April 10th - The Trigger!

April 10^th – The Trigger!

Ok….so the most recognized part of a gun, is the trigger.  Our whole culture has developed a sort of mythology around triggers, and they have migrated in to the general lexicon of the non-shooting world.  Who has not heard of a “hair trigger temper”, or a “triggering event”  or “if you do that it will trigger something else to happen”? 

Regardless of your experience with triggers, you probably intuitively know that  you NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THEM UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO SHOOT AT A TARGET!!!!  Let’s further refine that….YOU KEEP YOUR @!@# FINGER OFF THE @!?@? TRIGGER UNTIL THE MOMEMENT THAT YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON TARGET AND YOU ARE READY TO FIRE.

Did I make myself clear?

There are two things about shooting relating accidents that bother me the most. 1) if the muzzle of the gun was pointed in a safe direction (AS IT ALWAYS SHOULD BE!!!!!) when the gun “accidentally went off” the bullet would have hit something other than a person.  2) Triggers do not magically go off.  Someone has to press them.  WHAT THE HELL WAS SOME ONE DOING WITH THEIR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER TO BEGIN WITH???? 

So why is the trigger so important other than to make the gun go bang?

Trigger description competes with wine connoisseurs when it comes to verbalizing the characteristics of the trigger pulling experience.  “Crisp” “Glass break” “Sloppy” and of course “Factory”, all describe the trigger. 

Let’s focus on the last one for a second.  “Factory”  I’ve heard this referred to  as a ‘lawyers trigger” or a “committee trigger” as a means of derision.  You see,  when a rifle leaves the factory it is set at a trigger pull (amount of force in lbs per square inch) that the makers of the firearm feel will prevent anyone from accidentally discharging the rifle.  In fairness to them, they have to assume that someone will get a hold of their product that has not been properly trained in firearms, shoot the thing and then blame the manufacturer for setting an “unsafe” product in the market.  To minimize this potential they set their triggers at around a 7lb pull. 

So what is wrong with a 7lb pull?

Imagine taking an eye dropper and filling it with liquid.  Now to squeeze out a drop of liquid you need to exert something like a heart beat amount of pressure.  (This eye dropper is literally soaked with liquid inside.)  You hold the eye dropper at the height of your head and you try to drop just one drop onto a target the size of a postage stamp at your feet.  Assuming you have really good eye hand coordination you might actually be able to pull of this trick. 

Now suppose you only had a little bit of liquid left in the dropper.   To get the liquid to come out you have to really squeeze the liquid down until it leaves the dropper and heads to the floor.  During that exertion of squeezing the dropper you knave no idea where the dropper is pointed at the point that the liquid leaves the dropper.  Obviously accuracy is going to be effected.

This is sort of what happens with a trigger set at 7lbs. 

As you squeeze the trigger your muscle contractions are literally twisting and tweaking the rifle as the trigger travels back.  Accuracy is sacrificed.

So….we need to take the trigger and mess around a bit with it!  After multiple screw adjustments and tests with my trigger pull meter we have this trigger now set a “Crisp” 3lb pull.  Enough tension so that a hunter riddled with adrenaline will not get “buck fever” and shoot too soon…(yeah right)….but not so much that his rifle will be pointing God knows where when the firing pin releases.

Some bench rest shooters and competition shooters reduce trigger pull all the way down to ounces.  This is fine for them, especially when the target is a piece of paper and the goal is to win a match contest.  For the hunter…and we are building this rifle for a hunter…2.5 to 3lbs is “perfect”