doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Winchester 21 assembly / general questions

[img:center]C:\Documents and Settings\ohallalan\My Do
cuments\GUN2.JPG[/img] Most of us know the 21 is a great gun and I love mine. My Dad had a Lefever and I just had to have one.A friend found a mint DS grade 20 and I got it.This was in 1960 and I sent it to Frank Lefever and had the chambers lengthened to 2 3/4 and I was in heaven. I remember taking it to the skeet field and an old gent telling me I shouldn't shoot that gun and I ask why. O he said they won't take it.

Three years later after a broken firing pin , a loose rib and a cocking hook that would only cock when you held the the gun up side down it went down the road.The old gent knew. After a couple other guns I ordered my 20 in 1967. As I said earlier what a pleaure.
AC

Tudurgs, could the flaking be because of a different finish rather than a different steel? Model 12 receivers in certain eras flake like Model 21 floorplates, but I don't think the Model 12 receiver changed material. Model 21 top levers flake also.

Bill - re-reading Schwing doesn't tell me about differing metals. Only thing I can find (page 43) is that "the trigger plate was blued with the frame, and also head treated. It was fastened to the frame so as to absorb the same amount of blue. Sometimes the metal finishers had difficulty gettng the color to match". After 1939 the bluing process changed, but there is no mention of differing processes or materials between the frame and trigger plate

My understanding is the transition to the hot-blue du-lite technique took place over a number of years, but was basically complete by the time "postwar" guns appear.

Frankly, I find a bit of flaking on a prewar somewhat reassuring - though I suppose even that can be faked. 21 frames flaked, too - not just 21 floorplates.

I can't remember seeing an original postwar Winchester that flaked. Anyone?

Sam

My guess (and it is only that) as to why the trigger plate bluing flakes more or quicker than the receiver itself is that the trigger plate has a different heat treating done to it.
I think the difference in heat treatment/hardness effects the way the earlier blue of the pre war guns adheres/wears on those parts.

From the way the trigger plate cuts compared to the frame itself, I'd guess the trigger plate had little or no additional heat treatment hardness given to it at all.
The original mfr frames can be anything from very tough to near impossible to cut. Very tough on tools, even carbide.
The trigger plates cut much easier.

I would bet you are correct Mr. Kutter.

2piper,

Your comments got me rethinking the whole SXS design.

If the rear lump has an active load bearing role, then the stresses are kept within the rear part of the frame and transmitted to the barrels themselves. Which raises the question about the wisdom of not allowing the whole of the action bar to come into play in countering the loads developed during firing, as would be the case with no rear lump contact.

I thought that the action bridge was there to resist torsional deformation forces rather than those acting fore and aft. As I recall there are shotguns with neither a bridge nor separate lumps, mostly folding cheap types and they seem to hold up well under hard use and minimal maintenance, as per the Bernardelli Game model. The comparison is not fair however, because most of these folders are trigger plate actions with no recesses for cocking levers, springs etc and therefore have fairly stiff action bars that can contain the stresses within each side in the absence of the bridge.

This will take some renewed analysis and gives me an excuse to start looking critically at a lot of shotguns, which is not such a bad thing!

I now have it from a former Winchester engraver (P. Muerrle) that the trigger plates were heat treated seperately and some were very hard and some not. This would explain why only some of the plates flaked.

More pics!



Not a closet Queen by any means, but goes with me every fall.
12 guage, 28 barrels, Mod. and Full.
All original. Stock is marked with serial number 163xx.

I LIKE HER.
Ducks dont.

MooseGooser