doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Winchester Model 21 Trap ?

Ithaca5E and Old Joe are right about the stop screw on the Model 21. It does nothing to tighten up a loose gun or prolong the need for normal hinge or bolt maintenance at the time of high mileage looseness. The "silliness" of the Model 21 stop screw is that many owners, like Joe implies, screw the thing all the way in when the gun is young, and the bolt travel follows the screw into the slot to the end of travel in the next few hundred rounds, eliminating any further "adjustment" for the rest of the life of the gun. The correct use of the screw is to adjust it as far in as the bolt will allow without the first hint of sticking, assuming the gun is tightly locked shut at that adjustment. At the point where the bolt just starts to stick, Winchester recommends that the screw be backed out until it no longer sticks in the slot. On a fresh and new Model 21, this adjustment will allow many years of very minor adjustments of the screw to keep the gun crisp working and tightly locked. Although the reference to the stop screw as an adjustment screw may be a michaelmcintoshism, he is not the first to incorrectly describe the function of this feature.

Eightbore - I'm all for enlightenment. Did Winchester in fact describe in an owner's manual the adjustment process you described? Fun post, this.

You guys got to help me out here 'cause I'm still skeptical of that little thing. Everyone else survives quite nicely without it. Regardless, whether you have a yahoo slamming the gun shut or a yahoo dicking with the screw every time his wife goes off to the sewing club, the result will be the same - not good.

Eightbore - see what you made me go and do? A web search got me to a very early version of the 21 owner's manual which described that pesky little screw as you said. Hmmm...

Thanks guys for the help i will get the gun patterned to see POI the gun is in good condition so i am only interested in a side by side that shoots a high pattern as i am coming over from the dark side as a long time u/o shooter and i dont want to have to jack up the comb to high as i like a reasonably flat rib . Thanks Scott.

You don't mean it! I am shocked! :p

Schwing wrote that the factory started bending the barrels up at some point (50s?) to make them shoot higher - they called it flip up I believe.

Best,

Mike

A bit late to reply, but, yes, the instruction manuals explain that the screw is a bolt stop that should be adjusted to make the bolt stick slightly, then backed out until the bolt does NOT stick. I sold a wonderful Custom Grade to a friend who obviously was less disturbed by the well to the left lever position of the low mileage gun than I was. Obviously, someone, probably the original owner, had run the screw all the way in when the gun was new and it probably only took a couple of thousand rounds for the bolt to find its way to the end of its travel. The result was that the top lever took on a position that resembled a gun that had been fired hundreds of thousands of times.