doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Vintage single shotgun triggers

Ted: I was direct when they were doing the Parker reproductions and they did offer double triggers. They did have some early problems with the single trigger guns and if my memory serves me correctly you needed to send them to Delgreco to get them fixed.

Spanish single triggers on small bore guns can be a nightmare. I would steer my clients away if they requested a single trigger on a 28 or 410 bore.

Italians seen to know how to do a single trigger.

John
Quality Arms

Borderbill, thank you for clarifying that, the Winchester 101 does have a mechanical trigger and the Beretta has an inertia trigger. It has been so long since I have shot the Winchester I had to go to the safe and check it out. Felt good to handle it and look at it since I put it in there many years ago. Still in very nice condition for as much as I used it then.

101, mechanical trigger, good. 101, mechanical trigger, mine doubles, bad.

Strictly speaking about English guns. I’ve passed on some because of single triggers. How many makers actually had their own single triggers? Who were they? Who supplied most of them? Is there a way to tell whose trigger it is ? Any to definitely stay away from?

As for Spanish single triggers, O'Connor wrote of having the single trigger on his 28-gauge Eusebio Arrizaga replaced with a Miller.


If I did, I haven't been able to find it in my saved posts Word document. Maybe Larry Schuknecht?

My first single trigger gun was a CE-Grade Ansley H. Fox I picked up in a pawn shop on Hotel Street when CVS 14 Ticonderoga was in port at Pearl in 1971. I stripped the finish off the wood and recut the checkering then gave it to Bill English the best gunsmith in Seattle at the time to epoxy a crack in the wood, finish the wood, fit a new recoil pad and blue the barrels. When I got it back from Bill, he mentioned that if one wanted an American double with a single trigger the only one to get was a Model 21. But, that Fox-Kautzky, even with all that work on the gun, functioned flawlessly for two seasons and a lot of limits of Doves in Southern California. Not too long after I arrived in the DC area in 1975, it flowed down the river of commerce to the Hartmann brothers.

I owned a Fox that had been the victim of a catastrophic failure. I bought it after new barrels were fit along with a MillerSST. It had a minor glitch initially. A gunsmith who has sworn me to secrecy because he does NOT want to deal with Millers fixed it for me, after which I put a lot of rounds through it. In general, I'm not a fan of single triggers on which the safety works in any direction other than up and back in order to select which barrel shoots. The Miller safety does select the barrel, but it's all forward and back. forward for the R barrel. Back and in the middle is on safe. Back from safe will give you the L barrel. Like Ted, I prefer 2 triggers which in my mind are the best selective design ever. One trigger can fail, and you still have a single shot. I shot the Fox with the Miller mostly at targets (skeet and SC). It is an sst that if you spent enough time with it afield, you should be able to select when the bird flushes. Because most of my experience with the gun was on clay birds, since I knew which one I was getting first, I always pre-selected which barrel to shoot first. But once it was repaired, it was dead reliable. I no longer own that gun, but it wasn't because of any real problems with the trigger. It's just that I've owned so many DT guns that I'm more comfortable with them.

Someone asked me how frequently I select the rear trigger when I'm hunting. I can think of only 3 times I've done that while hunting ruffed grouse. I succeeded in killing the bird every time . . . but I'm not sure that I wouldn't have killed them had I stuck with the front trigger first. Pheasants . . . I've gone to the rear trigger on the flush a whole bunch of times. I can recall one hunt where I did it 3 times in a row. The first 2 worked. The 3rd one didn't, but it may have been a case of getting too cocky and stretching my tight barrel a bit too far.

after auto ejectors, single triggers are the wurst obomanation to affect sxs guns...or is hit them giant rubba pads...

The SST mechanisms on the vintage guns are generally Ok if they have never been messed with and the stock itself hasn't been the subject of removal, rebedding, oil-soaked wood, things like that.

The distance betw the upper and lower tang means a great deal. Simply put, wether they work or do not work.
In the do-not-work list it can be a bunch of different configuration of issues and then some not all the time.

The fact that you can often bring a faulty SST mechanism back from the dead by mearly tightening and or loosening the top tang, rear tang and sometimes the trigger plate screw as well is fairly well known.
It's not really a fix, it does show that there's something at least wrong with the stock bedding in relation to the tangs.

There are so many things that these mechanisms depend on to be stable to function correctly that by looking at the mechanism in hand I wonder how it often works at all.
The parts are generally crude,,any linkage connecting pins betw them are loose fitting looking for all the world like snippets of common nails an lightly peened over on each end to keep them from falleing free. The holes in the parts are that sloppy that slide through.


Here's a little on how the Hunter One-Trigger operates and what needs to be right for it to function correctly.
There's a lot more to it than just this, but it can show where the frustration can come from when someone sits down thinking they will
simply go through it, clean it up and it should be A-OK good to go.

