by Tom Gaylord, a.k.a. B.B. Pelletier
The two things shooters are concerned about the most are the barrels and the triggers on their guns. This will be a report on triggers.
People praise the Rekord trigger found in Weihrauch rifles — and in those Beeman R-series rifles that also have a Rekord — without knowing what makes it a good trigger. So, let’s take a look at airgun triggers to try to at least appreciate the basics. This report probably won’t change any minds. If you’re a single-stage man, you’ll still be one after reading the entire series; but at least you’ll know for sure what differentiates a single-stage trigger from one with two stages.
Rekord makes a modular trigger for some of its spring-piston air rifles. It operates via multi-levers rather than by a direct sear.
Single-stage trigger
Let’s get the fundamentals out of the way up front. A single-stage trigger is one that has no movement — often called “Take-up” — when cocked. The shooter squeezes the trigger until the sear releases and the gun fires. Many shooters like this kind of trigger because it feels right to them. After all, when a gun is cocked, squeezing the trigger should make it fire, right?
Foreign gun makers often mistranslate technical terms in their manuals and refer to “creep” when they mean take-up. Take-up is when the trigger blade moves without releasing the sear. I will discuss take-up in depth when I present the two-stage trigger, but for now I’m moving on.
On some guns, there’s a lot of real creep in the single stage of the trigger, and that leads to some confusion. Creep is not the same as take-up. Creep is the jerky start-stop movement you feel when the trigger is sliding across the surface of the sear. Sometimes, the creep is very smooth, but you can still feel the trigger blade moving. Other times, the creep is a very gritty feel, with numerous starts and stops. But the point is that with a single-stage trigger, the moment you begin pulling back on the trigger blade you’re in the act of releasing the sear.
Non-shooters believe that a trigger is squeezed or pulled until it releases suddenly, because that’s what it looks like on film. Since they don’t shoot, they never experience the actual movement of a trigger. But every shooter knows that a trigger has some movement when it’s pulled. The better the trigger, the less the movement can be felt — right up to the point that no movement at all can be felt and the trigger breaks (releases the sear) so suddenly that we say it feels as if a glass rod has broken. That analogy means that it feels the same as applying pressure to a glass rod until it breaks. It does so suddenly and without any warning, and that’s how we want a good trigger to act. Then, we know to prepare ourselves in all other ways and make sure we’re on target when it happens.
To recap, a single-stage trigger is one that is ready to fire from the moment you first start pulling it. How long it takes before that happens and how much pressure must be applied to make it happen are what define the characteristics of the trigger — good or bad.
Two-stage trigger
A two-stage trigger has two distinct stages to its pull. The first stage is called the take-up, and is nothing more than a pull against the resistance of the trigger return spring. If you relax your trigger finger during this stage, the trigger blade should return to the starting position, and the gun remains cocked. Sometimes, the tension on the return spring can be relaxed too far, however; and once taken up, the trigger blade will not return to the starting point. It simply hangs loose and floppy on its pivot pin. That’s not how the trigger is supposed to function, though, but is the result of improper adjustment.
Stage two is the point at which the trigger begins to act upon the sear in a serious way. I say “in a serious way” because in some two-stage triggers there is some sear movement during the first stage pull. But no amount of adjustment should allow the trigger to release the sear during the first stage of a two-stage trigger.
So, stage two of a two-stage trigger is very much like stage one of a single-stage trigger, in that all the same things happen. Everything I said for the single-stage trigger about creep and the “glass-rod” release applies equally to stage two of a two-stage trigger. And this is where people make their decision to like one trigger or the other.
Those who prefer the single-stage trigger wonder why there needs to be anything in the trigger-pull before it gets serious. As long as a single-stage trigger feels exactly the same as stage two of a two-stage trigger, they argue, why bother with the first stage?
Marksmen who learned to shoot on a gun with a two-stage trigger would answer by saying that the first stage gives them a safety margin. They always know exactly where the serious part of the trigger-pull is. It’s at the end of the take-up. Once again, non-shooters cannot even imagine what we’re talking about because they lack the tactile experience of having used triggers. But target shooters know that a two-stage trigger allows them to ease into the trigger-pull with complete safety, knowing where things are not serious and where they are. Let me give you an example.
