could be crud in the notch
That'd be my guess if its intermittent. Are you removing your finger from the trigger as soon as the hammer begins to move forward? Its possible that if you are not, you are sometimes not letting the sear go into the half cock notch but instead get hung up on the tip of it allowing the hammer to fall when you squeeze the trigger. I am surprised that it would fire the gun from such a low position though.hickstick_10 said:could be crud in the notch
I'd agree it shouldn't fire from that low. None I ever tried would.Tom-AZ said:I haven't done a full cleaning on the trigger assembly. And, yes, I am placing the trigger into half cock safety properly. It catches. More importantly, Marlin told me on the phone that the rifle shouldn't be able to fire if the hammer went forward from half cock. There wouldn't be enough force on the cartridge primer. So, even if there was crud in the gun, why is it firing from that hammer position. That seemed to be their point of focus.
I'm interested that you brought this up because while walking to work today my mind starting drifting to firearms and specifically how they should be safely carried while hunting. This led me to think about the halfcock notch and what would happen if it were to break. I convinced myself that the proper design should allow for this to happen without igniting the primer (i.e., the notch and mainspring should be such that the acceleration of the hammer is limited). I was going to do some reading about that when I saw your post.Tom-AZ said:I haven't done a full cleaning on the trigger assembly. And, yes, I am placing the trigger into half cock safety properly. It catches. More importantly, Marlin told me on the phone that the rifle shouldn't be able to fire if the hammer went forward from half cock. There wouldn't be enough force on the cartridge primer. So, even if there was crud in the gun, why is it firing from that hammer position. That seemed to be their point of focus.
Friend Tom,Tom-AZ said:I took my buddy to the range to show him the problem with the half cock firing. The next day he was out looking to buy a lever action rifle.