My gunsmith that retired Jan.1 came out of retirement and helped me get the barrels refitted. It was a long process of removeing very small amounts of metal and fitting to the action. All in all we spent five hours fitting the barrels to the action.Usnig a magic marker and closing the gun a few times made shiney spots that we carefully removed with a very fine tooth file that I ordered from Browneel's. The file was fine enough that it was like almost polishing the barrel breach surfaces.The top lever now sits just a little to the right of center.
I learned a lot but don't really want to do another one next week.

This is the second Parker that has had this problem and it's the last one for me to get case colored.

I want to thank everyone who gave good advise.

Regards, Gordon

so what would you charge per hour,ha
Glad you got it done!

I still don't think that taking metal off the breach face is the proper way to fit barrels. I wouldn't do it to mine.

Dave
No disrespect, but how would you do it? besides the obvious of not re-doing the case colors.

Regards, Gordon

Dave
I didn't take material off of the breach face of the action. We took metal off of the breach face of the barrels. I did not make this clear in my original post. I am sorry for this stupid attack.

Gordon

I mean no disrespect to you either. I'm not a barrel fitter.
I just think I would have taken metal off the hook, and/or the barrel flats. Before I would have removed any metal from the breach end of the barrels.
Regards, Dave Miles

In doing this fitting it was evident that the standing breach was "tweeked". When we started we had light coming through the bottom fo the barrels and the water table. As we progresed the space got smaller and smaller. Much the same thing with the barrels and the standing breach. As we got closer to a good fit and the action bar intersecting the bottom of the barrel lump the space between the barrels and the standing breach got tighter. Last weekend I had .0015 thousands between the right barrel and the standing breach. Today that feeler gauge will almost go into the space between the barrels and the standing breach on both sides.

I think Ron Coleman (retierd gunsmith) did not want to take much material away from the hook as it would have been getting the barrel breach away form the standing breach. With the "tweeked" condition of the action this might have caused more problems that it would have solved. I asked about this and Ron said it was not out of the question but he wanted to get the barrels matched up with the standing breach as well as possible. This sounded logical to me. We did not need to remove any material from the hook area.

Regards, Gordon

Is the fit of the doll's head extension affected in any way?

jack

I watched a retired gunsmith who had been a barrel fitter long ago, who had fit barrels for Fox, back when they were still in Philadelphia. He was fitting two sets of barrels to a gun which had been recase colored. One set I think was from the gun and the second was new to the gun. He was one of the old school, measure several times and cut once, type of craftsman who could almost feel the adjustments as much as see or explain them.

Lamp black, files, small hard stones, fine emory paper and a hammer were used. He said that the frame had warped slightly in the coloring. He set the reciever on a thick leather pad and stuck it smartly with a lead faced hammer. My eyes got real wide at that point. Checked the fit and repeated the hammering again. Then he went to work with the files and later the small polishing stones. Entire process took half an hour for the first set of barrels.

Then he fit the second set by only adjusting the second set of barrels. No more adjustments were made to the reciever. Last he fit the one fore end to the second set of barrels. He told me that often it was far easier to get each barrel to fit a seperate fore end than try to use the same for both. Sometimes the second barrels would not fit very well to the one fore end and he said that he "had to split the difference". The man was so fast that it made me understand just how little most of the "gunsmiths" that I knew realy knew. More theory than fact and more theoritical than experience.

Other than striking the reciever, with a hammer, I have used most of the tricks that I saw him do that day in fitting barrels. Just wish I had a chance to work with him a few days. I am sure he could have shown me tons more if I had only asked. I regret that I can not remember his name. Sad, I can see his face and remember he had kind of a hissing whistle as he let air out between his teeth. Some little diddy that he use to whistle. I was very young in those days and he seemed older than dirt to me. In fact he had to be past 70 or 75 at the time and that was over 40 years ago. I guess that makes me close to older than dirt myself.

rabbit

The fit of the dolls head itself was not affected much. The area at the dolls head base took some fileing though. There is a small keeper and screw that holds the ejectors in place and that was not in the barrels when we fit them. After fitting, the ejectors did not heed any fileing or the keeper for that matter.

Ron has fit quite a few barrels but mostly on over and unders. I think he did this Parker the right way but thats only my opinion.

It would be very informative to have seen the gun smith that KY Jon described. Someone with that kind of knowledge is not replaceable. I don't think I would want to take a hammer to the standing breach of a double but the first time I saw a guy in the Chicago Ford plant adjust a door on a new car I was amazed at that to. I guess everything is relative to getting the job done and being efficient with your time.

Regards, Gordon

I have read articles relating to old time gunmaking where they refered to "Soft fitting" & "Hard fitting". The soft fitting was done prior to case hardening & was by filing etc to get proper fit. Hard fitting was done after the casing & consisted of "Bending" back into place, "Hammering ie". This was the makers doing this.

Gordon, is the ejector retainer (the small rectangle of steel half-dovetailed to the underside of the extension and pierced by tiny machine screw) the part that needed reduction? Does that mean the bottom of the socket changed shape in the recase process? No, now I notice you say it didn't.

jack