The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Guns, Politics, Gunsmithing & Reloading Gunsmithing Browning BSS auto safety to manual conversion?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
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I just stumbled into a BSS that I’m setting up for sporting clays. I want to disable the auto reset feature for the safety. Somewhere I read that you could turn the rod around between the area behind the breech face and the inertia blocks. That rod has a “doughnut” around it that pushes on an L-shaped bracket below the safety so it made sense that if the doughnut didn’t contact the bracket anymore it wouldn’t reset the safety when the action was opened. But I turned it around and it makes no difference and the safety still resets automatically…. To me it looks like the rod just below the top tang is resetting the safety. I’m guessing that upper rod needs to be shortened, but since parts are unavailable I’m nervous about blind modification. Has anyone done this conversion from auto-safety to manual on a BSS? Or do you know someone who has? I know these are popular with the trap shooters and cowboy shooters and they both convert them to manual safeties. Any recommendations on who has done this conversion or what to do would be appreciated. I don’t think it makes a difference, but this particular BSS is a 12ga boxlock, non-selective trigger made in ’78. Thanks, Kyler | ||
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Don't do it I brought one that had it done and it locked the action up on it. I replace the messed up parts with originals and never had another problem. Had to take the butt off and pull the safety rod out to get it open. during a week long pheasant hunt it wasn't nice to have my favorite shotgun go down until I could get home. | |||
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Hi PD, I appreciate the advice and I'm sorry for your messed up hunt, but there are plenty of BSS guns out there with the auto safety disabled successfully (and I've done it on other models) so I'm sure there must be some way to do it correctly and not have problems. Thanks, Kyler | |||
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Don't do it because you need to stay in the habit of pushing safety off as gun comes to your shoulder. This way you will never forget to push the safety off. Also non auto safeties are a pain to get used to if you have used auto safties all your life. I wish all my guns had auto safties. Train yourself to push safety off going to shoulder and pulling it on when you dismount. | |||
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I know you guys are trying to help, but I asked how to cook a steak... and you're telling me that I should become a vegetarian. This gun will not be used for hunting (I normally use a double trigger exposed hammer gun to hunt so it doesn't even have a safety), this gun will strictly be for competition clays. It won't be loaded until it's time to shoot and with all due respect I don't think I'm risking getting out of practice of operating a safety. Serious dedicated competition guns don't have safeties at all or they're locked out. There is no way I'm competing with an auto-safety gun. I did it 15 years ago and it's not worth the hassle. I'll figure out how to make it a manual safety and I'll post the answer in case someone else is interested in the same modification. Thanks, Kyler | |||
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It was years ago but I disabled the automatic safety on my BSS. If I remember correctly, when you have the stock off there is a rod (maybe .100 diameter) that just has to be removed. How the auto safety worked was very apparent. I don't remember if you had to remove the safety to permit removal but it was pretty straightforward. There is another small rod that keeps the larger rod from peening a part with a slot by keeping the auto safety rod offset(sorry for the lack of part specificity--it was probably 15 years ago). You don't have to do anything with the small rod. The primary thing is that when you have the stock off it is apparent what has to be done. | |||
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Kyler, Regarding your last post...lesson number 1 below Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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Thanks a bunch dian1, I'll check it out. | |||
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Auto safeties are an absolute PITA for both hunting and competitive shooting. I wouldn't have seen anyone with their safety left on auto on the competitive field and why would you want something operating completely opposite to your rifles when hunting!! As pointed out by dian1 auto safeties are usually converted to manual simply by removing the actuating (push) rod which is easy to see once the stock is removed. Some may have a system where the auto feature can be actually switched off once inside the internal workings. I can't really remember now but I don't recall removing a rod when changing my Miroku O/U to manual and I don't have a spare 'rod' with the spare springs and firing pins. I somehow think this was a simple switch over job. | |||
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This evening I test fired quite a few shells with no issues and the safety worked as manual. So I think I finally conquered the BSS auto-safety, but now I see why there wasn’t a simple well-known solution to convert it to a manual safety. For one thing I believe there are a couple slightly different designs of the safety systems over the years the BSS were manufactured. And more importantly it looks to me like the upper rod that resets the safety is hand fitted for each gun. Therefore there may not be a common length that can be removed from that rod on just any individual gun without causing problems. The bottom line of what I did to convert the safety from auto to manual was to reverse the direction of the horizontal rod that goes from the back of the locking bolt to the inertia block. And I also had to remove, more specifically sanded, 0.120” from the length of the small upper horizontal rod. But since that part appears to originally have been custom fit to each gun I don’t think it would be wise to just jump in and remove that same amount from a different gun. The advice was given to go slow and remeasure often when you’re removing material and that’s definitely the way to do it. I started by removing about .070” and it was still resetting the safety so I kept removing from the length. The problem with making that upper rod too short is that it will fall out of the mounting hole in the back of the receiver and I would estimate that could lock the action. That rod can be unscrewed completely and removed, but at least on my gun I felt that was a bad idea because then there was too much slop in the mechanism without that rod allowing the lower rod to the inertia block to possibly misalign and actually miss the block. I’m guessing that the newer design (my gun was made in the late ‘70’s) of the safety being held with a spring clip might be more secure and allow complete removal of that upper rod. Please be aware that very few parts seem to be available for these guns. I was very hesitant to permanently modify any part, but after my brother (who is a prototype machinist by trade) blue-printed the little safety rod I felt better that we could reproduce it if I messed it up. I hope this helps anyone trying to tackle the conversion of their Browning BSS safety from auto to manual. Best of luck, Kyler | |||
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Au contraire For the most part the only firearms with auto safeties are double shotguns. I hate auto safeties and I would not leave one on any of my guns. I am sure you do not want an auto safety on all your firearms. Think about it... An auto safety on an auto loading anything, revolver, bolt gun, pump shot gun etc etc etc.
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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Guns, Politics, Gunsmithing & Reloading Gunsmithing Browning BSS auto safety to manual conversion?
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