parts get to hot then yes you will. If you just hone by hand, no.

tsr1965

It all depends on the way in which they were taken off from, and the way they were manufactured. Some of the ways of manufacturing are stamping, cast or forge, then mill, and one that is gaing a lot of popularity is MIM...metal injection molding. The latter can give extremely tight tolerences, with little or often no needed extra machining. The MIM is most likely hardened all the way thru from the mfg. process. If you have use of a torch, or know a machine shop that does heat treating, I would say yes, but do not over harden, and make the parts to brittle, especially the hammer. It should go to about a RC50. Rockwell C scale 50 that is.

Best

dcs shooters

If you took too much off, even just by stoning by hand, you could go through the hardening. Most parts are just surface hardened. I would find someone to reharden them, just to be safe.

richbug

Brownells sells a product called "Kasenit". It works perfectly for this type of job.