My SAM-10 target pistol has a two-stage trigger. Stage two must be set to release at greater than 500 grams, which is about 18 oz. Those are the rules in both national and international competition. Although it’s possible to set the second stage to break at less weight, it’s a waste of time to do so. The first-stage pull is around 20 grams, which is very light in comparison to stage two, which I have set to release at 515 grams. I set it that way so I never fail a trigger test before a competition, because there’s nothing worse than adjusting (and getting used to) a trigger just when the competition begins.
I can easily squeeze stage one all the way until it stops and know with certainty that the gun will not fire. So, I begin my trigger squeeze when the pistol is still coming down on the target. And most 10-meter pistol shooters do something similar. It’s part of a rhythm we get into and never once in I-don’t-know-how-many tens of thousands of shots has the gun ever fired at the wrong time.
Don’t try this at home!
Having told you that, I must now caution you that most shooters cannot control a trigger this well. I see shooters pick up 10-meter guns all the time and fire them before they are ready. If one of them were to try what I do they would put holes in the ceilings and walls! And before Edith makes me admit it, I’ve shot the walls, the ceiling and even the couch. But I didn’t do it while shooting a 10-meter target pistol.
When 10-meter shooters get together to compare triggers, we “see” things and talk about things that remain invisible to other shooters. For instance, many people think the IZH 46M has a marvelous trigger; but to a 10-meter pistol shooter, that trigger is a beginner-level trigger at best. It has loads of creep and variability that you can sense when you’ve trained your trigger finger to use only the best. But for the average shooter, the 46M trigger borders on being too light.
How adjustments affect triggers
Sometimes, shooters will try to adjust the first stage out of a two-stage trigger, effectively making it a single-stage trigger. That does work with some guns, but not with others. Those guns where the trigger moves the sear in both the first and second stages can become unsafe if you try to eliminate the first stage altogether. Because the sear is being moved in the first stage, the second stage has to be set on the sear so fine (with such a small contact surface) to eliminate the first stage, that it can slip off or be jarred off the sear without pulling the trigger. These triggers should never be adjusted like that.
Many triggers, even most of them, act directly on the sear. On guns with these triggers, there’s a benefit to smoothing the contact surface of both the sear and the corresponding surface of the trigger, as long as you do not cut through any case-hardening. Cheaper triggers often have their parts case-hardened, which is a way to use lower-grade steel and still have a sufficiently hard contact surface to resist wear. But this case-hardening is only a thin shell that can easily be cut away by a file. When that happens, the sear will never be able to hold a surface for long. The trigger-pull will change constantly and can become downright unsafe without any warning. The only safe method of smoothing these surfaces is with a hard stone, and with the part to be surfaced held in a jig, to keep the contact angle constant.
Some better triggers, like the Rekord, use levers instead of direct-contact sears. They do have contact points, but those act on levers that in turn act on the piston. These triggers can be adjusted very light and crisp and no stoning is ever required for their contact surfaces. Creep is usually not an issue with such triggers, as the levers rather than the contact surfaces are what bear the force of the cocked piston.
Trigger anomalies
I say I like two-stage triggers, but two of my favorites are actually single-stage. The first and my most favorite trigger is on a Winchester High Wall rifle that’s chambered in .219 Zipper Improved. It’s a single-set trigger that is a single-stage by definition. Knowing that, I don’t approach the trigger blade until I’m ready to fire the shot. The crosshairs are perfectly centered on the target before I touch that blade with my finger, because it fires with only 6 oz. of pressure, though I could adjust it even lighter if I wanted.
That screw behind the trigger blade on this Winchester High Wall rifle is a dead giveaway of a single-set trigger. Push the blade forward to set it. The trigger can be operated either set or unset.
I could use this trigger unset just as easily. It would break around 3.5 lbs. and would be very crisp.
The other strange trigger I like is also a single-stage, though a zero-stage might be more like it. The trigger blade on my Remington model 37 Rangemaster target rifle does not move. It was called the Miracle trigger by Remington, and it’s fully adjustable. On my rifle, you simply press the blade until reaching 1 lb., 10 oz. when the sear lets go. As far as the shooter can tell, the trigger blade never moves, though in reality it does move about 1/16-inch upon firing.
Though it appears very plain, this Miracle trigger on the Remington model 37 Rangemaster target rifle is anything but. It releases without any perceptible movement.
Today, we looked at single-stage and two-stage triggers and learned how they operate. Do not confuse them with single-action and double-action triggers that are a different thing altogether — and the topic of our next installment.
Very important topic to me. Decent triggers are a must.
