In this post I will encourage people to do things they are not qualified to do and probably shouldn't attempt themselves, but knowledge is power! I believe the more people understand their 10/22 trigger groups the less issues they will have over all. The 10/22 is one of the most easily tuned trigger groups and the least well understood.

This is a little fixture I made many years ago to help me to see and understand the relationships in the hammer, sear interface.


In the picture it shows how the sear engages the hammer notch to hold the hammer back against the hammer spring tension. The little nub on the back of the hammer hits the disconnector as the hammer is re-cocked by the bolt traveling rearward. This lets the sear jump back up against the hammer and catch it as the bolt releases the hammer.

This arrangement is the source of some of the issues that crop up from time to time in these trigger groups. What you can't see from this picture is that the trigger return spring is what pushes the trigger back forward after the shot to allow the disconnector to snap back over the tab on the sear to reset the trigger so it can pull the sear out of the hammer notch on the next shot. The more pressure it takes to reset the disconnector over the sear tab the more pressure is needed from the trigger return spring. This means higher trigger pull weights.

The disconnector has to slide down and catch under this part of the sear tab.


There are a couple big improvements to the sear tab and the disconnector.

First, this angle forces the disconnector to have to "cock" itself down against the disconnector spring. The angle actually forces the trigger group to need a lot more force to reset than is required by the design of the trigger group. I like to make the bottom part of this angle into a very short radius centered on the pivot pin so the disconnector doesn't have to cock itself at all to snap over the sear tab.


This is the part of the disconnector that rides over the sear tab to snap over the sear tab to reset the trigger. I polish the snot out of the bump where the arrow is as well as the end of the sear tab. This makes the reset smooth and easy.


My most recent addition to this process is to shorten the disconnector spring by a couple coils to lower the force between the disconnector and the sear. This is tricky because if you shorten it too much the sear won't jump up and catch the hammer as the bolt pushes it back. I tried this on my takedown 10/22 last night and I was able to lower the disconnector/sear spring reset forces from 12oz down to 4 oz. I think I will do my other trigger groups at 6oz. I used my trigger gauge to figure out the pressure required.


All these steps are an attempt to get the lowest trigger return weights possible. Doing the spring and reset work first, before you do anything to the engagement surfaces is important for a reliable, safe trigger group. If you get these steps really right, you will actually end up with a fairly long, creepy, extremely reliable, and safe trigger. Once these things are done, then you can work on the engagement knowing that you will be able to get pretty low trigger weights without sacrificing safety and reliable resetting.

I had polished my hammer notch and sear surfaces when I bought the takedown. I used the little step in the radius on the bottom of the trigger as a guide and used my belt grinder to remove the material up to that step. This reduced my sear engagement about .020" and dropped my trigger weight from the respectable 3lbs it was before down to 2lbs on the money. It was 5 lbs before the polishing. The shortening of the hammer notch reduced the creepy feeling a lot. You can hardly feel any movement as the sear moves out of the notch. Nice clean break but not terribly well defined. Not a hard trigger to control.

The easiest way to get this part right is to buy a Power custom or Volquartsen hammer/ sear set. Those combined with the spring and reset force work and you have a very nice combination you can do yourself.

I don't advocate doing this work yourself if you are not willing to make mistakes and possibly end up buying a few dollars of new parts here and there. I just want to promote understanding and education on how things work. If you are inspired to try it out, good for you. Lots of good folks here will help walk you through things as you go.

interesting post.  makes for a good overview of your process.  I might even try the DIY approach if I ever pick up another 10/22.  Right now I have a kidd trigger job kit in mine though, and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out, although I feel like a fool for having so much invested in aftermarket parts for a $200 rifle.

good post

Don't feel bad.  Kidd makes truly excellent stuff. Most of my tinkering comes from my lack of funds to buy kidd stuff.

