Reworking a kit pistol trigger

[Dave B]

I was gifted a finished kit pistol and its trigger pull was excessive. Having seen some single triggers from  french and english examples i thought to modify this one just for the fun of it.















To keep the added extension in alingnment i inserted the blade of the trigger reversed to keep it square while siver brazing the extension to the trigger plate.  I will post more when i am back home.

[Bob Roller]

The FIRST place I would look would be the LOCK,That trigger has no "set" capability and the lock determines trigger pull.
Nob Roller

[45-110]

Man that is a lot of work to fix the trigger pull. I would have reworked the sear engagement and most likely lighten the sear spring first.

[Jim Kibler]

The main reason I've seen a trigger shape like this is to allow a shorter trigger plate slot to be used with a simple pinned trigger.

[Dave B]

You guys are right on for each item mentioned.

The raising of the pivot cut my trigger pull in half. I can now look at the sear spring tension.

[B.Habermehl]

By raising the trigger pivot, the leverage against the sear is increased. This would be my first remedy too rather than modifying lock components. Although sometimes the result is a trigger with some take up or “creep”. I mess with sear springs and or sear engagement last. In the interest of safety. BJH

[Steeltrap]

I see what you have done to get the pivot point closer to the sear bar.

But wouldn't it been somewhat easier to have just cut off the existing trigger plate, and then silver soldered on two new "forks" at a given height?  I did this on my current pistol build to get the pivot point where I want it.

Once I got that I just cut the excess above the pivot point off.

[Eric Krewson]

Lots of work but you did a good job. If it were me, I would cut everything off the trigger plate and just use the plate, make a tall trigger you can file down for a perfect contact point with the sear and pin it through the stock at a position to give you the a low weight, low creep trigger.

But then again, I like to cold forge triggers, kinda' neat taking a flat piece of steel and turning it into a functionable trigger.

Just starting out on these, they have a way to go.

[whetrock]

Dave B,
Some years ago I made a trigger from scratch that was similar to yours, with the pin going through a post. It worked very well. I think your solution was clever, especially the way you split the trigger plate and separated it at the split to move the pin placement.

With the one I made, I filed the post down as thin as I thought reasonable, so as to limit the amount of wood to be removed in the trigger mortise. I soldered the post on with a medium temp silver solder. It was plenty strong.

The main reason I did it that way was because the wood in the mortise was thinner than I wanted (mortise cut deeper than necessary), not leaving much wood where the pin needed to go, and I wanted a stronger pin placement. The trigger on the post worked well. Doing it now, I might do it that way again. It wasn't hard. And I liked that solution more than I liked the idea of gluing a big plug of wood into the mortise and re-inletting the lock internals so as to use a simple pin.

Anyway, again, I thought your solution was clever.

PS: Super cool post vise. First one I ever saw with a faceted knob.

[Dave B]

Great work guy's.  It is a falut of mine to over due most things. The use of the original extenion was an effort to keep the line of the pivot point close to the original and keeping it in place & square.  i left the post taller if I didnt get the desired amount of pull I would stretch the blade height and repin in that higher section.  I like the making of the trigger from a flat stock but it seems the originals start with heavier metal and end up with a thicker trigger shoe. Eric nice work on those triggers.

[Waksupi]

Lots of work but you did a good job. If it were me, I would cut everything off the trigger plate and just use the plate, make a tall trigger you can file down for a perfect contact point with the sear and pin it through the stock at a position to give you the a low weight, low creep trigger.

But then again, I like to cold forge triggers, kinda' neat taking a flat piece of steel and turning it into a functionable trigger.

Just starting out on these, they have a way to go.

Also my preferred method.

[Bob Gerard]

Lots of work!
You might be removing a lot of metal off the top of that trigger bar as it's inlet into that stock. (Is the stock wood taken down to close to where you want it?)

[Dave B]

 I really lucked out, the position of the sear bar contact point  was just behind where the bending up of the extension took place so the original contact  with the sear never changed. I have no trigger slop/rattle with the trigger. I was prepaired to have to do some grinding to the trigger blade to make it work but it was not needed. Looking back at the pictures of the trigger, the rear slope of the trigger breaks down in the shot with the new cut slot to the hole set back from the pivot point. That break point is just past the sear bar contact point. You can see all my heating and bending out of the front exention almost removed that downward hump. I didnt plan that intentionally it just worked out. Like a blind squrirrle finding an acorn from time to time.