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
