Uberti 1871 trigger work

[jlucke69]

Looking to lighten up the trigger on one of these rifles. Anyone know a good place to start?

[bigted]

well i will jump in with a bit of advice that has worked for me and my old rem roller [military].

first off i took it all the way apart for a good cleaning. then i took my stone and shined up the sear notch making sure i didnt change the angle of the flat. then installing everything i tried the trigger to find it still way above the hard to pull. next i took it all apart again and examined the trigger spring as i have been instructed to do. it is very tough and not being patient i adjusted the spring with a bit of western persuasion. it was a bit lighter so i put the old girl back together and found a bit of improvement. taking it apart again i westerned the spring again a bit and after installing everything back together i found it to be considerably better then when i started

the proper fix is a springy piano wire or such to replace that leif spring that belongs on an old chevy pickup. do not file off the deep flat on the hammer sear as this will change a bunch of things including the half cock notch. the smoothed notch is a bunch better along with the less springy spring and now i have a shootable 43 spanish that i love to play round with.

look up "remington rolling block parts" on the net. this will lead you to the folks that carry pretty much what you will want/need ... cant remember the name but you will know it when you find them ... there did that sound cryptic?

[Nobade]

Big Ted is right on concerning a #1 rolling block action. If the '71 works the same way that's the way to go. Get or make a new trigger return spring and stash your original one. If the design is different, then the concept is the same but the execution may be a bit different. I know a #4 is totally different but never been inside a #2 or the Italian copy of it.

-Nobade

[jlucke69]

Ok, after reading the comments, looks like the spring is what needed to be changed. I put 2 small brass washers between the frame and spring. Seems to have lightened the pull quite a bit. I will report back once I have time to shoot it.

[country gent]

Alot of the reproduction of these rifles have alot of "preload" on the hammer and trigger springs That increases pull wieghts tremendously. One thing to watch out for lightening springs is that hammer strike is heavy enough to fire the round, trigger returns and sets consistently and levers or actions have suffient force to stay in position. Lightening a spring can also slow lock time.

[bigted]

question i have is which spring did you put washers under? if the trigger return spring then good but if the main hammer spring then maybe not so good.

as is pointed out above ... the hammer spring is going to be touchy to fool with as the hammer fall is to be quite crisp to continue to function with reliability ... the return trigger spring however is another matter completely. that springs ONLY job is to return the trigger to battery against the hammer sear to fully engauge each time the hammer is pulled to the full cock or half cock position ... it is not in need of the old pickup spring that they come with from the remington factory.

reason for the heavy return spring is so in the heat of battle ... in grime and fouling as well as dust or rain ... sleet or snow ... the solder could keep his attention on those that needed shootin rather then to concentrate on the loading and firing at the very real and dangerous paper target down range.

[jlucke69]

Going by the manual, it is the main spring which is screwed to the tang. Lockup functions fine, but primer strikes are lighter than before. Not sure if this is going to be a problem yet. It was almost hitting hard enough to puncture the primer before hand and is still hitting hard enough to dent spent primers.

[jlucke69]

Got it out and shot it today. 12 shots, no misfires. Primers strikes were still very heavy. I think I found a good solution to reducing trigger pull while keeping everything stock. I can change it back to factory if I need to in the future. Thanks for the input.