doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com inertia triggers--good, bad, and why??

The two major makers of sub-gauges tubes (Kolar and Briley) are experts in tweaking the interia triggers fitted to 12 ga. guns. They've each done many thousand's on 'em, and they'll work reliably all the way down to standard .410 loads. In some cases they can convert to true mechanical triggers at the owners request, but IMO there's really no need and it's much more expensive.

I like most here have both also. I happen to like the mechanical trigger. I have an early Win. 101 in 20ga. that has a mechanical trigger. Most of the others have inertia triggers. I've never had a problem with either, but it is true about the inertia trigger that if you have a dud, or a blopper in the first shot, you will not get the second shot.
As far as using snap caps in an inertia gun, just tap hard on the butt stock and it will set up the second trigger. Whether it is important to release tension off the triggers or leave them cocked, would probably fill a small book.

My 4000 serial number series first generation Superposed trigger still works flawlessly. It is eighty years old and is a trigger that had a bad start and was "improved" in the mid thirties. The one in my gun never got the benefit of the "improvement". By the way, many conversions for light recoil operation are not really conversions to "mechanical" operation, but just a lightened inertia operation. Properly lightened 680 series Beretta triggers will dry fire successfully, but are still inertia in operation rather than true mechanical.

Interesting hypothetical (it would certainly teach you to improve your gun mount!) but in reality, I've never had it happen.

Good inertia triggers are pretty good, and most of the ones on decent guns are good. However, there's no getting around the issues that a light load might not reset the trigger, or if you don't get the gun properly against your shoulder, it might not reset. And you are indeed at a loss if you have a misfire. First one is more likely to happen if you're fooling around with real light loads while shooting targets, second more likely to happen when you're hunting and make a bad mount, third can happen any time and can happen with factory ammo, although probably more likely with reloads.

The vast majority of the doubles I've owned have had the correct number of triggers: 2. However, I've had all of the above happen to me--not all that often, I'll admit--and I've seen all of the above happen to other shooters. I wouldn't necessarily reject a gun because it had a single inertia trigger, but if I were to choose, I'd go DT first, mechanical ST second, inertia last.

Why do they make an inertia trigger if a mechanical trigger is reliable?
I've had guns with both types of triggers and never noticed much of a difference. The inertia trigger does fail to fire the second barrel occasionaly, if you are using light loads or the first barrel fails to fire.
Pete

Mechanical single trigger - Pro-Sensitive only to pulls (insensitive to recoil level); Con-mechanically complex.

Inertia single trigger - Pro-Low complexity and tunable; Con-Sensitive to recoil level.

Double triggers - Pro-Mechanically simple, easy barrel selection, and one barrel redundancy; Con-require repositioning of trigger finger.

All three types survive (and thrive) because each has uses and devotees. If one type were truly best, then that is what we would all shoot.

Excellent point, Rocketman, and excellent post. Whether it's DT vs. ST, inertia vs. mechanical, 12ga. vs. 16 vs. 20, #7 shot vs. #8, "bore" vs. "gauge", there is no "correct" answer - just a personal choice. Use what works for you, and pay no attention to the "my choice is better than yours" folks.

Thanks all. Another silly question--with an inertia single trigger, how does barrel selection work differently than a mechanical one? (I'm assuming it's still possible?) (and yes, I know this is unrealistic on the fly--or at least it is for me!)

All single triggers follow the following principles. The trigger "blade" moves from under the sear tail of the first barrel to the second barrel during the firing cycle. All selectable triggers, both mechanical and inertia, have a mechanical link to select which barrel goes first. Upon firing, the "blade" shifts to the unselected barrel.

The bug-bear of single triggers is that when the gun rebounds off your shoulder from its rearward recoil, you will make an involuntary pull of the trigger (second pull). The trigger must defeat this second pull. Mechanical triggers have a dud position or use the second pull to move the blade. Inertia triggers use a fly weight to disconnect the trigger such that the second pull does nothing. I have never seen any data that proves one system is more reliable than the other. Once the second pull was understood, both systems quickly became robust.