I recently purchased what I hoped would be a nice German drilling, a Carl Stiegele back action hammer gun. As soon as it arrived I noticed that it had a few issues.

1. The top lever is loose, there is hardly any tension on it at all. Push it to the right and it stays there. Push it back to the center and it stays there. The screw holding the trigger assembly to the action is frozen and I stabbed myself pretty badly in the thumb trying to get it off so it will likely be a while before I'm able to get the stock off and assess what is wrong.

My initial thought is that it's maybe a broken or cracked top lever spring? Is the gun still safe to shoot if that's the case, since I can push the lever back to center, or does that need to be fixed first?

2. The left hammer would not hold back and stay cocked. Initially I was afraid that the tumblers might be worn, but on taking out the lock I saw that the sear spring screw was broken. The little bit that screws into the lock plate is still there, but the screw sheared right at the juncture of the screw and the plate, so the sear spring was out of position. My options, best as I can tell, are:

a. Send to a shotgun smith to have a new screw made. I'm assuming this will be very expensive.
b. Try to buy screws from similar shotguns of that era, say L.C. Smith, and see if they work.
c. Try to find screws that small at the hardware store and modify them to fit.

3. In taking the gun apart I found that the tang screw under the trigger guard that holds the top tang to the stock had also sheared. It's actually bent just before the threaded section and the tip is, once again, still in the tang. So I'll need to find a new screw for that too.

For background, this gun came in a lot and this was the primary gun I wanted from the lot. Paid less than $1,000 for the lot, with one of the other guns probably being worth $500-600 at least. The bores are in great shape, stock appears to have quite a bit of oil in the head but no cracks, and the action locks up very tightly, so I definitely want to keep her. But with a new baby and starting to save to buy a house, $500-1000 in repairs just isn't in the cards right now.

Any suggestions?