I admire B.B. for his ability to obtain accuracy with triggers that are horrid. I’m just not a good enough shooter to overcome this hurdle.
Hope there’s room in part 2 to talk about dst’s and the amazing Mach II.
kevin
kevin,
I agree! What B.B. does with some of these air-guns with inferior triggers is impressive, especially since he does it with minimal practice. It can take me many sessions to master a particular gun, and 95+% of it is because of the trigger. However, I have to admit, I do love the challenge. 🙂
Victor
Very informative. A descent trigger is a must.
May depend upon the nature of how the change-over is implemented… I speak from what I discovered, last summer, about my T01 RWS m54. Which came from the store (Cabela’s I think, might have been Gander Mountain) configured for a long creepy all 2nd stage. Definitely safe, but highly undesirable.
Since the T01 is now a somewhat ancient trigger group I’ll attempt to describe it somewhat.
It is one of those forward pivot triggers — the pivot point is in front of the finger when pulling it, with the result that the trigger blade “rises” into the stock. There are two screws in front of the blade, controlling 1st and 2nd stage engagement points. if you visualize the trigger as:
__+_+_o
(
[lousy ASCII art — o is the pivot, — is the horizontal extant, and ( is the blade, and + are the adjustment screws]
the intermediary lever that engages the sear would be:
|
o———–
[| is the portion that rides on the sear]
The angles are such that, in 2-stage condition, the front (right) screw pushes upward on the intermediary at first. Being close to the trigger pivot point, a large trigger motion is required for a small upward movement by the screw. The screw is at the long end of the intermediary, where a long movement is needed for a small movement on the sear — making for a light pull during this stage (and yes, the trigger and intermediary return springs are NOT strong enough to reset the sear engagement if you release the trigger — you must recock the gun to reset the engagement). At some point in the motion, the trigger will have a \ slope on the horizontal extant, and the intermediary will be / — the second stage screw will now contact the intermediary. Its position is such that a small movement upward becomes a larger movement in the sear engagement.– greatly increasing the pull weight.
As it arrived (and as it sat for over 15 years) the second stage screw was basically in contact with the intermediary — the first stage screw did nothing. I discovered this after I’d modified the trigger per a website I’d found (plastic blade, the mod was to grind/sand off about 1/8″ from under the 1st stage screw head to give it more inward travel). The modification did nothing for me — I found I had to back out the second stage screw quite far — so far that I had a few dry-fires when only the first stage was active in the pull. I still want to tweak it some more, but I now have a distinct stage transition: a long first stage (I could shorten it by turning in the 1st stage screw; it is currently set so that there is no free-play/take-up before the 1st stage starts acting, but that is it).
I suppose, since the springs don’t reset the sear on trigger release, and this design does have movement of the sear engagement during first stage, one could look on it as a poor man’s set-trigger. One can pull through the first stage to feeling the pressure stack up at the transition point. If one then releases the trigger and starts pulling again, all one has for first stage is the take-up of the return spring.
{Someday I’ll have time to work on the GRT-III on my Gamo; I still can’t feel a transition between first and second stage… Then finish rasping the grips of the Baikal 46M so I can properly reach the trigger [which I’ve moved all the way back] and see if I can increase the 2nd stage weight… These diabetic fingers are too insensitive to feel the current 1st-2nd transition point — the only thing more sensitive would be a pair of electrodes measuring skin conductivity to release a solenoid}
Time to go to bed — I’m rambling, and writing something half the length of the blog itself
I agree with Kevin on the value of a decent trigger. I have Rekord triggers on my Weihrauch rifle springers. They come set at the factory at 2-2+1/2 lbs. I have never had the desire or need to adjust any of them. The Weihrauch hand guns, such as the HW45 are pretty nice out of the box too. One trigger that amazes me is on the Marksman 2004, or Beeman P17. For a sub $50.00 pistol , it has a wonderful adjustable and predictable trigger. The fact it is on a pneumatic gun could have some bearing on this. There is no spring to hold back. Just the release of high pressure air. I’m not sure how much air pressure is being built up with one pump on a Beeman P17. My nemesis as far as Weihrauch triggers go, is on the HW70 Black Hawk. It is advertised as a two stage trigger, however, I have experienced a long ‘smooth’ single stage. I believe I used the term ‘creepy’ when describing it to you in the past. It is essential to use proper terminology when describing a problem. Thanks for setting me straight on that B.B. It is creepy only in that I do not know when the sear will be released.
