doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Doubling

I guess eventually gun trouble will show up and if it took better than forty years to have gun trouble in the field I'm probably ahead of the game. Today the gun I was shooting decided it was going to start doubling. I had shot a few shells prior to it happening. After it happened the first time I only loaded the right barrel. After shooting that shell I again loaded both barrels and again it doubled. After that I only loaded the right barrel and hunted with the gun as a single shot. I have used this gun a handful of times but I had not shot it in 2-3 years prior to today. Never has there been any issues. It is a 20 gauge Zabala made in 1960. Prior to today I had only shot it with 3/4 ounce loads but I had a couple of boxes of 7/8 ounce loads that have been loaded for probably ten years that I was wanting to use up so that is what I was shooting today. I also noticed difficulty closing the gun after loading it about half the time. Either switching the shells to the other barrel or swapping out one of the shells with another one would allow the gun to close. Is there any chance that the problem is related to the shells and not the gun? I wish I would have pulled the back trigger after firing the right barrel to see if the left barrel tripped but I didn't think to do that. I just tested it here at the house with snap caps and it seems to be working fine. Any thought would be appreciated.

Snipe Hunter,

Since you said "back trigger" I assume this is a double trigger gun? Not the infamous Spanish made single trigger?

A guess,

weather has changed a bit this year. Sometimes the wood in the stock will expand/contract so as to rub the parts.

Are you skilled enough to remove the stock and evaluate it for rub marks? Also, while the stock is off, check for proper lubrication and clean the sear areas.

Mike

p.s. and Yes the reloads could induce some issues, try the gun with some light factory ammo and see if the problems still happen.

p.s.s. also really clean the chambers and forcing cones.

Yes, it has two triggers.

I have a 10 gauge Zabala that started doubling on me, that will flat wake you up!!

Now this sounds crazy I know but it is what happened to me, on my gun the sear has a long arm on it that reaches back to the trigger, very simple, somehow, and this is the crazy part, that sear shifted so it made contact with the trigger before it was fully engaged, so the recoil from the front trigger would set off the rear trigger, I checked everything, nothing loose, nothing broken, nothing lodged under the trigger making it ride high, just crazy, I "adjusted" the sear and the gun has worked fine ever since, that has been at least 20 years.

Any way you should at least look to see if something is making the trigger rid high, or making the sear arm ride low.

On mine when I checked it the sear would only engage the tumbler about half way, and like I said the rear arm of the sear would rest on the trigger. And yes it was the rear trigger!

Good luck!

TM

Real hunting guns tend to get more crap in the works than target guns. Perhaps pull the stock and do a detailed cleaning job on the action. A little crud goes a long ways.

Mike, I don't feel comfortable taking a stock off. If nothing else the screws would never be the same. I don't have the tools or the knowledge. My main problem with a few Spanish guns has always been related to primers. I have found that if I use Fiocchi they work flawlessly but with Winchesters they are often difficult to open after firing. I'm not sure if that is due to Winchesters being softer, non-rebounding hammers, or both but until today primer issues were all I've had to deal with. The previous times I have used this gun it has been with Fiocchi primers but today I used shells with Winchester primers. Probably irrelevant but just wanting to mention any differences since it always functioned correctly prior to today.

Just a guess,,that's all we can do!,,but I'd first think that recoil is knocking the second bbl sear out of engagement with the hammer.
Maybe the second bbl sear isn't in complete engagement anyway from a problem like Skeettx mentions,,but that's where I'd start looking.
Could be something as simple as dried lube in the hammer sear notch so the sear nose can't get a full bite. Clean the sear areas as skeettx says;

The fact that it doesn't double when dry fired and didn't when using the lighter 3/4oz loads 2 or 3 years prior and had gone unused till now, just points me in that direction.

TMair, the Zabala you have that had a sear that was only partly engaging due to the sear tail being in contact with the trigger blade had probably been that way ever since it was built. But it took years of use and wear for it to finally reach a point where the jar from firing the first barrel caused it to slip out of engagement. The shrinking of wood that skeetx mentioned, or improperly tightening screws can cause these types of issues too.

These kinds of problems should be evaluated by a good trigger man if you aren't very familiar with trigger problems. A gun that doubles easily upon firing may also be prone to accidental discharge if you fall or drop it. The problem is sometimes as simple and obvious as an accumulation of dirt and crud in a sear notch that prevents complete engagement. But sometimes, the problem is a tiny bit of wear that can be very difficult to spot to the untrained eye. The sear angles might have been stoned incorrectly at some point by someone, or even from the time of manufacture. There was a thread here in the past few weeks about adjusting trigger pulls that addressed many of these issues. Some Spanish guns had a reputation for improperly hardened parts, and depending upon how frequently the gun is used, it could take many years for a problem like doubling to rear its' head.

I had a Miroku Daly that started doubling after a few years of use. I got it well used off the internet. I sent it to Steve Bertram (SKB here) and he fixed it.

He said someone before him had tried to reshape the nose of the sear and that was the problem. I don't try to fix anything on the parts of the gun that make it go boom...Geo