Ruger 77 Mk II trigger

W

warbirdlover

New member
I've sold the skeleton stock for this rifle and the Boyd's stock isn't here yet. I'm sitting looking at the barreled action and the trigger which is about 5 lbs. pull. It's one of those lawyer jobs where there are no (apparent) adjustments. Big question. Can these be adjusted either by myself or a gunsmith? It's a nice crisp trigger but it would be REALLY nice if I could get the pull weight down. I just KNOW someone in here has experience with these. Or maybe I'm just doomed to put on a Timney?
 
77 MK II triggers are not adjustable. I would go for the Timney myself but there are others that are cheaper.
 
I have a M77 Mark II at the gunsmiths right now getting some custom work done and when I posed the question to him he said better to get the adjustable trigger rather than a trigger job. It'll give you the ability to adjust the trigger up or down to a weight you like.
 
I've got a bunch of Rugers of various ages, but honestly haven't paid too much attention to model nomenclature, other than 'tang safety' and 'not tang safety'. So... forgive me if I'm confused over Mark II and Hawkeye, but I'm thinking that the Hawkeye is a Mark II version of the rifle. I took my Hawkeye to a gunsmith to get the trigger adjusted and he said that he couldn't adjust it, but he could replace the spring, which took the pull from between 4 and 5 pounds down to about 2 pounds. Took him 5 minutes and cost me $10. But if the Hawkeye trigger is just a later and improved (and different) version of a Mark II trigger, then maybe you can't have the same easy fix. I guess what he did wasn't really an adjustment, but it did get me to where I wanted to be.
 
I used a Timney to replace the tort-liability trigger on my 77 Mk II. Easy do-it-yourself; the only grinding is on the safety bar. A little at a time; no big deal.

The Timney isn't as good as a Canjar, but Canjar is no longer in business. Shame. But, the Timney is okay...
 
I have worked on the M77 trigger before and it is not hard. I simply took the trigger apart, honed the mating surfaces and replaced the spring. It made a pretty horrible trigger pretty decent, and it took about a half an hour to do it.
 
Um. Working on a m77 mkII trigger is one of the easiest things there is to do. They sell spring kits that will lessen the pull a little, but I just filed a little off the stock spring. Also, if you polish the trigger really well it will help a lot. Lastly, and only do this if you want a very light trigger, you can use a very very fine file to ever so slightly lessen the angle of the trigger. If you want to shorten the trigger pull a little (and this can get dangerous if you file too much) you can file the sear a little so that there isn't so much friction between the trigger and the sear. It is really easy. Let me see if I can find some instructions.
 
There are no adjustment screws, but the Ruger factory trigger is one of the best, once it has been properly smoothed up and a lighter spring installed. I wouldn't think about replacing it, but would consider either working on it a bit myself, or having it done by someone else if you are not comfortable doing it.

I've done couple that came out pretty well.
 
I have a Jard Inc trigger on my M77 MkII. It is very good. The safety is solid and dependable, the pull weight is 13oz, advertised as 1 pound. No discernible creep, no over-travel. It was $79 I think.
 
I just cut a coil off of my trigger and then filed it smooth so it wouldn't stick in or gouge the action. Then I polished the sear and the trigger with steel wool on a drill bit. It turned out at about 2-1/2 to 3 lbs. It is by far the best trigger on all of my guns. You can get the trigger much lighter than that but for a hiking varmint gun it would be too light.
 
Your easiest and cheapest is to buy a Wolff sear spring for the M77 Mk II (about $6). This will drop the pull by about 1-1/2 to 2 lbs just by itself. The next best is a Rifle Basix or Timney trigger (Timney has a sear and spring as well as a trigger adjustable for weight of pull). A new sear/trigger/trigger spring combo is the all around winner.
 
Sorry for this, I don't mean to hijack this thread, but Longdayjake's link shows a guy taking metal off of the sear? I was told by a master machinest and master gunsmith that you never, ever take metal off the sear as it is heat treated and the hardest part of the sear is right on the edge. By removing that you are creating a trigger that at some point is not going to operate correctly since it'll round off the edge. Thoughts?
 
AllenJ said:
I was told by a master machinest and master gunsmith that you never, ever take metal off the sear as it is heat treated and the hardest part of the sear is right on the edge.
Click to expand...


I'm no metallurgist or machinist but the sear is a little bitty thing... I find it VERY hard to believe that one teeny little section of it is heat treated separately from the rest. I'd be fairly confident that it's all the same. The danger is in getting the angle wrong, not so much in making the edge "soft".
 
Trigger pulls of less than 2-3 pounds on a gun you may be moving around with over rough terrain, sometimes in a hurry ...... are foolishness. As long as the trigger is crisp and does not require you to pull so hard you disturb your sight picture, then it is good enough.

As for cutting springs, grinding on sears and other internal trigger parts..... you are "picking up pfennings on the Autobahn" there....... saving $50 bucks so you can stand a good chance of having a ND (and you modifying the trigger makes it Negligence) and losing everything you have and are ever going to have...... that is just ....... words fail me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top