Progress continues!
I have re-shaped the magazine tube and now it's installed and operating correctly. I used what I had handy as a "mandrel" in order to support from the inside while I gently tapped around the area. Worked like a charm.
I used the EZE-lap diamond honing stones to remove that bump under the full cock notch, and now it holds in full cock as it should.
So with that I loaded up 6 A-zoom 32-20 snap caps through the loading gate and they all went in perfectly. Cycled the lever, and again, all working as expected! Closed the lever, chambered just right. But a pull of the trigger and it fell... to the half-cock notch! So I just cycled the rest of the 5 rounds and all of them extracted perfectly.
So removing the lower tang assembly and looking closer at things, I saw 2 potential problems. First is on the top of the half cock notch, there is another bump that seems to be too much "in the way" of the sear once the trigger is pulled. So I did some light filing and stoning of that area. It helped, but not enough. Second problem is the trigger and the sear seem too "loosely" connected. The trigger sort of dangles there - as you pull it, there is "take-up" but not like normal take-up where you have some spring-resistance there... It just dangles. So taking it apart it looks like there is a small crack in the trigger just on top of the pin hole. This combined with a little deformation of that area and it is just too loose against the sear. So when you pull the trigger, it can't come back enough to push the sear far enough away from the hammer for it to clear the half-cock notch. That looseness was always there, I just hadn't been familiar with 1873's to know whether that was normal.
So, I just ordered up another trigger and I'll install that once it arrives. I'm pretty confident that will fix the problem.
The folks at homesteadparts.com must love me!
More to come, and thanks again for the help.
-Jason
I have re-shaped the magazine tube and now it's installed and operating correctly. I used what I had handy as a "mandrel" in order to support from the inside while I gently tapped around the area. Worked like a charm.
I used the EZE-lap diamond honing stones to remove that bump under the full cock notch, and now it holds in full cock as it should.
So with that I loaded up 6 A-zoom 32-20 snap caps through the loading gate and they all went in perfectly. Cycled the lever, and again, all working as expected! Closed the lever, chambered just right. But a pull of the trigger and it fell... to the half-cock notch! So I just cycled the rest of the 5 rounds and all of them extracted perfectly.
So removing the lower tang assembly and looking closer at things, I saw 2 potential problems. First is on the top of the half cock notch, there is another bump that seems to be too much "in the way" of the sear once the trigger is pulled. So I did some light filing and stoning of that area. It helped, but not enough. Second problem is the trigger and the sear seem too "loosely" connected. The trigger sort of dangles there - as you pull it, there is "take-up" but not like normal take-up where you have some spring-resistance there... It just dangles. So taking it apart it looks like there is a small crack in the trigger just on top of the pin hole. This combined with a little deformation of that area and it is just too loose against the sear. So when you pull the trigger, it can't come back enough to push the sear far enough away from the hammer for it to clear the half-cock notch. That looseness was always there, I just hadn't been familiar with 1873's to know whether that was normal.
So, I just ordered up another trigger and I'll install that once it arrives. I'm pretty confident that will fix the problem.
The folks at homesteadparts.com must love me!
More to come, and thanks again for the help.
-Jason