Charter Arms Trigger Help

[nitetrane98]

I was out shooting with some friends yesterday and one guy brought his girlfriend and her nice little Charter Arms Undercover snubby .38. This gal is an itty bitty little thing, 70lbs soaking wet. She absolutely loved her snubby, but was having a lot of trouble firing DA. A few of us tried it and were all pretty amazed she could pull the trigger at all. It was without a doubt the hardest pull I've ever felt on any gun. It started hard, got harder, clicked, got a little easier then ran away and fired. When the gal fired it she would be trembling from exertion. Consequentlly she loved firing it SA. I think it's a lawyer trigger run amok.

Any ideas on how to lighten it up? I looked for a Wolff reduced power hammer spring but they only carry them for Bulldogs. Maybe it's a job for "Spring Snipper Man". While I've always considered CA to be well made reliable guns, and I've never heard smooth trigger and Charter Arms used in the same sentence, this trigger pull is ridiculous. I've got nothing to even reference it to but 15# comes to mind.

 

[rcmodel]

Unless they have changed the trigger/hammer geometry over the years to give harder strikes, I doubt you can lighten it much at all without getting mis-fires in double action.
I imagine that is why Wolff doesn't offer reduced power springs for it.

I have owned two Charters through the years, and they were both problematic for DA mis-fires at times with the standard factory springs.

That's why I don't own them anymore.

If you want to try clipping the spring, I would get a replacement first and clip it.

Then you can put the unaltered factory spring back in when it doesn't work.

rc

 

[nitetrane98]

That's probably good advice. I've got no dog in the fight and I just figured it was oversprung to satisfy the lawyers. Didn't really figure it was my place to say but I thought she would be much better served with a nice .380. Then again, she might have just run into slide racking problems.
Oh well, maybe she can develop a real good SA draw. It's usually the first shot that counts anyway.