Dave McCracken
October 23, 2003, 03:57 PM
Had a query about this off line, so on the principle that if one asks, 100 may need to know....
Lock time is the time it takes in a given firearm for the primer to be hit and ignited, starting from the first movement of the trigger. Modern arms do this in tiny fractions of a second. Old guns like flintlocks take much longer.Shotguns with visible hammers like old doubles and single shots fall in between.
Geometry, spring tension, design and so on all effect the lock time. Pull weight does little pro/con, but it comes into play elsewhere.
Ithaca used to advertise that its New Ithaca Double had a lock time of 1/625 second. This is fast by even modern standards.
In aimed shooting with rifles and handguns,faster lock time means less chance of the sights drifting off the aiming point. Target rifles and Olympic style pistols have fast lock times for this reason.
Shotguns aren't shot still, they're moving and so's the target. Lock time is less important here, one adjusts the timing to make the thing go boom at the right time. The imprecision of shotgunning pays off here, small variations do not carry the same penalty as with other arms. The key word there is small.
But all modern firearms run to very consistent lock times. Long ago the NRA did a test using 6 Model 12s, IIRC. Variation from shot to shot in each was truly picayune, on the order of a few thousandths of a second. Variation in average times from shotgun to shotgun was but little more.
Some custom shotguns have very quick locks. The Ljutic trap gun is one.
Unless one switches from a fast lock to a very slow one, there's not much downside. The timing has to change, but we do that every time we shoot a different shotgun anyway. If one alternated using a Ljutic and an old hammer gun when shooting trap rounds, there might be some otherwise inexplicable misses, but few of us do that.
Except for slug guns, lock time is a non issue and it's not major even with slugs....
Lock time is the time it takes in a given firearm for the primer to be hit and ignited, starting from the first movement of the trigger. Modern arms do this in tiny fractions of a second. Old guns like flintlocks take much longer.Shotguns with visible hammers like old doubles and single shots fall in between.
Geometry, spring tension, design and so on all effect the lock time. Pull weight does little pro/con, but it comes into play elsewhere.
Ithaca used to advertise that its New Ithaca Double had a lock time of 1/625 second. This is fast by even modern standards.
In aimed shooting with rifles and handguns,faster lock time means less chance of the sights drifting off the aiming point. Target rifles and Olympic style pistols have fast lock times for this reason.
Shotguns aren't shot still, they're moving and so's the target. Lock time is less important here, one adjusts the timing to make the thing go boom at the right time. The imprecision of shotgunning pays off here, small variations do not carry the same penalty as with other arms. The key word there is small.
But all modern firearms run to very consistent lock times. Long ago the NRA did a test using 6 Model 12s, IIRC. Variation from shot to shot in each was truly picayune, on the order of a few thousandths of a second. Variation in average times from shotgun to shotgun was but little more.
Some custom shotguns have very quick locks. The Ljutic trap gun is one.
Unless one switches from a fast lock to a very slow one, there's not much downside. The timing has to change, but we do that every time we shoot a different shotgun anyway. If one alternated using a Ljutic and an old hammer gun when shooting trap rounds, there might be some otherwise inexplicable misses, but few of us do that.
Except for slug guns, lock time is a non issue and it's not major even with slugs....