Batman... if you can attach a dial indicator to your fixture via magnetic base, and take a reading off the hammer you can determine if the hammer is being cocked or rolling off the sear...careful stoning in a bench vise with a machined square as a guide will allow you to change the angle of the hammer notch so there is no motion on the indicator...(I built a fixture with an adjustment screw to precisely control the angle of the hammer because I knew I would be doing about 6 trigger groups) you have already reduced the depth so it will not take too much... additionally, you might want to deepen the spring hole in the disconnector rather than shortening the spring... if you then look at the diagonal track of the trigger return spring and follower... I deepened the spring hole, rounded the follower , and polished the rear of the trigger where it rides.... it would safely hold at 11oz , but settled on a 24oz trigger on my STC rifle

I always set my hammer notch at zero degree angle. I made a fixture for my surface grinder that will set it and repeat perfectly. At zero there cannot be any cocking of the hammer at all.

I have not found a huge need to mess with the trigger return plunger other than shortening the spring. For a long time I was converting my single stage trigger groups over to a short two stage with a torsion spring I wound on my lathe. For a single stage the plunger works just fine. The travel is not long enough now to even feel the plungers side ways movement on the trigger. A little polishing on the plunger never hurts though.

The sear/disconnector interface works a little like the sear/hammer notch interface because the disconnector was being cocked against the disconnector spring to get it to snap over the sear tab. This is why I mentioned the angle on the end of the sear tab. Changing the angle there will really lower the forces necessary to make the reset work under lower spring pressures.

I have had groups run at 12oz, but they were finicky. I hate having finicky triggers. The best one I have right now runs right at 16oz. It is an old VQ trigger group I reworked with all the stuff I mentioned here. I think 2lbs is a more realistic goal for most stock trigger groups. Even 3lbs is a huge improvement.


Shortening springs is the easiest method to lower the force, but you have to be careful. I take only one coil at a time. Now that I do the spring work first I have had great luck with reliability with my trigger jobs.

I just spent some time on my 16" Kidd barreled 10/22. I lowered the force required to reset the disconnector/sear interface to right at 3 oz. That might seem like an extremely low amount of reset force, but this is for a target gun used for silhouette competition. Also remember that the hammer presses on the disconnector which in turn compresses the disconnector spring, raising the force on the sear for a moment.

This let me drop my trigger reset torsion spring down to 4oz. When I started it was 8oz. This had a direct impact on my trigger pull weight. It was slightly over 1lb before. Now it is running right at 13oz. I was hoping for 12oz, but that is close enough.

I ran some Wolf MT thru it and some Blazer; Standard velocity and high velocity. It ran perfectly on both. I put 10 rounds of Blazer thru as fast as I could pull the trigger and it worked flawlessly.

I honestly believe this was the missing link in my trigger jobs to get reliable reset at lower weights. As long as my target trigger group runs like it just did I will be extremely happy with the results.

Did some shooting with the latest 10/22 to fall victim to my tinkering. Ran like a dream and no creep in the trigger at all. 13 oz is very nice!

I can't wait until the next shoot.

if you are having trouble getting consistent lots of quality ammo, a simple barrel tuner can be made, and allow you to tune the barrel harmonic to the ammunition lot you can find....my STC 10/22 with a 24x Tasco World Class 1/8 minute dot would print less than 1" , 10 shot groups on a windless day at 100y with non match Winchester Super X high velocity.... machined from a piece of 1 1/4" round stock... bore a .930" hole and slit it lengthwise, and thread for a pinch bolt... shoot a group, and then move fractionally... you can see the groups tighten and loosen... my STC rifle was double lugged and the barrel bedded ... first shot flyers was eliminated by limiting the vertical movement of the firing pin

I had to increase the disconnector spring to 6 oz on my takedown.  I had a few failures to reset.

My kidd barreled target gun runs perfect at 3oz. Not a big deal but it almost seems like 6oz is the way to go.

My takedown runs like a top now! Haven't checked the trigger pull but it didn't change much. I'll check later.