The other gun I have is an older Tau 200 co2 target rifle. Very nice, accurate, and affordable entry level target air gun. I do not have a trigger gage, however I would say it lets the pellet loose at 8-12 oz. Very hard to tell by feel. The guy I bought it from, had set it for single stage only. It has two screws in front of the trigger blade, and one screw behind it. Also, two screws that adjust the blade up and down and back and fourth. I have had the gun 4 years now, and have gotten used to the way it performs. However, knowing it is a highly adjustable 2 stage trigger, I would like to find out where I can get information so I can put it back to being two stage again. I feel I’m not getting the full value this trigger has to offer. So to speak.
Great blog B.B. And on one of my favorite topics.
Caio Titus
Titus Groan
You can find the triger adjustment procedure for your Tau 200 at the Air Arms S200 owners manual at Pyramyd air under owners manuals. Just look under owners manuals at the bottom of the home page. You will see that the A/A S200 is derived from the rifle you have and has the same triger.
Loren
B.B.
Great and very informative article. Trigger and trigger work IMO is 25% of accuracy, because it is the interface between you and the shot.
Some day I made some experiments on the way the trigger affects accuracy. In brief – I put a pencil into rifle’s muzzle, hanged a sheet of paper and pulled trigger set to different force to “draw a pictire”. Very heavy trigger meant rifle going up, a little wobble left – right and turning clockwise around its barrel line (I’m right-handed when shooting rifle, but most time left-handed with pistol). Now imagine how it’ll affect POI for springer. Extremely lightweight trigger did not affect rifle position, but it gave me no information on shot execution. So I think the rule for trigger tuning for custom settings is “as light as possible as long as it’s iformative” and as usual one must keep his head connected to his hands, fully understanding that and how he’s doing.
As for me, I’d prefer relatively long first stage with informative tactile feeling when going second stage and short “dry” second stage. Both stages must be inside less than 11 mm.
duskwight
BB, what is your take about the trigger of Sharp Innova? Is it single stage or two stage? The adjustment screw only makes the trigger blade travel shorter ot longer without engaging the “L” plate that hold the rod from releasing the compressed air. Is this qualified as “stage one”?
The weight of the “stage two” is actually varied on how many times you pump. So it is adjustable in a sense, I guess.
This pique my curiosity because I’ m currently looking for used Benjamin 397. Of three 397 I have tried, all the trigger seems very heavy compared to my Innova (I always put 6 pumps,that way I know precisely how much pressure ia needed ).
The heavy trigger of 397 is the only thing I dislike from the rifle.
Regarding the accuracy I can definitely say the trigger is important. My grouping suck big time with heavy trigger.
Lee,
It has been so long since I tested a Sharp pneumatic that I don’t remember if they have a first stage or not. But the variability I remember clearly! That was the biggest drawback to the two Aces I owned — their variable triggers. Such a beautiful airgun has such a gritty-feeling trigger.
That comes from the type of valves in the gun. Sharp uses the blow-open valve that uses a type of trigger geometry to hold the valve shut, and the more it holds back, the grittier (creepier) it becomes.
B.B.
The previous owner of my Sharp polished the “L” plate and replace the original aluminum block that the plate rides on with brass to reduce friction. It helped with the gritty feel but still doesn’t improve trigger break repeatability with different number of pumps.
Regarding 397, will a little moly on sear contact surface make it lighter without compromising safety? I know you are not usually advising tinkering with trigger but I really like the looks of 397. If the trigger were lighter I’d love to have one.
Do I detect a non-standard part with that Rekord ? I know how THAT can happen.
twotalon
TT,
Good eye! Paul Watts gave me the smoothed trigger blade and I swapped it for the factory blade in the Rekord, which is from my R1.
B.B.
B.B.
I completely missed the trigger…
It was the safety spring that caught my eye.
twotalon
TT,
Oh, yeah! It’s from a ballpoint pen. Weihrauch safety springs always get caught in the safety pin hole and squashed, so ballpoint pen springs seem normal to me. Ha, ha!
B.B.
B.B.
