New Trigger Spring for the Savage

I think I now have the world’s most dangerous .22 rifle. From the perspective of squirrels. I have also had an extremely satisfying session with the new workbench. Putting this thing together was a stroke of genius. Which I failed to have until I was really old, unfortunately.

I started out with a Remington Nylon 66. I could not put a scope on it, so I looked for something new. People recommended the Ruger 10/22 and the Marlin 60. They said the Ruger 10/22 was a very accurate gun…once you gave your life savings to a gunsmith to make it work. Uh…no. If I want to spend way too much on a .22, I’ll get a CZ 512 or Browning, not an entry-level rifle which is a small step up from a BB gun. I bought a Marlin 60.

The first 60 I got literally would not hit a soda can at 100 feet, so I sent it back to the factory, and they sent me a new one which shot pretty well. Then I found out how hard it was to attach sling studs to it. I also found out how hard it was to get a trigger that worked. The guy who sells the best trigger, which he calls the “KAT,” did not answer email inquiries or social media messages, so I bought the second-best trigger, an M*Carbo, and installed it myself. I also added an M*Carbo recoil spring, because the Marlin 60 is too fragile to shoot hypervelocity rounds with the factory spring.

Finally, I had an okay rifle, but it still didn’t make me all that happy. Because of Marlin’s firing pin design, it could not be dry-fired without damage. With the new recoil spring, it was SUPPOSEDLY able to stand up to powerful .22 rounds like CCI Stingers, but I didn’t trust it.

I bought a Savage A22. It can be dry fired all day without damage. It comes with sling studs. It can be disassembled in about 10 seconds with one hex key. It has a real milled receiver. The Marlin has no receiver. It has two sheets of pot metal bridged by removable pins. The A22 has a Savage barrel, obviously, and Savage makes barrels that are accurate when you buy them, not just after you pay a gunsmith to finish the job the manufacturer should have done. It was also pre-drilled for scope mounts, and it had real iron sights, not the cheap sheet metal flap that comes with a Marlin.

The Savage, which was only slightly more expensive than the Marlin, had an adjustable Savage Accutrigger. This is a wonderful adjustable trigger that sets Savage apart. You can adjust it in the field with a tiny wrench, lowering or raising the trigger pull weight to suit you.

I shot the Savage, and I found that it was accurate. I had failures to fire, but I was using highly questionable Obama-era Remington Golden Bullets, so I wasn’t disturbed by that.

Problem: I had been under the impression that the Savage’s trigger could be taken down to 2 pounds, which sounded very nice to me. In practice, I found that it was fairly stiff even when I adjusted it as far as it would go.

Solution: a company called Gun Shack sells a special spring for the Accutrigger. Apparently, Savage makes at least two springs. One is a somewhat stiff spring that comes with certain models, and the other is a lighter “varmint” spring, for varmint rifles. The springs are interchangeable.

You know I had to have that.

I got myself two springs, because I have two Accu-trigger rifles.

Today I put the new spring in the A22. It was very easy. Well…it should have been easy. I had no instructions, so I wasted some time taking out and replacing the wrong spring.

In case you’re Googling “A22 Accutrigger spring replacement,” let me tell you what to do. I am too lazy to take pictures, but this is really easy.

Take your gun out of the stock. You will need to engage the safety, because it gets in the way when you try to pull the gun out.

Remove the trigger assembly (a plastic box) from the gun. You have to drive out one pin at the rear in order to do this. Your manual has a picture. Make sure the gun isn’t cocked, because the pin won’t move if it’s cocked.

See the fat spring at the very rear of the trigger assembly? That’s your trigger spring.

Insert your trigger adjustment tool and tighten the spring all the way. Your spring is like a screw. It sits in a threaded hole. You have to screw it up out of the hole so it comes loose. That’s why you tighten it. Once that’s done, you can pull it out with tweezers.

There is a little wire pin sticking up from the top of the spring. It rests in a hole in the trigger assembly housing. It acts as an axle. When you turn the spring with the adjustment tool, it turns on this pin. Once you have the spring unscrewed and released from its threaded hole, you can pull the pin out of the hole in the trigger housing and take the spring out of the gun.

