Sear spring tension

[J. A. Early]

In my case, now with a broken sear spring out of the gun, I hold the gun upright and cock it by manually pushing down on the sears. When I pull the triggers (no stock on the gun and no sear spring), they are both the same. The sear spring in my case, whether altered by someone else in the past, had a tremendous amount of tension on the sears and thus the triggers. I could see it had been bent in the past. Like a lever, it takes quite a bit less force to move something from the far end. In this case I believe the extra tension from the bent spring greatly added to the pull.

So I know the problem is not in my sear engagement as both are exactly the same with the gun disassembled and no sear spring. I am hoping when I get the new unaltered spring things will work better, and I won't have a trigger that one has to jerk to fire the gun. By the way, I have looked for interference with the head of the stock but can find none. Hopefully will fix the problem soon.

[Silvers]

Just some additional comments here. I didn’t use 2 pounds by random In the analogy on page 1 of this thread. Actually 2 pounds is a close average for the component of the “pull weight” that's just related to the factory trigger sear spring. Anyone with a precision trigger gauge can verify that average on a few unmolested factory Foxes, by measuring the pull on each trigger when the hammers are not cocked. If one of the test guns is already sans its stock you can do the same by installing all the metalwork and using an exact length spacer bushing between the upper and lower tangs to simulate the height of the stock between the tangs. Typically an average of the pulls will be about 2 pounds at the end of trigger travel. Thus if you bend the sear spring leg(s) to make that 1 pound, you’ll only reduce the total pull weight when that hammer is cocked, by 2 minus 1 = 1 pound, as in the analogy.

A good SxS trigger man should be able to make a Fox trigger pull come in between about 4 pounds to 10 or more pounds and to do that without bending the factory sear spring legs. And it should stay at (or close to) that value over 1000's of firings. Also, keep in mind that a Fox shotgun isn’t a target rifle and thus very light pulls should be avoided due to the danger of having an unintentional recoil-fire on the second loaded barrel. Often well meaning gents will have a go at trigger work like this by hand and using a honing stone or worse yet a grinder, and usually all they’ll do is to round off the tip of the trigger sear and/or the very small hammer notch. Another outcome of repeated trial and error to get to a desired pull weight, is that the hammer arc gets too short for reliable firing.

Again, if you’re not happy with the trigger pulls on your Fox, I strongly recommend sending it to a good SxS professional with the knowhow, tooling and precision jigs to work on the larger component of the pull weight that relates to the hammer and its mainspring. He should be able to do that without having to do much experimentation. Again this is just my experience but it's based on years of playing with Foxes and I'm posting this to hopefully save gents some grief or maybe even to avoid an accident due to a cocked hammer that jumps its sear on a loaded chamber.

Sorry, I don't work on triggers except when necessary on a Fox I buy that's already been goofed up. Please don't ask. Also, this is all I can offer up here = my last post on the subject.