Page 1 of 1

Benefit of dry-firing

Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 10:30 pm
by charlesb
Not long ago, I purchased a Browning BLR lever gun in .308 Winchester and found that I liked just about everything about the gun except the trigger.

I looked into the rather involved process necessary in order to tune the BLR trigger - but never got around to it. I have been very busy lately trying to get my shop moved in and organized, and just haven't had the time to approach that project.

What I have been doing though is to develop a dry-firing routine with that gun.
Several times a day, I remove the scope cover, open the action to be sure it is empty, then sight in on a tree leaf or clump of grass visible through my shop window and dry-fire, calling the shot.

After a month or so of doing this several times a day, the trigger has improved considerably. I believe that my ability to use it has improved too. Measuring the pull weight, it is the same now as when the gun was new ( around five pounds ) but is is much smoother and the cross-hairs don't jump around so much as they used to.

So I guess in situations where adjusting a trigger is not so easy to do ( H&R single-shots come to mind ) then one good thing to try is a regular habit of dry-firing.

I still plan to tear the gun down to stone the engagement surfaces and judiciously lighten the springs when I get the shop organized, but in the mean-time I am impressed with how much some dry-fire practice has slicked up the BLR's trigger, and my ability to use it.

This week I finally got the last of my stuff out of storage, so it shouldn't take me much longer to have the shop ready to use. - I had to give up on moving my milling machine, TIG welder and lathe in, and will have to make do with just a drill press and gas welding rig until I can expand the shop.