In January, I was waltzing around Walmart trying to decide how to spend a $75 gift card that I had. Like any man, I started out looking at the pharmacy, cold meds, deodorant, toothbrushes, candles, lotions, squirt guns, barbies, legos... then as I continued walking, I got to the gun department! Okay, okay, that was my original destination.

After wiping my drool off of the display case, I realized I didn't have much more than the $75 gift card to spend (as I was about to purchase an engagement ring). So I started walking over to the ammo case and thats when it happened. A Savage Mark II-F rolls into view, with a price tag of $127. Couldn't believe my eyes! I could buy a gun for only $127?! I'LL TAKE IT, I said realizing I was talking to myself again and there was no one around the gun counter.

After buying it and taking it home, I sadly came to the conclusion that it didn't have the accutrigger like I was led to believe (from a quick google search about the Mark II and seeing they all had the accutrigger). Oh well, I'll make due. I bought it to be a cheap gun anyways and didn't plan to spend much on it for mods.

Took it to the range and ouch, the trigger pull felt to be over 8lbs with lots of creep, plenty of slop and horrible overtravel! It was the worst trigger I've ever shot! In addition, it had accuracy which I'm blaming on the trigger. So I stopped caring about my groupings and started just putting lead through it. Put 300-400 rounds through it that day and really had fun with it.

Went to the range again last weekend and brought it with me, after having forgotten about it when my Fiancee and I bought a house and moved in. I shot 350rds through it again after topping it off with a Burris Fullfield II 3-9x40 scope I had lying around. Was getting roughly 2moa groupings (1in at 50yds). The trigger still bugged me. To put it simply, it was very sloppy and very heavy.

When I got home, I got onto RimfireCentral to look at the trigger shim mod. I read about it when I first got the rifle, but when I started reading that lots of people were having slamfires, I said no thanks since no one wants an unsafe rifle. It had 16 pages of excellent information. I found that people who were getting slamfires, were using shims at 0.025" or larger. So I started scrounging for parts. Found out that a 2.5" hard drive mounting case is 0.017". That'll do with a little safety overhead, so I cut myself two shims. But the fun didn't stop there. I wanted to swap out the trigger return spring and dissected as many pens as I could find. Sadly, all of them had springs that were larger diameter than the hole in the trigger. Until I remembered that BIC lighters have a spring pushing up on the flint. Tore one apart and cut the spring up (its about 75% the diameter of the factory trigger return spring), and installed it. Its much thinner than the stock spring, but it worked perfectly! With just a few coils sticking above the trigger face, it did its job without adding a ton of weight to the trigger. I also added a shim to the side of the trigger to remove the transverse wobble the trigger had.

Put it back in the stock, cycled the bolt, finger on the trigger and BREAK! It felt smooth as glass, had a very defined step and broke cleanly. It was an entirely new gun! I couldn't believe it, so I cycled the bolt and did that about 50 more times, each time the grin on my face getting bigger and bigger! Got out the water jug and tested the trigger pull weight: right at 2 lbs 6 oz. It was less than half of what the original trigger pull was! And for the wonderful price of FREE!

Now I REALLY can't wait to take this rifle back to the range! I'm sure I will be able to get moa, or maybe even sub-moa accuracy with it now that I don't have to use two fingers to pull the trigger. I would take it to the range tomorrow, but my Fiancee and I are heading out to get a new bed. Maybe next weekend though.

I performed as many tests as I could think to force it to fire without the trigger and nothing. It seems to be still very safe! Which means, now I want to upgrade the stock on it to a Boyd's Rimfire Hunter in Royal Jacaranda!

Long story short, if you have a Savage Mark II without the accutrigger and hate the trigger, do the shim mod! It is extremely worth it!