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Finally the Stevens gets stripped

CaddmannQ

CaddmannQ

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This old Sears Ranger (by Savage Stevens) shotgun has a receiver Mark 5000 and I can find no information on receivers earlier than the 5001 Mark, within that numbering series.

In other words as far as I can tell there was never a model 4999, and the predecessor to this gun was called something else.

But with a 5001 diagram in hand which is relatively the same, and a brief education (thank you YouTube) I was able to completely strip the receiver and find the cause of my random misfire on the left chamber.
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At some point the left firing pin Spring was replaced by this mismatched attempt at repair.
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The firing pins seem a little hammered with the right one being slightly mushroomed on the hamer end.

This is all borne out by the fact that the right Barrel is the thinnest. The right barrel was used far more than the left on this gun.

This all came apart exactly like the 5001 model receiver except for the latch, which is screwed from the top on the 5000 but from the inside of the receiver on the 5001. Also the latch spring guide rod passes through a machined block which is screwed from the top of the tang, this screw being visible as soon as you move the latch sideways.

On the 5001, that guide rod passes through a cast-in boss on the underside of the tang.
 
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The internal surfaces of this receiver are all roughly sand cast, except for the machined surfaces, which are a small percentage of the surface.

There is a great opportunity here to clean this all up with a Dremel, but for now I simply snagged off a couple offensive cast steel dingleberries with a tiny screwdriver, and tucked it in a can of solvent to soak out the petrified grease.

I'm surprised those two little dingleberries survived for 70 years, & they had not been snagged off by someone in the past. I am certainly not the first guy to take this gun apart.
 
Following the thread with interest.
 
I Love This Stuff!
I had a great time refinishing an old JC Higgins 311A SxS last year.
I use it for Skeet a lot .
First time one of the regular skeeters saw me with the SxS and not my 500, he said "When did you become a gentleman?"
LOL!

Keep the thread rolling. Can't wait to see the finished gun! :)
 
Just checked out your previous post on the Stevens stock. What an ambitious project this gun is. Really nice work.
 
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Here are the left and right hammers, and you're looking at the front side of them, which smacks the firing pin. So the left is on the right and the right is on the left. I believe the left hammer has been replaced with a slightly later pattern. The notch on top is obviously different in the photo. However this might have been a mid-production change, and mine just happens to have one new and one old one, right from the factory.

They also smack the firing pin's retaining screw, on part of the head.

Each hammer has two marks on it, and you can see here the Red Arrows point to the marks where they contact the firing pin, and the green arrows point to the marks where they contact the head of the screw.
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Although the heads of both firing pins had mushroomed slightly, they both still left fairly identical circular impressions against the hammer.

The markings from the screw heads are more difficult to identify. They look completely different from each other and this is due to the fact is that the slots in the screw head did not tighten to the same exact angle, plus both heads had been ground off slightly by someone.

Since the firing pins were slightly mushroomed at the hammer end, I dressed them with a stone.

I will probably dress the screw heads a little more as well. This has clearly been done in the past, because the screw heads need good contact with the hammer and even then they will mushroom a little bit.

Now the firing pin must always float between the hammer and the primer and must never impact solidly with the receiver. It must bounce, & it must have a shoulder on the pin to retain a spring, so that the pin is retracted when not actually being hammered. The Hammer will bash that shoulder (and the poor little spring) right into the receiver, except for the fact that the hammer hits the retainer screw and stops before it actually destroys things.

Anyhow the geometry of that screw head is critical to the function of the floating firing pin mechanism, and these have clearly been ground off by someone on a coarse stone, by hand.

So I will have to check the clearances when I set the thing up, to make sure that things float.

I created a new spring to more properly match the original firing pin spring on the good side. I modified the spring from an old Pentel drafting pencil.

You cannot simply cut the spring off to the correct length. There's not enough clearance in the receiver to accept the compressed spring and still allow the pin to float and contact the primer.

It would be a mistake to simply cut a coil spring to the length wanted.

That coil spring must be wound as a truncated cone, so that when it is completely compressed, it doesn't stack up too thick. It would get hammered to death instead of floating.

Here's the top view of the Hammers and you can clearly see that they are left and right handed, but the pattern is slightly different, with no apparent mechanical reason for the difference.
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You can see these screw heads were mushed slightly, then ground down at some time. Also there's a firing pin I dressed myself.
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I have an old sxs stevens that needs a new stock. I should probably follow this to see what's what...thanks Cad...
 
I find firing pins and springs available for this gun on the web at about $30 for the four pieces. I'm going to try and avoid spending that and see if I can make this thing reliable as is.

One pin is 0.020" shorter than the other, but that's probably still OK, as it is not the nose which is shorter. It's the tail end, which means I will dress off the screw head the same.

Also that was the side with the incorrect spring. With a new spring I think it will be much better.
 
I'm not understanding why the hammers are contacting the firing pin's retaining screw but I like the photos and explanations. Very good stuff. Keep it coming.
 
I think the hammer has to stop against something, and it can't be the pin.

When the hammer is at rest, the pin must still float in the receiver.
 
Starting to clean up the receiver.
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Here it's very clear that this is a sand cast part. I've snagged off some of the dingleberries from those three fingers in the foreground which are the trigger pivot points.

Here you can see just how rough some of the sand casting is. These are the pivot Points for the safety device.
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Imagine this thing looking like that, rough as a cob all over, before it was completely machined on the outside.
 
It must of taken those guys forever to get a presentable function and form in that receiver. Since it lived that way for 70 years they must have done an adequate job.
 
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It's a 120+ year old design, and it was 50 years old when mine was built, so they've had lots of time to perfect things.
 
I cleaned up the rough spots inside the receiver with a dremmel, and washed it out with solvent and compressed air.

I dressed off the screw heads, and assembled the firing pins. the left screw was just barely proud of the casting, so not the best situation.

I decided to reassemble the gun and check the hammer contact to avoid any surprises later. I may be forced to find new firing pins and screws.

To get the hammers back in is the tough part of assembly. The mainsprings and plungers are first greased and easily installed. Then both hammers and the y-shaped cocking lever and its spring must be placed together and aligned, and the pin stabbed through all 3, plus the 2 walls of the receiver and its 2 interior walls. And you must do it all at once, while compressing both mainsprings and keeping the hammers both seated on the mainspring plungers.

I have seen some fancy tools for doing this assembly, and I actually started making one before I decided to just try it with a slave pin first.

After a preliminary alignment with just the straight pick, I pressed the hammers in place one at a time and the pick went through with a little jiggling. Once that was through I
I sharpened an ordinary 8d nail for a slave pin.

Here you see both hammers and y-shaped cocking lever, in the receiver with the slave pin. It's a little thinner than the real pin, so things don't align perfectly yet.
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Here you see the slave pin driven through with the real pin. I had to press each hammer in a bit more, and I did it with a husky screwdriver, minus the removable tip, while tapping the pin through with brass hammer.

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Unfortunately, I don't have a good assembly. The left firing pin is not long enough to make this work, and if I dress off the screw head again the hammer will just smack the cocking lever.

It looks like I will be ordering parts tomorrow, and taking this apart again.
 
You've done a really good job considering the condition the gun was in to start with. I admit, that's probably more than I would've wanted to do, but it looks like you've done a really good job with it so far.

And don't sweat ordering the new firing pins. Those are a wear part, and from the looks of inside the receiver before you cleaned it out, it's been used a lot and time they're replaced.
 
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