trigger pull on a Cricket

I just purchased a new Cricket single-shot .22 rifle for my granddaughters. The trigger pull, as expected, is quite heavy and I would like to smooth it and bring it down a bit.

I am not a gunsmith, but have have polished and played with the internals on my revolvers and rifles that I use for cowboy action shooting, so I have more courage than knowledge!

Do any of you have advice for getting a Cricket's trigger to be more manageable?

Thanks.

I would strongly advise against this.

+1

Grand daughters small enough to shoot a Cricket certainly don't need target grade triggers on them.

It is heavy for safety reasons with small kids using it.
Leave it that way.

It will get better with use.
And so will they.

rc

I disagree with rcmodel on this one.

If a child has to use all his hand and arm strength to pull the trigger, they will only focuse on that and not on muzzle discipline, sights, etc.

Heavy pull for safety reasons make sense on a DA carry gun. Not on a single shot rifle.

J-Bar I don't have any personal experience with the Cricket design but any competent gunsmith can make most triggers lighter/smoother and still safe. Polishing the contact area of the sear and firing pin while maintaining the angles is where I would start.

This is interesting to me only because I saw one of these at Wally world the other day and was thinking of one for my Daugther, she is very small yet at 9 yrs old but always wants to go when I shoot. I only picked the gun up and looked at it but never thought about trigger pull. I know a trigger job is around $120 so Is that gun worth sticking that much more into???

http://www.shootersforum.com/rimfire-rifles/47722-crickett-kids-rifles-trigger-job.html

I disagree with rcmodel on this one.

While it may be a once in a lifetime experience (:)) I do too.


If a child has to use all his hand and arm strength to pull the trigger, they will only focuse on that and not on muzzle discipline, sights, etc.


That was one of the reasons I went with the Savage Cub w/ Accutrigger for my kids. I remember being young and the trips out to the gravel pits with my Dad and granddads to learn to shoot. The universal memory (aside from the fact that 20 ga. pumps kick darned hard when you're 7 :( ) is of straining with all my might to squeeze hard triggers on the old Iver Johnson single-shot .22 and some others used as trainers.

There was nothing at all safer about making it so difficult to make a clean, deliberate trigger pull. Doesn't need to be 1.5 lbs, but something below 4 would be great for their little tiny fingers and limited hand strength. It might feel "light" to you, but kids struggle with much more pull weight than that, and struggling at a hard trigger while you're supposed to be focused on the sights and all the other stuff that you're so new to just makes for a miserable time.

Thanks for the link, nice to know I am not the only one!!

dab, most trigger jobs on a simple single shot run closer to about $60.00 or less, as all it tkes is smoothing out the sear which is relatively simple.:)

The Cricket has a simple single stage trigger. The angles are neutral with a lot of sear engagement.

It can be smoothed up a lot with just some light stoning. There is a vertical plain on the sear that catches the firing pin. This surface and the one on the firing pin that the sear catches are what you clean up. You don't have to remove all of the tooling marks, just smooth the tops of the ridges down.

I did this to my grandson's rifle and it made a big difference.

I ran a trigger scan on my granddaughters Crickett (the pink one), and it came out looking pretty good. The X-axis is trigger travel in 1/1000" and the y-axis is pull in pounds. It could be smoother, but less than 2.5 lbs seems light enough. And the creep is certainly acceptable with a clean break.

Your thoughts??

Interesting. I bought my daughter a Henry Mini-bolt and it had a great trigger. It measures out a 2 lbs 2 onz and no take up to speak of. It is an excellent training gun and I was thinking that Henry specifically made it clean and crisp to teach children how to shoot well. I probably have shot it more at 100 yrds then my daughter because it combines good sights and a good trigger with a nice single shot.

Have you contacted the company about the trigger? They may fix it.

20 years ago I bought a Cricket for my son.
My father, the chief engineer gun designer, said it had equal hardness steel on steel galling between the firing pin and the bolt body was a poor design.
My wife took it back to the store.