Cocking piece rubbing on top inside of trigger side plate

B

Boyd Allen

Active member
I have an acton that is left bolt, right port, and recently when I was looking over the Jewel trigger that I have had in it for over a decade, I noticed some very light rub marks on the inside of one of the trigger side plates that are in an area where only the side of the cocking piece could have done it. It is on the triggers right side as viewed from the rear. The same area on the opposite side does not show this. I have been thinking of what the proper solution should be the polish in the area where the cocking piece is on the top of the top lever of the trigger (sear) is offset to the same side as the rubbing is on. I think that this means that the trigger hanger mortise might be slightly off center. I could do a couple of things, remove some material from the side plate, since the trigger lever would still have plenty of guidance in front of and below the area, and I could narrow that part of the cocking piece a small amount on that side. Have any of you run into this? What have you done about it? What effect do you think that it has? The rifle seems to shoot OK, but when you are looking at small differences in accuracy it is difficult to tell what matters and what does not. My next step will be to color the are in question with a marker and see if there is any further evidence of rubbing.
 
Did you happen to look at how the title of this thread looks as abbreviated at the forum level?
 
Boyd, i had it happen a lot of Jewel triggers and when i pull them apart to stone off the burrs, i find the plates are bent,some are worse than others some needed to be bent in a vice first........ jim
 
Jim,
Thanks for the tip. I laid something straight across the side plate diagonally, so that one end was the top rear, and the other at the bottom front, and it was high centered. The whole side plate appears to be bowed. This is disappointing. What grits of wet and dry do you use for the side plates, from start to finish. I guess that I will be picking up a piece of plate glass and getting to work on flattening and polishing.
Boyd
 
Boyd, i use a flat diamond stone on the inside of the plates and get the burrs off first. it will show you the high spots...... have fun..... jim
 
Boyd

I have not had the exact problem you are describing, but when I work on the side plates of Jewels to smooth rubbing spots, I wet sand with 1200 grit, than with 2000 grit, then a final polish with Flitz.
 
Not that it necessarily applies here, but it seemed like a good place to repost Jack Neary's trigger tune-up document.

Jerry
 

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I have seen the side plates get bowed inward at the rear from tapping the retaining pin into place [ 700 or 40X ]. After discovering this I started tapping the side plates outward from the top using a small hammer and a brass drift. On aftermarket actions with trigger hangers I haven't seen one that was likely to have this problem as the trigger pins went in easily.

ETA- With the normal loose tolerances between the bolt plug [ shroud ] and the locking lug raceways the cocking piece could easily end up rubbing the side plate no matter what. Stiller addressed this issue on his latest RF BR action.
 
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Ray, I was thinking the same thing, the shroud may not be machined properly leaving the cocking piece a little off to one side. I remember seeing a shroud that had delrin plugs installed on both sides which rides the raceway, and might help align it.
 
Sounds like this would be a normal condition. When lifting the bolt handle to cock the firing pin, the cocking piece will naturally rotate counterclockwise until something stops it, in this case the right inside wall of the trigger casing. When rotating the bolt handle down the cocking piece is on the left wall, but since it's held by the sear there are no rub marks. That is unless the tolerance on the shroud is tight enough as mentioned to keep the cocking piece perfectly centered. What's the width of the cocking piece vs. the inside width of the trigger plates?
 
I think that the problem comes from the side plate curving in in the area where the cocking piece slides by it. It was easy to see, once someone pointed me in that direction. The action is a custom one that has a good shroud fit. The clearances do not allow the shroud to rotate excessively on bolt closure. I have another trigger on the rifle at the moment, that has a milled trigger housing with a side plate, and as I look down the cocking piece groove in the bottom of the action, I can only see the triggers sear. Sometime in the next couple of days, my Jewel is coming apart, and the first thing that I plan on exploring is whether I can do some side plate flattening by careful tapping with a flat surface as backing, and after that the inside faces of the side plates will be worked over with successively finer grits of wet and dry backed by a flat piece of thick glass. After that I will detail out the sides and outside corners of the internal parts, and do some polishing with Flitz. Wish me luck.
 
Just a thought

Boyd, get your dial test indicator set up and pass it across the test surface you are going to use. Glass or granite. Make sure it is flat first.
When you know this is flat put your part down and begin passing your indicator over the part making notes.

You might even want to check both sides so flattening the outside surface first and then go inside and flatten by your indicator readings. Some prussian blue might also help.

Regarding level of grit I would stay with aluminum oxide. Just remember if you induce scratches into the metal you will have to take the surface down to the bottom of those scratches to get back to a 1000 or 1200 finish.
Higher numbers take longer but are slower--safer. Try some different grits on a test specimen to gain perspective of how deep a grit scratches. Try to keep the grain direction with the parts movement.

Possibly a machine shop could surface grind these parts for you but you would need to find out what wheel they might be using. Br standards are different than machine shop standards.
Centerfire
 
I think you are getting too carried away with the side plates. just use a good stone and flatten the burrs down if the back corners are bent straighten them. Then use a finer stone to polish them up a little clean them off and a little machine oil and put it back together. The spacers are a lot wider than the trigger parts so nothing will touch anyway…….. jim
 
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