Today I thought it would be a good day to fit a set of 32" orphan extractor barrels to a ejector Sterlingworth. Being too ambitious I wanted to convert them to to ejectors as well. That was my mistake. Fitting them to my gun was fairly easy. So I had a set of 30" and 32" barrels fit to my Sterlingworth but one was ejector and one was extractor so I had to convert the new barrels to ejector. Never did that before and wont again I expect.
Then I had to pull the ejector out of a 85 year old set of barrels. The screw retaining the slide spring was locked in solid. After repeated soak, heat, tappings tries it released on the seventh try. Another five minutes to get the ejector retention screw out. A few minutes to clean out the hole which the ejector slides in and I thought I was in good shape.
Over to the scrap ejector barrels, to pull out the ejectors. First I measured to make sure the width of the small pins were the same on the ejectors and extractors and they were almost perfect. Same screw slide spring was stuck twice as bad. Another 30 plus minutes before it gave up. Then the small screw holding ejectors in preventing over travel was another pain in the butt. But out it came after a while.
Good to go I thought. I was until I was 1/4" from seating. I had failed to notice the ejector barrel face was different from the extractor barrel face. Choice time alter the ejector or alter the barrels. I figured it was better to alter the barrels but did not have the equipment or skill to do it.
So off to a friend who has a small machine shop. After he laughed at me for too long, he decided to help. Only took him about 20 minutes to get me straight. Back home for a little file work and honing to make everything perfect it was back to fitting my ejectors. Got them to seat properly but had a lot of drag. So a little marking with a magic marker to find the high spots, then a little smoothing and repeat until they were smooth as glass. But I knew I had to touch up the face of the ejectors and then the shell rims would have to be re-cut. That took another hour to get them done.
Then I was not looking forward to fitting a new fore end to the barrels. I had three ejector fore end to work with and found one which almost fit perfectly. But the ejectors were a mess. After cleaning them, removing rust and 80 years of crude and dirt they worked well. They were strong and well timed.
It took all day, not the three hours I was hoping for. And without my friend, his machine shop and help this project would be back on the bench for who knows how long. So if anyone wants to try this I suggest you send it out to someone who has the equipment and skill to do the job. Whatever they charge you it is worth it in my books. Also I have decided again to not try these type of projects ever again. But I have said that before. Perhaps this time it will stick. Perhaps not.
Last edited by KY Jon; 03/15/18 11:06 PM.
