AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Antique Gun Collecting => Topic started by: herath on October 10, 2013, 04:48:48 AM
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Were antique longrifles built in the U.S. equipped with more single lever or double lever set triggers ?
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I think single levers were more prevalent. Mostly because many of the early locks lacked a half cock notch, or a fly.
Hungry Horse
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Thanks for the reply.Trying to see what is more authentic for set triggers from the 19th century,perhaps late 18th century.
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I would agree, single lever triggers were much more common, but the highest quality rifles often had double-lever triggers, and could be cocked and fired without setting the triggers.
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I think single levers were more prevalent. Mostly because many of the early locks lacked a half cock notch, or a fly.
Hungry Horse
I have seen more late percussion locks without a half cock than early locks. A flint lock without a half cock would be functionally awkward.
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I agree with Don Stith here.
In my experience, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a flintlock without a half cock notch. Also early percussions all seem to have a half cock notch as well, and use double levers triggers.
It seems to me when you get into guns/locks without a half cock notch, they’re usually inexpensively made rifles, very late period percussion guns, 1850/60-ish target rifles or iron mounted mountain rifles.
Of course there’s always exceptions, but if I was going to make a 1780 – 1840-ish period PA type rifle of average/good quality, I’d use a double lever set trigger.
John
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Speaking from experience,the single lever triggers would be much easier
for a gunsmith with limited tools to make. The two lever types would require
a fine group of files and a better vise than most shops had back when a muzzle
loader was the main rifle.
Just yesterday I got a call from a man in Louisiana about a trigger problem and
it was the single lever type.It was my diagnosis that the rear trigger's mainspring was
either cracked or the screw had backed off and lessen the strike against the sear.
I told him how to fix it if the spring wasn't cracked.It wasn't my lock or triggers and
I didn't ask him who made them.He also said he has to set the trigger before cocking the lock
and I told him a lot of range officers would tell him to get that rifle fixed before it could be used
in competition.
A two lever trigger in a rifle without a fly in the lock would have to be arranged so the trigger would
have to be set before cocking the lock. The only purpose of the two lever triggers would then be to
have a redundancy in case of a rear trigger spring failure.
I have made a VERY few locks without a half cock,caplocks all and I had one guy wonder why it
didn't have a fly and I couldn't get him to understand why it didn't need one.
Bob Roller