To install your new spring, which is lighter and easier to work with, just do everything in reverse. Get the lower end of the spring into the threaded hole and screw it in as far as you can with the adjustment tool. Then you can take tweezers and fit the spring’s pin into the trigger assembly housing hole.

You’re done. Adjust the spring and give yourself the trigger pull weight you want.

I finished working on my gun a few minutes ago, and man, is that trigger easy to pull. I could not get the original trigger spring to give me a weight I liked, but the new spring is so light, I had to back it off from the lowest setting. You can give yourself a bona fide hair trigger with the varmint spring, and if you do that, you might have problems with the gun going off before you want it to.

This is sweet. I look forward to taking it out in the pasture to see what it will do.

I’m also going to fix my 93R in .17 HMR. It’s already extremely accurate, but a lighter trigger pull will surely improve it.

It is said that gun companies make trigger pulls heavier than they have to be in order to avoid getting sued when unskilled people shoot themselves and others accidentally. This is probably true. A heavy trigger pull is helpful for idiot-proofing. Sadly, it also makes it hard to hit anything. The other day I read that NYC cops are forced to use pistols that have extremely heavy triggers. That may help explain why they miss the people they shoot at.

I don’t like heavy triggers. When you go the the range and shoot 50 rounds, you will lose accuracy if your finger gets tired. When you shoot slowly and carefully, your finger spends a lot of time working, and after a few dozen rounds, it can start to tremble. This is a problem you don’t need when you’re wrestling with breath control and God knows what else.

If you’re happy hitting a man-sized target at 7 yards with a pistol, or hitting a deer’s huge kill zone at 100 yards with a rifle, a heavy trigger is fine. If you want to shoot WELL, it will be a problem.

My short-range pistol goal is to keep nearly every round inside a 1″ circle at 7 yards. I want to shoot 1 MOA (or as close to it as my guns will permit) with a rifle. I don’t want to fool around with heavy trigger springs made for old ladies and bro dudes.

I criticize the Marlin 60 because in the end, it cost me 15% more for a modified Model 60 than it did for a Savage A22 that worked perfectly out of the box. Even with the modifications, the Marlin was still completely inferior. Here I am, though, adding an aftermarket part to the Savage! Hey, it cost something like 9 bucks. Go price an aftermarket Model 60 trigger. No comparison.

Now I just have to learn how to use a scope correctly. I need to know where a bullet will land, regardless of the distance between me and the vile rodent in my crosshairs. Scopes are great for putting bullets exactly where you want to at the distance at which you zero them, but change that distance, and everything goes nuts.

I think accurate hunting must be much harder than shooting paper. A target shooter always knows his distance, he always shoots from the same position, and he should know exactly what the wind will do to his shots. Also, targets cooperate. They don’t run around or go behind trees. A hunter has to deal with unreliable targets at unknown distances, and he has to shoot from various positions, most of which will not work as well as shooting from a bench.

When I decided to shoot squirrels, I thought I was entering the minor leagues, but I was wrong. Minor leaguers hunt large animals. I can hit a deer over and over without understanding my scope. A total idiot can hit a deer. To hit a squirrel with a rifle, I have to know exactly what I’m doing. I have to know my ammunition and the way my bullet will behave at various distances.

If I shoot a .308 at a deer anywhere within 100 yards, even if I can’t figure out how much error there will be, I will still hit the kill zone. The error from shooting at a distance different from that at which I zeroed the rifle will never be more than a couple of inches. Big deal. But if you have a one-inch error when you shoot at a squirrel, you’ll probably miss him.

I feel like I finally have the right tool, and the right adversary, for learning how to use a scope. If I can learn how to nail squirrels, I’ll be able to hit anything. And I’ll be doing the world a favor, because squirrels are obnoxious.

If tomorrow brings me a couple of hours without rain, I’ll go out and see what the new gun will do. Wish me luck.