doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Different lock styles & qualities.

All V sprung locks have superstrong springs. It makes you wonder about the need for such humongous power to indent a simple primer. Autos and pumps have much weaker hammer springs (judging by how easy they are to cock manually) and they have no problems with misfires. Is there a technical reason for this overpowering or is it another one of those "we always did it this way" things?

JDW, your appreciation of quality and mine clearly differ. But rather than get engaged in that - i'll restrict my like for like comparisons to what we can see.

I suggest you look at the first photo you posted and compare that with the Edward Lang on a quality basis. Then look at the Joseph Lang backlocks and compare those with the one you just posted. In each case, there are comparisons, which on point by point basis favour the two Langs, but the ball park is (quite) close.

Then look at the Woodwards and the Purdey hammer gun (the case coloured one). You SHOULD be able to see a qualitative step up. A big one.

Re intercepting safety absence in US locks- Maybe it has to do with the style of use, a gun that is handed back and forth between "gun" and loader probably needs features such as auto safe and intercepting safeties. Much handling increases the probability of a drop and an accidental discharge.

A gun in the hands of a lone hunter slowly walking up behind dogs can be held open till the dogs point and thus be safe. I am just speculating, the real reason mught have been cost.

V springs give a cleaner strike. They are a little faster and trigger pulls with V springs a can be set better and crisper. They retain their power for their entire life.

Coil springs are much easier and cheaper to make and they do continue to work (after a fashion) even when cracked or broken. In the English gun trade, the use of coil springs was almost always linked to cost cutting and applied to cheaper grade guns.

However, you may notice that Dickson preferred coil springs t power the top-lever return of his guns, while most quality makers used a leaf spring here too. Of course, Boss ejectors are powered by coil springs. They are very useful things but generally less favoured in quality locks than leaf springs.

An intercepting safety sear is a refinement. It was an added cost and made the gun safer. How necessary it is, is debatable. Arguably, the better quality the gun, the less need for an interceptor, as the likelihood of slippage or breakage was far less than on a cheaply made gun. We actually find them generally on higher quality guns.

Ah V springs! They and ribs are my two major peeves. I happen to have been unlucky with V springs, having had two break on consecutive hunts in a high quality boxlock, meaning one of those with super thin grooves on engraved grip screws, ie major expense to take apart. I know that this is a super rare event, but once it happens it leaves its mark in the mind and the wallet.

An old and decrepit Westley Richards droplock I own has a broken coil top lever coil spring, had it for decades before I bought it. The guide kept it operating, still does.

Thanks, KK, much appreciated.

[quote=Small Bore]V springs give a cleaner strike. They are a little faster and trigger pulls with V springs a can be set better and crisper. They retain their power for their entire life. [quote]

I would like some clarification on a couple of those comments, Dig, and must take you to task on one.

"They are a little faster and trigger pulls with V springs can be set better and crisper".

Faster? Are you saying that, when comparing a coil spring of 4.5# at full compression to a leaf spring of 4.5# at full compression, the leaf is faster ? (The 4.5# is just an arbitrary number) If so, that is really a moot point, and an arguable one, as the finest triggers in the world, and those having the shortest lock times, employ coil springs, not leaf. Faster lock times are a result of proper geometry. It is the easy way out, and the wrong method, to decrease the lock time by increasing the power of the spring, alone.

"V springs give a cleaner strike".

Huh? What does that mean exactly? Sounds more like sales pitch than physics.

"They retain their power for their entire life".

Not so at all. I can't believe, Dig, you've never handled an old hammer gun that was (evidently) used by right handers most of it's life, and in which the right hammer spring was much, much weaker than the left. This is so common in old external hammer guns that I can't believe you've never noticed it. I have several examples of them myself. My first original m/l side by side was a Powell. It retained the original springs in the locks. The right hammer was so much easier to cock that it wouldn't reliably detonate the percussion cap. As a quick fix I whittled down a piece of a wooden clothes pin (the coil spring type ) and press fit it between the leaves of the spring. It increased the power of it sufficiently that it fired 100% of the time. I eventually found another spring and fitted it. Point being that leaf springs certainly do lose their power, without breaking.

SRH

Stan, I agree the differences may be academic in practice, as are many of the differences between back and bar action locks. I assume you have read Burrard on the matter so I won't re-hash the stuff you already know.

It is a fact that the British gun trade used coil springs as a cost saving measure in general. I cannot think of a single long-lived really top quality gun made with leaf main-springs, though some makers did experiment with them (Greener & Scott spring to mind) and ultimately rejected them for their best models. Maybe others can come up with an example. I'm not being dogmatic about this, just observational. Coil springs did persist in lower grade models.

In my experience, where one mainspring spring is significantly different in power to the one on the opposite lock, it is because one has been replaced at some point in the past.

Almost all the quality hammer guns I pick up, ant they number hundreds per year, demonstrate that well made leaf springs are as good a century after they were made as the day they left the workshop.

The finest triggers in the world employ coil springs - really? Somebody please tell the British shotgun makers, they missed that.

It does not really matter does it? I guess the observation that leaf springs are preferred in quality British guns is the essence of the discussion on them, whether you think they got it right is something you are welcome to argue.

It doesn't, Dig. I am certainly not promoting coil over leaf for all applications. I have both, and appreciate both. I was just addressing your points.

The finest triggers in the world are not British, they are not even shotgun. Perhaps I should have made myself clearer, that I was referring to triggers on benchrest rifles. Triggers on them have reached perfection, necessarily so. The finest shotgun trigger I own is on my MX-8, leaf springs, but they are not in the ballpark with benchrest rifle triggers. My point, which I did not make very clearly, is that, if leaf springs were entirely superior to coil springs, they would be used in the benchrest rifle triggers.

Coil springs are kinda like semi-automatic shotguns. They are just......... made. Fine doubles, wherever they originate, and good leaf springs in them, are crafted.

All my best, Stan

All the peripheral stuff about top lever springs and trigger springs perhaps clouded the main point we were discussing - the mainspring on a shotgun lock. I take all your other points entirely.