WVsig... the safety feels normal when flicking it on and off.
tangolima... I'll admit, I didn't think too far ahead when I skipped removing the safety and whent straight to removing the mainspring, it's housing, and the leaf spring/sear spring. But it did work, and I got to see first hand where everything fits. I've tripple checked the gun and it's functioning correctly.
tangolima, g. willies, RickB.... I was primarily working on getting the safety out with it between the safe and fire positions, I was working on the left side (non ejection side), I gave it everything I had, even used a small flat blade to pry a little until I decided I was going to end up gouging something if I were to keep going.
Using some magazine or news paper with a thin knife blade might be the ticket.
I'd really like to take it all down just for the sake of doing so, but at this point I might wait till I've shot another 500 rounds from it so my excuse can be to do a full disassembly and cleaning. Maybe then I'll be able to get the safety free and I can tweak the spring a bit more and see about smoothing some things out while leaving the sear and hammer alone. If for some reason I just can't get the safety off, I'll just leave it alone and wont mess around by skipping steps.
I'll probably buy some stones eventually though. There are countless occasions that I wish I had some nice polishing stones to smooth out internal surfaces on various firearms.
I'd like you all to know, I am enjoying myself and I appreciate all the advice! It reminds me of when I finally fully disassembled a Glock and got to see how it all works. The 1911 is a very cool design! I'm not sure if I'll ever mess around with the internals of a revolver! Well I take that back... I've taken apart a couple Rugers and they were pretty simple, but i didn't mess with them too much. Thank God for the internet... I don't think my library would have the info I'm looking for and I'd be stuck buying books to tell me how to fully disassembled each gun I own. I guess that wouldn't be so bad actually.