That spring has a tendency to get lost real easy too.
twotalon
I’m barely into my first cup o’ joe this morning.I couldn’t be more interested in a blog.While I have excellent examples at my house of the many different designs,performance levels,etc….of airgun triggers,there is MUCH I wish to understand about them,but as yet do not.The only upside to that is that I haven’t TOUCHED the adjustments on mostly all of them.The ugly truth is I couldn’t pass a test on which are 2 stage,single stage……but I do have a vintage 10M LG 55 with double set triggers.THAT one I know from using that I better be on target when I touch the second trigger! I swear it releases before I actually leave a fingerprint on it! If I’m too timid to make adjustments on a Rekord,you better believe I won’t ever touch the double set trigger settings……even though I’m certain I could shoot much more precisely if I could actually feel the first trigger without the shot leaving suddenly.The LG55 with one trigger is my best 10M springer for accuracy @ 10 meters.(at least it’s NOT my equipment’s fault!)
…..also,the hole in my ceiling is from a BSF 55 that fired when the barrel closed! That one is VERY seldom shot for that reason.Derrick actually adjusted it for me because when it was brand new it was lacking.I believe the sear fails to fully set when cocked occasionally.BB called them a trigger that wears OUT instead of in…..I think I got that right? BB?
Frank,
You aren’t going to believe this, but there is a (filled) hole in the ceiling of my office from a BSF S55N that slipped off when I closed the barrel! 😉
I don’t know if I said what you say I did, but I’ll claim it! BSF triggers do wear out, and their owners must be ever-vigilent to keep them adjusted safely.
B.B.
A bit of Dejavu’ there…..we share a nemesis in the BSF then.With mine being marked on the barrel block as “B55” it’s the same action…….but the lack of the “N” signifies no walnut stock,right? N=Nussbaum-walnut? It is a sweet little springer with suprising power for the dimensions IMO.
I’m left wondering the signifigance of a “B” prefix on mine,rather than the “S” ie; S55…..mine came outfitted with an inexpensive 4x fixed power 3/4″ scope,and a trigger shoe mounted.The scope is Korean made……I much prefer the Bushnell “scopechief” of the same period & dimensions,my favorite is a 2×7 who’s mount rides an 11mm dovetail that is part of the scope’s underside! It allows for an incredible range of adjustment fore& aft……nearly the full length of the scope.It only occupies about 2″ of the airgun’s scope rail to mount it.Pretty neat design,although the reticle cannot be canted and it seems the tiniest bit off horizontally plumb.
Frank,
Yes, we do share a grief with the BSF rifle that is apparently not that uncommon. My S55 N is an older rifle and since I now have the S70 shooting where the sights look, I’m getting rid of the 55 at Roanoke. As you know, the S70 is nothing but a dressed-up 55 in a better stock.
Best of all, my S70 is in excellent condition with not much wear on the trigger.
B.B.
Well…..now I know the details.I’ll wager the BSF WON’T sit for long on your table.
Frank,
Derrick should adjust it again, or I might be able help you figure it out, if it is anything like the double sets I’m familiar with on ML’ers. Usually sear engagement on a double set trigger is simply a screw. If there is excessive wear, you might also need to set the backlash, which may or may not have an adjustment screw. You could always add some hardened material to the contact surfaces, although even quick wear would be realatively slow.
Thanks BG……this isn’t the double set trigger acting up…..that one is spot on as I understand it.
The BSF is the one subject to sudden spontanious firing….happens upon closing the barrel.Derrick adjusted it to behave better before I recieved it….but there is evidence it’s not setting fully.BSF sears are a stacked lamination of layers…..that can wear in to be very nice from my understanding.It will recieve adjustment as soon as I read the rest of this series.It’s definitely not Derrick’s doing……since BB’s BSF did the same thing! That needed pointing out….thanks for your help,my friend!
Frank,
First, let me say that I absolutely was not impugning Derrick’s setting or his skills — I just had assumed it has worn since he did it and needed further adjustment! Derrick is far beyond the smoke pole hacker I am! I see what you are talking about with the laminations — they wear faster initially due to irregularities in the edges, although I think they are comparable to solid when they smooth out and if hardened properly. I’ve often wondered if limited metal treatment facilities — in addition to the obvious fabrication facilities — in airgun factories wasn’t the reason for the laminations. It is easier to cut out and then through harden a thin piece than a thick piece. You could always accelerate wear-in with a stone and then case- or pack- harden.
BB,
Just curious about this. How does a dual-trigger mechanism (like on a Bronco) work? The forward trigger takes up the first stage, the rear trigger the second. How is this arranged internally?
Les
Les,
I don’t know. I wish I did, but the truth is, I have never looked.
