Triggers can sometimes be a sensitive subject for some and we get it, but this one is a fun one. This was certainly an awesome review with it being my first ever experience shooting a binary trigger. I had always wanted to try one out personally but I just could not justify the cost for one on a whim. Luckily Franklin Armory themselves was gracious enough to provide me one to review for my readers and followers. What a journey it was to do this! Tons of fun and ammunition of course.
To the review, first of all I liked the simplicity of the packaging! Some
companies will absolutely give you package rage while trying to open the
product was not the case here. From the first quick glance I thought it was in very close resemblance to a standard mil-spec trigger but I was surprised when the parts were laying out. It is quite a bit more complex than a standard trigger while I was installing luckily the instructions were super easy to follow as my slave pin was not intact from shipping. However, they had the forethought to include how to build the trigger pack in case of that specific event clearly in the instructions. Installation including rebuilding the trigger pack was very simple though the whole task took me under 8 minutes which included finding a few hex keys.
Upon receiving the shipping notice I immediately ordered the KNS anti-roll
pins because I figured that I would use them but decided against it and used
what was provided for the initial review. I knew getting into this review it
was going to be a massive round count and I wanted to run this trigger with
several different ammunition types and calibers. I wanted to get a good mix of both steel cased and brass just to be thorough in several calibers including, 5.56, 7.62×39, 5.45×39, .22LR, as well as .300blk. I have a good understanding from my social media followers that if they are blasting through tons of rounds for pure enjoyment, they want to save a bit of money while doing so.
So, getting used to the “Rhythm” to properly do full magazine dumps was
surprisingly a very easy adjustment period. Honestly, within 2-3 magazines I had it down pat. The only issue I had was I started the review on a brand new upper that the gas block had not seated yet so I caught a few blasts of hot gas and it burned a bit of my hand (but that was entirely my fault, I just wanted to share the warning). I very easily started doing magazine dumps for fun and small controlled bursts as well and the smile and thrill I had while doing so was extremely noticeable. In fact, the more time we had with the Franklin Armory Binary trigger we ended up buying a few more because they were so fun.
Running through ammo and switching complete uppers was a TON of fun however, with the 7.62×39 or 5.45×39 you will have a few light strikes I went through 150 rounds of each and averaged about 2-3 in each caliber. To which I chalk up to ammunition problems because I even experienced these same results with new brass 5.56. However, I experienced absolutely zero issues while doing controlled burst these issues only occurred during magazine dumps so the provided hammer spring is sufficient to handle these calibers out of the box. One problem that you cannot avoid during use is definitely the heating up of your barrel and hand guard during use (trust me it will happen) but put on some gloves and give it a few minutes rest before heavy use and you will be fine.
Mid-way through my review I discovered that the trigger would work perfectly with a CMMG .22LR conversion kit so I picked one up locally for $175 headstrong on testing the theory. I will definitely warn you right now that if you pick this trigger up and conversion kit the amount of cheap fun that will follow is ridiculous. The provided 25 round magazines that CMMG sends will not be enough, I ended up picking up a Black Dog Machine 50 round drum to continue the fun 50 rounds at a time for less than a few bucks a full drum of ammo. It was certainly a good time with a much more budget friendly price tag. I would highly recommend doing this for practice and simple fun to remain budget friendly.
A bit more into the review, operating the Franklin Armory binary trigger
will not kill your accuracy like some people say it will. I will however
recommend that you use a red dot as it is a lot easier to identify an area
target. At 50 yards out of a sub-moa upper I was averaging about a 4” group
after adjusting to using the trigger in binary mode and roughly 9” at 100
yards. So it is definitely not terrible but will absolutely open up your impact
area as it’s not as consistent as full-auto where you can walk it in. Not that it necessarily matters because we are shooting a paper target or steel, but I wanted to let you know that it will do so.
In conclusion, I would absolutely recommend this trigger to anyone if they had the coin to drop on it without any hesitation. If you ever wanted to shoot simulated full-auto the Franklin Armory binary is about the closest you can get after the “bump-stock ban”. They did give us a discount code “Liberty” that puts the AR-C1 binary trigger just under $350 shipped so I would definitely use that and save a bit (Libertyreport.co does NOT receive any money of kickbacks if you use this code, it is solely for the readers and followers). So, if you have been on the ledge about getting one, I would say take the leap and definitely have a ton of fun! You can check them out here.