Many don't realize that the rear end of the Sear Arm(s) themselves plays a part in the selection of the bbl to be fired in Hunter One Trig.

The very first contact of the pulled trigger against the selected sear pushes the Hook Shaped element part in the mechanism to the rear.
I have no idea what the real name of that part is, I guess I don't care.

A very fine wire spring gives that Hook it's tension to sit forward and out of contact. As soon as the Sear Arm makes contact with selected sear arm,,the Hook moves to the rear. As the trigger continues to be pulled and the Sear elevated to release the hammer,,that Hook is a limiting devise as far as how far the Trigger can be pulled rearward.
In it's rear position it is under an overhanging shelf of a part that it will engage as the trigger is continued to be pulled.
Once engaged, that is the limit of the trigger pull on the Selected Side.

So. the selected bbl/Sear-Hammer must release/fire before that limit of travel is reached.
That limit of travel is in place to avoid the Trigger from travelling too high and engaging the opposite bbl sear arm (unselected side) and firing it as well (Doubling).
The difference in height betw the two sides is the Selector moved into position by the shooter.

Once the selected bbl is fired, that sear arm must be designed to move upwards and away from the trigger mechanism so it does not once again engage the Hook.
If that Hook stays engaged, then the overall trigger pull distance is again limited to what it was on the Selected BBl side.
That's been done,,it now needs to be out of the way so the trigger can be lifter higher to fire the unselcted side/bbl.

Getting the hook out of the way and disengaged is done by profiling the area on the hammer behind the sear notch to be an upward travel ramp of sorts.
The (fired) Sear nose will follow along it as the hammer drops and the tail of the sear arm will end up raised and out of the way. The Hook retreats back from underneath it's travel limiting 'overhanging shelf' part (again I don't know what the part is called actually.

Now with a release of the trigger, it resets as the Hook disengages from it's limiting stop and is now out of the way.
The trigger under it's own spring power moves upward but only a very small distance till the unselected side of the Selector engages the underside of the second bbl.
A second pull on the trigger fires the second bbl.

If the Sear arms are out of wack as far as their height above the selector,,the mechanism will fail in one way or another.
If they are too low,,the Selector may not be able to slide under the tail of one or both sear arms.

If they are too high, it may take too much Trigger Travel to actually release/fire a bbl and that side won't fire no matter how hard you tug on the trigger.
If both sides are high enough to allow easy Selection, and the gun doubles on one selection but not the other,,the unselected side Sear Arm is somewhere betw being too high,,and too low.

Don't forget to make sure the Safety engages securely and the anti doubling swinging weight is working as well.
Two other things that can make for problems in this mechanism, but I won't get into them.



This stuff is all pretty easy to do with on the gun With-Out the stock being on it.
You've likely seen some with those plier teeth marks on the tail end of the sear arms. Thats generally where they were 'carefully adjusted for height and sometimes even bent downward or up at the tip.

All your adjustments done, you put the stock back on and tighten 'er up....it doesn't work.
Probably different or more issues than before.

W/O the stock on the action, the SST can work great with some adjustments and tweeks.
But once tied up in it's stock, those tangs and plate bend quite a bit and throw the positions of parts way off. Then things don't work,,but you are in the dark. Being able to only experience the failures and sometimes hear what's going on.

Here's where many 'smiths start fiddling with the tang screws and the trigger plate screw to get it to 'work.
That leaves the stock head loose even a little and it's a poor excuse for a repair job.

You have to do these with the stock in place and tightened up.
You have to have a very good understanding of how the mechanism works to begin with, before you even start to 'repair' one..
Making changes & alterations to parts in blind attempts to make it work, or work better is doomed to failure.
You have to go by experience and 'feel' to get an idea of what is happening inside when they balk at doing a certain function.
Then know what to do to correct it when you take the thing apart once again,,and again,,and again.

Getting the stock and action firmly (re)bedded so the tang screws return to the same place each time goes a long way towards success in this.
Using steel or brass tube pillars in the rebedding process around the screws is very helpfull.

The same thing goes for repairing a Parker , Fox , Win21 or any of the SST mechanism.
Yes they all can, and do fail.
..and don't expect the best, crisp trigger pulls from most vintage SST mechanisms. There's just too many links to get to the end of the line to disengage the sear from the hammer. Plus most are not anyway near a precision mechanism.
There will be some that are a trying to be a shining star in that respect. But not generally.

Sorry for the long post..

Searching my files for pictures to what Kutter has stated.









Also one thing to note, the HOT uses a different hammer, if you break one good luck unless you have a spare HOT side plate.



Sorry for the pictures being so big but Imgur changed things and I don't know yet how to edit the size.

Sorry Stan for getting off the topic but with Kutter's excellent description I thought I would post pictures.

Thanks so much David, Jim and others. Very good information.