S&W M&P9 Pro Trigger Job

Yesterday I posted about my first impressions of the Smith & Wesson M&P9 Pro, and the majority of my discontent with the pistol was with the awful gritty trigger. Sure, I could throw an Apex Tactical DCAEK kit in the pistol, and the trigger would improve considerably, however, I don’t feel that I should need to throw a $100 trigger kit into a brand new pistol in order for it to have a serviceable trigger.

I field stripped the pistol, and began to get a feeling for how the internals worked. What I noticed was that the trigger was buttery smooth with the slide removed, however, once the slide was put back on, the trigger became very gritty again. It literally felt, and sounded like the trigger bar was dragging against a piece of sandpaper.

I then began to look at the trigger parts that connect between the slide and the trigger bar, and noticed that the part of the trigger bar that engages the striker block had a very nasty edge left on it from the factory, which was causing the gritty feeling trigger. I grabbed a couple very fine stones that I had around the house, and began to very slowly take down the edge on the trigger bar. I worked very slowly, checking my work many times, and taking care not to change the shape of the trigger bar, but just remove the gritty edge left on it. Once I was satisfied, I switched to an ultra fine stone, and cleaned up the edge a little more.

When I reassembled the pistol, I was very impressed to find that the trigger take-up was very smooth, much like what I expect from a nicely tuned Glock trigger, which is exactly what I was looking for.