- Joined
- Dec 20, 2022
- Messages
- 460
- Reaction score
- 887
A couple of weeks ago I bought an unfired, in-the-box Renegade Hunter on GunBroker. While I'm sure that it was unfired, the trigger was a bit odd - extremely creepy but VERY light - to the point that I have to be careful not to set the rifle off by just touching the trigger. After reading everything I can find on here and Idaho Lewis' new forum, I took out the lock to have a look. First issue is that all the surfaces were very rough, which was causing lots of perceptible friction while cocking. In addition, the tumbler had a big burr on one corner (not anywhere near the half-cock or full cock notches) that was actually engraving a groove on the lock plate. Finally, the surface of the cocking notch which the sear engages was fairly rough and had some grooves in it. The burr on the tumbler, the marks on the cocking notch engagement surface, and the extremely light trigger pull have me guessing that although the rifle did appear to be unfired, as advertised, somebody tried to lighten the trigger by filing on the engagement surface, messed it up, dropped the tumbler on a hard surface which created the burr, and then decided to just sell the rifle.
First order of business, then, was getting rid of the burr and polishing all surfaces that rub against other surfaces. After a couple of iterations, cocking is much smoother, I suspect that lock time is much faster due to friction reduction, and the creep was smoother but still there. I carefully polished the engagement surfaces of the cocking notch and the sear as well. No improvement in the trigger pull.
Next order of business was to shorten the cocking notch "tip," following the procedure that Idaholewis posted here: TC single trigger “Trigger Job”
I carefully filed down the tip from .572" (which seems to be the factory dimension) to .562, taking great care to go slowly, test a lot, and keep the surface from which I was removing metal squared up. The creep is almost completely gone now, but the trigger pull remains way too light, especially for a hunting rifle which will be used with gloves in very cold weather.
At this point, then, it seems that I have to tackle changing the angle of the engagement surface of the cocking notch. As-is, the angle between the engagement surface of the full-cock notch and the flat part of the tumbler just behind it appears to be almost exactly 90 degrees, as closely as I can gage it with the square end of a precision steel ruler. Has anybody tried to INCREASE the trigger pull of a TC New Englander, Renegade, or Hawken? Does anybody know what the factory angle is? I did some precision machining and a fair amount of ultra-high precision mechanical design some years ago, and have a few ideas of how to go about changing the engagement surface angle by very small amounts in a controlled way, but any advice or references that anybody can provide before I tackle this will be GREATLY appreciated! New tumblers for TC trad muzzleloaders seem to be very scarce these days.....
First order of business, then, was getting rid of the burr and polishing all surfaces that rub against other surfaces. After a couple of iterations, cocking is much smoother, I suspect that lock time is much faster due to friction reduction, and the creep was smoother but still there. I carefully polished the engagement surfaces of the cocking notch and the sear as well. No improvement in the trigger pull.
Next order of business was to shorten the cocking notch "tip," following the procedure that Idaholewis posted here: TC single trigger “Trigger Job”
I carefully filed down the tip from .572" (which seems to be the factory dimension) to .562, taking great care to go slowly, test a lot, and keep the surface from which I was removing metal squared up. The creep is almost completely gone now, but the trigger pull remains way too light, especially for a hunting rifle which will be used with gloves in very cold weather.
At this point, then, it seems that I have to tackle changing the angle of the engagement surface of the cocking notch. As-is, the angle between the engagement surface of the full-cock notch and the flat part of the tumbler just behind it appears to be almost exactly 90 degrees, as closely as I can gage it with the square end of a precision steel ruler. Has anybody tried to INCREASE the trigger pull of a TC New Englander, Renegade, or Hawken? Does anybody know what the factory angle is? I did some precision machining and a fair amount of ultra-high precision mechanical design some years ago, and have a few ideas of how to go about changing the engagement surface angle by very small amounts in a controlled way, but any advice or references that anybody can provide before I tackle this will be GREATLY appreciated! New tumblers for TC trad muzzleloaders seem to be very scarce these days.....
Last edited: