CZ 452American

Two separate things I see here -
1. Trigger not breaking when you want it to will contribute to inaccuracy; that should go without saying.
2. Not following through on the shot will contribute to inaccuracy. The longer the lock time, the worse this problem becomes. See threat on shooting flintlocks......

Of the two, for the average shooter, I'd guess #1 is by far the worse problem. For an experience shooter, and the more solid the rest, the less of an issue #1 is and the more evident that #2 is.

Shooting standing, with no rest, I'm guessing that making the trigger break when you want is far more of a problem, since most of us (myself included) rarely shoot that way. About the only time I shoot with no rest is when handgun hunting. I'm not a good enough shot to tell the difference between the long(er) hammer fall of a single action, vs. double action. For some reason (most likely familiarity) I shoot single-actions better even though lock time should in fact be a handicap, according to theory.

For most of us, I suspect lock time fades into about 99th place on the list of reasons we might miss.

edwardashley02 said:

I can shoot tighter groups with more accuracy at 100 meters with my old (50's) Anschutz Model 54. standard sporter, with its iron peep sights, than with any scoped rifle I have tried. Maybe it is just me. Sure do love my 22s.

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There are a lot of factors that come into play:

1) peep sights, particularly those with an adjustable or interchangeable rear aperture are capable of great accuracy. In my Service Rifle competition days a .052“ or .0595” NM rear aperture and a NM width sight on an NM M14 or M1A Supermatch was sufficient 1 MOA accuracy at 600 yards with M852 ammo.

2) the front and rear diopter sights on a match rifle are capable of extreme precision on a round target.

3) Telescopic sights are prone to parallax errors and those errors increase:

- as the distance from the parallax corrected distance increases;

-with magnification, becoming critical at anything over 9x; and

- the further the eye is away from the center of the cone of light created by the optical system.

That makes proper selection and mounting of the scope critical. It’s also important that the rifle and stock be designed to accommodate a scope, and that the scope is placed at the correct height, so that the cheek weld consistently places the pupil as near as possible to the optical center of the scope.

If a sporter is designed for use with iron sights and isn’t isn’t primarily designed to accommodate a scope, you can mount a scope on it, but you’ll need a parallax adjustable scope and adjust it properly for the range to get optimum accuracy.

In contrast, rifles designed primarily for use with a scope can often work well with iron sights, assuming the shooters eye can be bright low enough to align with the sights.

True story -

Years ago, I found a Remington 511 in a gun shop that had been poorly (at best) drilled and tapped for a scope. The gun had a nice finish on the metal and a decent stock and a shiny bore, but there weren't 3 of the 4 holes in a straight line, and none of them pointed up at the same angle. I gave it to my dad to fix all that. He soldered in some screw plugs into the old holes, then using a mill D&T'd the gun for scope bases. I did this so my son would have a decent .22 LR rifle to learn to shoot with. And the gun will shoot - half inch 5 shot groups at 25 yards are easy, with bulk ammo. Never shot any target ammo in it.

So I take my (young) son to a local range and we get set up. He's on my right and there's some of the 'shorty AR' crowd on my left, making a deafening racket (frankly I'd vote to have muzzle breaks outlawed for the nuisance they are, and REQUIRE anything with a barrel less than 18" to have a suppressor). We're all shooting at 25 yards.

My son gets bored pretty quick shooting groups so he starts shooting smiley faces and whatnot in his target. No big deal, he's having fun and I can see from his target what he's doing. Fun is what it's about.

Eventually, he gets bored at that and stops shooting and I glance over to see what he's doing. He's curious about what the other shooters are doing and is looking at their targets through his scope. The most confused, jaw-dropping look comes over his face.... and he looks at me, and the body language reads, "DAD..... what on earth??????"

Most of their targets were just random bullet holes sprayed here and there. I'm not even sure they were on paper every time at 25 yards, judging from some of this holes being near the edge of the paper. My son is in grade school and it is boggling his mind that ADULTS aren't shooting as good as him! I just shrug my shoulders and smile at him. Mind you, EVERYONE is shooting from the bench - it's required on that range.

So, if we can charitably call 12" patterns on the paper 'groups,' then that's 48 MOA 'accuracy' and I seriously doubt that lock time is playing into that. Would a trigger that breaks better help? It sure wouldn't hurt! My son and I build an AR a few years later and the trigger the gun came with was pretty awful. It has smoothed up a little over the years and is moderately tolerable. Even with that he shoots it a LOT better than those guys did. I hate to paint the AR crowd as all being that poor of skill level (some folks are getting amazing accuracy and the service rifle shooters are nothing to sneeze at), but clearly a LOT of new shooters are thinking that's the platform to start with, when they have no training or experience. I've seen it many times before.

We forget that not everyone is a crack shot, and can discern minute, theoretical accuracy nuances. I know I don't shoot enough anymore to, and for my hunting rifles, even in my best form, I probably never could have. Dunno where lock-time differences start showing up; maybe if the gun is under 1 MOA. Just guessing. Most of my bolt guns will shoot around 1MOA for 3 shots, if I'm on my game and with careful handloads. Levers maybe 1.5 MOA if I'm having a good day. ARs, to me, are difficult to handle off the bench vs. bolt guns. Lever guns are in between, as far as bench shooting technique. I've shot a gun with a set trigger - once - and that takes some getting used to. But I can see how some folks might like them.

So, if a better trigger helps someone stay on target, more than a lock time reduction will, that may be a good thing.

My ex father-in-law, since gone to the game fields in the sky, had opportunities to shoot running jack rabbits with full power rifles. He was also an excellent trap shooter. But he never could have afforded a set trigger and can't ask him anyway. He's one of the few people I've ever met that had experience shooting running game, and he'd sometimes put it to use jump-shooting deer, from the stories he told.

If I really wanted to find out whether a set trigger was more important than lock time, I'd put one on my $99 Gamo spring piston air rifle and shoot it standing for score. Even off sandbags, poor follow through shows up on target, quick! And that at 10 yards or less.

JBelk said:

Set triggers double lock time, but worth it.

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JBelk said:

Under field conditions, the wobble induced by trigger pull is considerably more than any error additional lock time gives.

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These claims are unfounded and mistaken, again unless you have some actual data to substantiate the claims.

The rifles with quicker lock times, are in the 1.5-ish ms range; whereas the slower ones(Mauser 98 and clones) are often in the neighborhood of 6ms.
To be gracious, lets assume a rifle somewhere in the middle of that range; say we are "in the field" shooting off-hand with a rifle that is 3ms. Well lets take your claimed doubling of the lock time, and we are now hunting with a rifle that in practice is a 6ms rifle. Without some context, saying 6ms doesn't mean anything tangible to most folks; so we need something to reference and compare with.

If we look at any number of the pressure traces that I've shared over the years, we get a reference point to help understand what 6ms means. Looking at these traces, we can easily see that the entire firing event is less than 1.5ms; but our rifle is a 6ms system. So we are holding our rifle towards a moving target, we feel the trigger release; and we have 6ms worth of pulse, tremors, anticipation, etc.
All of which happens AFTER we felt the extremely light set trigger release, then the firing event begins. And we are supposed to believe that something which takes 5x longer than expected to occur, somehow doesn't really exist; and all of the normal contributions to moving the barrel before firing. Somehow you believe that doesn't effect anything, unless in a machine rest which doesn't move? Yeah..... No.


To Mike's points:
If someone prefers a set trigger, then using one is "worth it" to them. Then by all means they'd be crazy to not use one! No doubt the confidence they feel for a system that is a more 'natural' fit to them, will allow them to better take advantage of things; and have more favorable outcomes.
But to say that doubling lock times simply doesn't matter, or that it won't affect things....

When we didn't understand volcanoes, we prayed to some imaginary god to spare us and not kill us.
Once we did a little study and learned a few things, we realized all we had to do; is not build our houses on top of a volcano.😉


For folks who want to study up on lock times and such, the following book will be a great resource for you.
The Bolt Action - by Stuart Otteson
The study of lock times and how they can decrease the potential for error, was studied long ago by SAAMI and the Army. Take note of Olin's patent from the 1950's, Patent# 3056226A.



Cheers

JBelk said:

Set triggers, by definition INcreases lock time because there are two sears being tripped. The point is, the first sear is tripped without a (longer) trigger squeeze. . Lots of critters are missed high due to a timely ducking.

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You seem to be confused by some basic concepts which aren't the same thing.

Lock times, weight of trigger pull, and length of travel; are all different things.
Let's compare two different triggers:
1) Is a set trigger, it moves 0.1mm before tripping, has a 2# pull weight, and a lock time of 6ms.
2) Is a single stage target trigger, it also moves 0.1mm before tripping, also has a 2# pull weight, but a lock time of 3ms.

The set trigger will take longer from it's release, to begin the firing event. This allows for more time for shooter induced error potential, and time for the critter to execute his "timely ducking" maneuver.
Again, if someone prefers a set trigger; then they should use one. As long as they don't try and pretend physics don't apply to them, I'm happy to champion their use of them.
Cheers

I don't have any problems hitting ground squirrels with my 788's, which have possibly the worst trigger group ever invented. Any misses, though rare, are blamed on the shooter, not the rifle or its trigger. I consider a 75% hit to miss ratio to be excellent by the way.

Taking a benchrest shooter out to shoot furry ground dwelling rodents is, to say the least, very entertaining. They are in awe of my tomato stakes with "high end scopes" (on my budget) and high hit percentage.

The best way to cure "trigger problems" is by shooting more.

With trigger "reaction times" In the milliseconds, and vibrations set off by the trigger group only measurable with an oscilloscope or some other sensitive instrument, how can the human body react to something that takes (on average) from Darrker's (and others) studies .006 of a second. John Force's fastest reaction time at the christmas tree is .074 seconds and he knows when the green light is going to come on . . . . .

RJ