I am in the process of restocking a Jeffery sidelock with Brazier locks. I have stocked several boxlocks in the past but never a sidelock. The gun was poorly restocked at some time in the past. It has also seen a lot of repair work - sleeved barrels, broken trigger plate that was brazed back together, sears on the tumblers that have been repaired by brazing on some additional steel, etc. The trigger plate was broken at the front of the trigger slots. All the issues contributed to a pretty low price and an appropriate project for an amateur.

I am now at the spot in the stocking process where I am trying to get the trigger plate inletted to the correct depth so that the action will function correctly. I have a question on what is the appropriate "engagement" between the triggers and the sears and also the triggers and the safety? When the action is assembled outside the stock, there is about .050" gap between the trigger and the sear and about .025" gap between the trigger "tail" and the safety. The .050" gap creates quite a bit of slack to take up in the trigger. I am not sure what the gun had for those gaps earlier as unfortunately I cracked the braze repair in the trigger plate when making a pattern out of the old restock. Then had the braze cleaned up and the cracked trigger plate welded back together where I now have a good solid trigger plate but I am not sure we got the shape of the curve precisely correct - maybe dropped the sear engagement down a little? I'm thinking I might need to "lift" the back end of the trigger plate up to close the gap by maybe .025". Any experienced advice would be appreciated.

Gary Erickson

The trigger return spring should bring the triggers up to the sear tips and touch them. You want to have some travel on the trigger blades in the opposite direction to be sure the the sears are not under any undue tension. The safety should firmly engage the trigger tail blocking any travel of the triggers. I hope I was clear on that. If you have more questions let me know.

Thanks Steve for your kind help. I probably should have mentioned that as received the gun did not have the trigger return spring or the small screw that retains the spring. That was one of those "etc" items. I'm waiting on a shipment from Brownel's for what I hope is the correct size screw and some spring wire so I can make the trigger return spring.

I will keep tweaking on the trigger plate and the stock inletting to get everything in the correct location.

Gary, If Brownells does not come through I have an assortment of spring wire.

Mark

Gary, Interesting gun. I currently don't have an English side lock in shop, save a couple of hammer guns to "measure", but I would think there would be a norm for the length of the rear screw, or pin on a lot of guns, which is primarily determined by the depth of the grip. I am talking about the length of the screw as measured under the guard, leaving wood for the guard inlet. That would determine the depth of the grip in total

We probably have to make some assumptions on this, like that the safely lever's length is correct, so I would fit the trigger plate to bring the safety into full engagement when it's on safe. Generally the safe blocks the triggers, and the triggers should not move the sears when the safe is engaged. With the action and lock plates in place, and hammers cocked, without the stock should show the triggers have at least a slight clearance from the sears, with the safe engaged I would suggest check all these dimensions with the stock off. If there is too much clearance with the triggers to the safe, you may have to make some adjustments, but when the safe is moved to Fire, the triggers are spring loaded to bear on the sear tails. I think the safe should engage the triggers with with a small clearance from the sears.
I'll check the grip depth on a gun in the shop and let you know.

And finally make sure there is sufficient trigger pull length to fire each side.

Thanks Dennis and Mark. This gun only has one pin right behind the top lever that goes down to screw in to the trigger box. At the back of the trigger plate there is only a wood screw that goes up in to the grip so that really can't be used to establish any dimensions when the action is outside the stock.

I will work to slowly scrape in the trigger plate depth in the stock inletting until I get the safety to have a fairly close fit. That will still leave about .025" gap between the triggers and the sears without any upward spring tension. Then install the trigger return spring.

What could possibly go wrong. Hopefully I'll have this done to bring along to class this summer and you can critique my work then.