B.B.
That’s easy. The triggers are simple direct sears that are independent of each other.
The sears are not even… the one for the front trigger is located slightly ahead of the one for the rear. When the gun is cocked the the piston rod rides over the front sear and then the rear sear… and it is the rear that holds it. This means that there’s no pressure on the front sear at all, which is why the front trigger is so easy to pull.
If you were to pull the rear trigger without pulling the front you’ll find that the piston jumps forward a tiny bit until it catches the front sear. At that point you’d have to pull the front trigger (now much more difficult) in order to fire the gun.
The front trigger does nothing except catch the piston if the rear sear fails.
Trigger Happy… Here I was expecting a discussion more along the lines of, how to stop shooting everything in sight!
I showed amazing restraint yesterday. While re-sighting my “one shot” test guns to 27 yds, a large, particularly ferocious looking squirrel parked his butt right on top of my backstop and proceeded to eat a leftover peach! I didn’t shoot him because I wasn’t sighted in yet and I didn’t want to put a hole in the fence if I missed or over penetrated… The cheeky thing then moved to a spot right under the target and next to a small oak to dig around for missed acorns. Every shot whistling over his head caused him to hop back into the tree trunk, only to hop back down and resume hunting for treasures in the grass. He eventually went on his way never knowing how many times the crosshairs landed on his head, back and chest. I couldn’t see killing him this time since I had no full birdfeeder or crops or garden to guard, and didn’t feel like suburban/city squirrel stew… Maybe another day…
/Dave
/Dave. I think your squirrel experience is typical of the majority of not just airgunners, but all shooters who read this blog. Animals are not merely targets to be shot at whim. You let him live because he wasn’t being a pest and you were not looking forward to ‘city squirrel stew’. I see people on YT that love to shoot everything in sight. Squirrel, rabbit, Evan song birds. And then leave the dead carcases to rot. This shows a total lack of morality and empathy on their part. The comments on the video would tend to support this as well. I bought an air gun to take out starlings that were eating my cherries and apples. There is just too many of them to make a dent though. I would like to think that who ever introduced these birds here, lives in a place where all the dead starlings go. Poetic justice? O.K., I’m off the soap box for today.
Caio Titus
Unfortunately, starlings are too small, even in a flock, to justify refurbishing a turn of (last) century punt gun…
{I’d have loved to stick the one shown at the Leeds Armoury museum… breech-loader, looked like a scaled down deck gun from a destroyer. Empty soda cans would have worked for pre-measured loads…} (unfortunately the only image online is of the /other/ gun they had).
Yeah, I killed a lot of stuff for no reason when I was young. Made me feel bad, so I quit decades ago… I may not feel so nice next year. Squirrels, jays and starlings take a couple of bites out of a peach and move on to the next. Lots of peaches with holes… Might try a net next year, though.
/Dave
Totally off topic, but perhaps of interest, certainly for its implications for gun ownership.
Once or twice a year I have to go up to the Johns Hopkins Univ. Hospital in Baltimore to have the retina in my right eye checked, because it actually has a crease or wrinkle in it that needs monitoring. I always carry my iPad because the waits are staggeringly long. Recently the place put in a courtesy patient internet connection instead of charging you by the hour or making you use a telephone connection. So I used it.
I tried this blog, and found out that it was permanently blocked because it talked about “weapons.” Targettalk.org which focuses almost exclusively on Olympic shooting was also blocked. So then I decided to try some of the better sites on building and employing nuclear weapons. None were blocked. Not a block to be found. Ya gotta love the guy who built the blocking data list!
My eye isn’t deteriorating; this isn’t glaucoma or macular degeneration or any other of the horrible problems leading to blindness; it just needs to be checked to make sure it doesn’t morph into something else. Which is nice since it **is** my shooting eye. But they do want to pull the cataract soon, and I rather agree. Nice to get rid of the blue haze.
pz
Same thing happened to me while waiting for new tires to be put on my vehicule.
First I tought something was wrong with their connection so I tried another website… worked fine, went back to PA, not working.
Then I tought PA was down so I turned the WiFi off and used 4G and there was the PA page.
Cutting adult material on public networks but guns???
J-F
This blog is blocked? Do all the iPads have this software? If so, it would be a good reason to get something else.
Mike
Mike,
It isn’t the device. It’s the service provider — the connection.
B.B.
