Quote Originally Posted by BigSky View Post
J.B.,

I appreciate your ideas to fix the safety on my 1903. I went through the steps you outlined, one step at a time. On the 7th step, the safety moved freely and very easily after I removed it from the sleeve, cocking piece and mainspring. That's the way it worked before I decided to take it apart and clean it. I put it all back together and reinstalled the sleeve/firing pin in the bolt, hoping things would improve once it was all together again. Unfortunately, things didn't change. If I pull on the cocking piece, I can move the safety to the mid-point position, but that's as far as it goes. When I move the safety back to the "ready" position, the spring relaxes. It won't let me push it to the "safe" position. (I hope I'm using all the correct terminology of the parts.)

If I'm making a mistake in the assembly of the bolt sleeve/firing pin assembly, I'm not sure where I'm making the mistake; all of the parts seem to go back together as they should. If I were to take it to the range, would normal operation of the gun fix this problem? Or, do I need to purchase a new bolt assembly? Or, do you have any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks again for your invaluable help.

BigSky
Thanks for your reply!

Now we know what your problem is.

Follow the preceding steps again, but stop after step (4).

Look at the rear of your bolt and you will see a small shallow half-round notch in the top rear of your bolt body.

Look at the front of your bolt sleeve and you will see the small round shank of the safety lock. You will note that the shank of the safety lock is partially milled away.

When the bolt sleeve/firing pin assembly is installed in the rear of the bolt, the safety shank rotates down into that half-round notch in the bolt body and locks the bolt closed. The locking action occurs when the safety lock is rotated past the vertical position.

Your problem is caused by your bolt not being fully closed. Perhaps your rifle's stock is interfering with your bolt handle and keeping the bolt handle from going down all the way. Because your bolt handle is not going down all the way, the notch doesn't line up with the safety shank, and that blocks the safety from rotating fully to the right.

If you can notch the stock and get your bolt handle down all the way, your problem should go away.

Let us know what you find.

Hope this helps.

J.B.