1897 Project No. 1

[ssgross]

took some vacation days this week. was tearing the receiver on this one down to get it ready for re-finishing. The inside is full of dull reddish brown sludge. Will get a good scrub before boiling. The bolt face shows wear - but no shiny spots. Some other areas / parts lead me to believe this shotgun has been re-blued before. The serial, however, of the broken extension matches the receiver - so I don't think it's a parts-rifle.


Looking the receiver over after disassembly, it should clean up real nice!...except the chamber ring screws are already buggered. Now we can't have a beautifully slow-hand-blued receiver with ugly buggered screw heads now can we. One side came out ok. The other side is frozen in, and not enough screw head left to bite on. I tried soaking overnight in kroil. tried some heat too, and no. One of my nice screwdriver bits even bent trying to get it. It will likely need to be drilled out and then chase the threads clean. This will be dicey work as there is a shank below the threads, just undersized. I'll have to drill very carefully to the minor diameter of the threads, not too big to enlarge the hole, but big enough to separate the bottom half of the screw.
I'm trying to guess the thread pitch. On the screw that came out, the diameter is 0.118, and I think I counted 6 threads in 1/8 inch. This makes me guess it's #4-48...or maybe #5-44. Hard to tell as the threads go all the way up the head and the top few are buggered. #5-44 are unobtainable to test...but a tap set is cheap and easy to get.

I'm not worried...yet. Let's get the receiver metal prepped and keep plugging along.

EDIT: The chamber ring screws are indeed x-xx . I found a screw at the bottom of the odd bits jar, and...perfect fit. Maybe the original measured a few thous. wider because it was over tightened.