doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sterlingworth questions

regarding your question of the orientation for the "trip" as it is called (stop in a previous reference), the flat side goes to the rear.

Thanks All!

Got the trip oriented correctly, and found a spring that works for the time being. I've saved springs from different projects and had one that fit. I think it was a firing pin spring or extractor spring from something.

As far as the ejectors go, I'm going to go the route of making pins and mating them to the existing ejectors.

Thank you for all of the feedback and council.

New question: what is the safest way to separate the forend iron from the wood? The seems to be only one screw holding the iron in, but there is an ornate metal piece set into the wood on the opposite side.

One might question why you feel the need to take the wood off the forearm iron? At any rate there are two screws the one you mention down through the forearm iron into the escutcheon and one in from the back to the yoke inlet in the wood around the forearm iron.

Needs some new finish. Buttstock is worse, and has a poorly fit and decayed pad.

That round piece you refer to that is inlet into the forend is the escutcheon. It is what the screw threads into. After removing the forend iron it will usually tap out easily from the inside. Be careful that you don't splinter off any small chips of wood as you remove it. I haven't had that problem but, never say never.

SRH

In the disassembly instruction cited earlier, the author states that they always remove the auto safety rods. Maybe a poll would be better than a question, but if folks are willing to reply I would appreciate knowing reasons why people do and do not remove this feature.

Thank you

I do not own a Sterlingworth or any grade of Fox for that matter. I do not however de-activate the auto safety feature on any of my doubles which have them. I was never involved in serious competitive target shooting, primarily hunting & a bit of casual clays for practise. As my desire was to always take the gun "OFF Safe" as it came to shoulder, it therefore required to be "On Safe" prior to the mount. For this purpose there is simply no handicap to an auto-safe & its just a bit of insurance. I have never however conditioned myself to just automatically rely on that auto feature but check each time I load or reload the gun.
For a gun which might see use both on a target range & as a hunting gun Lefever Arms Co had the best design I am aware of.
They used a 3 position safety. center position was safe, forward was fire which was automatically returned to safe upon opening & closing closing the gun. The rear fire position however was not a manual setting as on most other 3-position safeties but rather by turning a screw in located in the top tang the safety could be locked into the rear fire position, thus making it a non-safety gun. Unless locked out by the screw it would not stay in the rear position.

There is absolutely no good reason to remove the safety rod except for risking it's loss or gumming it up during the refinishing process and then re-installing it prior to reassembly.

When doing a custom restock, the auto safety rods are often removed on a Fox because this is the area that is most likely to crack. It is very thin up in the left part of the cheek. Dan Rossiter of Custom Stocks and Steel told me he recommends this when he is redoing a gun. On an existing stock, the wood has already been removed so I'm not sure what the point would be other than personal preference or the convenience factor.