Hi,
What procedure do you fellows follow when lightening your trigger pull? How do you ensure you don't make it too light?

Some can make a lamp of any object.
Some can do a trigger job on any gun.



When a gunsmith does a trigger job on a Mauser, he will likely try to reduce three things and then test:
1) Trigger force
a) The rear hump on the trigger is reduced to make a different camming angle of the trigger on the receiver.
b) The spring can be exchanged for a lower force or coils may be clipped from the original
c) The surfaces may be polished:
.1) Cocking piece on bolt assembly and the sear mating surfaces. These must maintian thier flat shapes to the mating surfaces. This is an advanced task. If the corner gets rounded, the trigger will not break clean, so the surfaces are not polised with wire wheel, but best in a stoning jig. These surfaces are probably already smooth enough.
.2) Hump on trigger to underside of receiver mating surfaces
.3) The two pins in the trigger assembly may be polished or the holes may be reamed and lapped and the pins replaced with ground and polished pins of a larger size.
d) The angle of the sear and cocking piece engagement can be reduced in some guns, but I have never seen it done in to a Mauser. This is not recommended unless you really know what you are doing. The parts can be easily wrecked and it could cause accidental discharge.
e) The mating surfaces can be lubricated.

2) Take up, this is how far the trigger must be pulled before firing pin release. This is done with a sear engagement adjustment. This adjustment must be enough for safety margin. A good safety test for this is to kock an unloaded gun, and slam the but on the floor and see if the gun fires. If not, add a little more engagement for safety, and set the lock nut.

3) Over travel, this is how far the trigger can be pulled after the gun has fired. Reducing this distance increases accuracy, but if it to short, the gun will not fire.

4) Test for safety. The trigger job may seem to work fine on the bench, but the assembled rifle with screws tightened and the stock in the way may change things. The above but slamming is good, but also kocking the gun repeatedly with the trigger slightly pulled is another test for safety margin. If the gun sometimes does not kock, then more spring force or sear engaugement or cutting wood out of the wary, or something is needed.



I should probably quantify what I earlier said about spring wimpyness. The stock Mauser trigger spring has a relaxed length of ~ .74" and is compressed to ~.47" when the gun fires. At that point the spring force is about 15 pounds. That force is translated through the geometry of the trigger to ~ 1 pound of trigger force [ due to trigger spring alone]. The spring has a coil dia of .25" and a wire diameter of .040" giving a spring index of 6.25 [a fairly stiff spring].

I have been substituting springs with relaxed length of .61", a coil dia of .235" and a wire dia of .020" for a spring index of 11.75 [a fairly wimpy spring]. These springs at the point of firing have a force of ~ 1 pound. This translates to ~ one once ounce at the trigger [due to trigger spring alone], less with the rear hump of the trigger ground off. This is not a good choice for military or hunting, but works well for me for targets and varmint hunting.

Clark,
Thanks for taking the time to post the procedure. roger

Tweek it a little at a time,and use a trigger scale.

It's only too light if it's not safe. It may not be safe because it's too light for the application. Thus the trigger for a DGR should be, in my opinion, heavier than one for a target rifle.

A drop test should be done on any gun if the trigger is worked on or not.

Here is a site with some trigger info
www.clcweb.net/Shooting/Rifle_Trigger_Adjustments/rifle_trigger_adjustments.html

Savage99,
Thanks for link to trigger site. Lots of good info there. I agree that a DGR should not be set too lightly. For me, I feel that a crisp 3.0 # is about right. Some of my light rifles are set at half of that.

Hi,
Thanks for all the info, I was just worried that cutting too many coils off the spring would result in too light a trigger pull, does this change between different makes or is there a standard strength, whereby each coil removed will lighten the pull by a certain amount?

Thanks for the Info. < !--color-->

You would be well advised not to cut the coils off an existing spring. The thing to do is get a spring made of lighter wire with the same length. you will have more consistent adjustment range.

Procedures vary greatly, depending on the DESIGN of the trigger!!