The block was the hospital WiFI Firewall system…
Copy that. No suprise there. Very PC on thier part.
Mike
PZ,
I think I have something similar — I call it fake glaucoma because it has triggered a couple of scares with the test for that, but the ophthalmologist assured me it was not that worrisome after doing some scans over time. Never heard of anyone else with it — curious.
In my case there is a membrane over the retina. Everybody has it. But in rare cases it bubbles and pulls on the retina.
Well, my heart is broken. Tom diss’ed my 46M trigger. Beginner level trigger at best? Maybe he’ll dis my Challenger trigger, too. These are the two best triggers I’ve experienced (or should I say, I can afford to experience). Ok, I’m over it now. Mine heart hath healed itself. Now I would dearly love to feel a real trigger since I know what a beginner feels like.
-Chuckj
P.S. I do not deny being an amateur, either. 🙂
Chuck,
You shoulda been in my living room the day Kevin tried the trigger on my Wilson Combat pistol. He estimated it at a pound and refused to believe it was over three pounds until I got out the trigger-pull gauge.
B.B.
Tom,
Please send me that Wilson that I may try it. But you have reminded me of one tool missing from my air gun tool box: the trigger guage. Note to self: fill gap.
-Chuckj
chuckj,
I’ll never forget pulling the trigger on Toms wilson combat. Smooth, short take up and then the proverbial glass rod break. I honestly thought that his trigger broke at a pound or less. It’s that good. What an eye opener it was when he put the trigger gauge on it.
That experience taught me that the pull weight alone doesn’t determine a good trigger. I’ve found that grittiness in the first stage makes a trigger FEEL heavier to me.
kevin
kevin,
You are part of that rare group that gets to experience stuff like that. You can probably feel my envy from there.
-Chuckj
chuckj,
I was very grateful and felt blessed when Tom and Edith allowed me to spend a little time with them. Very genuine and down to earth folks that share many of my passions. The kind and caring demeanor that comes through their writing on this blog is not an act. It’s real.
ps-I was fortunate to be given a glimpse of their vast gun collection and to say I felt like a kid in a candy store is a gross understatement.
kevin
Looks like I got something out of the crossbow book after all. The business about sliding across the surface of the sear now makes sense. But it sounds like all triggers are creepy. Some just have a smoother creep than others. Is that right?
I can see why there is a two-stage trigger on my Anschutz. The take-up is so light that occasionally I will set it off unintentionally. But much as I like two stage triggers, I have no complaints about single-stage triggers either. The ones on my Winchester 94 and Ruger Single Six seem completely natural.
Matt61
Matt,
Not all triggers have creep. I defy anyone to find any creep in my SAM 10 trigger or my Wilson Combat trigger.
B.B.
The triggers on my HW40 PCA and Marauder have absolutely no creep. A friend of mine who shoots Glocks and Sigs sent a pellet downrange early even after I warned him about my Marauders trigger. Many shooters just aren’t used to great triggers, I was one of them, now I’m spoiled. It’s a shame I can’t get triggers like these on my old military surplus bolt guns, what they lack in triggers they make up for in character.
Good one, BB. There is a lot more to a good trigger than pull weight. In general, I like single stage with 4 lbs. pull and no gritty creep :). The TO6 on my new D34P is pretty nice, though — smooth stage 1 (and actually resets) and crisp stage 2, and I enjoyed the TO5 clone on my short-lived blackhawk, although it wasn’t quite as good as the real and updated thing. Of course, the best target trigger is a double set like on my flintlock — they can snap instantly with just a breath of pressure if set up correctly but are safe if used as intended. Not a good idea for hunting, though.
I just wanted to give one more piece of advice from something I saw on YT. Some guy was modifying an early Gamo or Crosman trigger. Instead of paying the 30 or so bucks for a Grt or Charliedtuna trigger, he put in a couple of washers to take up the length of pull on the sear. This is very dangerous as washers are not case hardened. It is only a matter of time until this quick fix fails. The young man says that he now has a hair trigger. Apparently, from reading the comments, a number of people have done this and thanked him for saving a few bucks. What price do you put on a safe gun. I’m not saying I didn’t pull some boners in my time, but please don’t attempt this mod. I’m surprised YT is still showing this video, as a number of people have written them about the safety issue. O.K. I promise. That is my last trip to the soap box. I just don’t want an accident to happen in our great hobby. We must police ourselves, so to speak. Knowledge is power.