One of my friends sent out a family heirloom Iver Johnson Hercules Grade SXS to have some rust removed and have the action lubricated. Unfortunately, he sent it to a modern gun pawn shop type smith, who apparently wasn’t very familiar with old box lock doubles. When he got the gun back, most of the rust was still there, and the top lever was about 1/8th inch proud of the frame, and the top lever had to be manually returned to center upon closing the breech.
Can anyone point me to a resource for a schematic for these guns? I’m comfortable working on old guns, but mostly I work on LC Smiths. I could likely figure it out if I just jumped into it, but I’d much prefer to know where I was going before I started pulling it apart.
Thanks,
John

The Hercules had a long production run and I'm sure there are variations. Most obvious from the outside are the mono-bloc barrels on the early guns and chopper-lump barrels on the later ones. This from the mid-1930s --

Thanks Researcher! That’s exactly what I was hoping for. On my way to the bench right now.
Have a great weekend.
John

Forend on the non-ejector sure looks like the common J spring rather than a D&E to me.

Numrich Arms might show the semantic on their website.

https://www.gunpartscorp.com/gun-manufacturer/iver-johnson/shotguns-ij/dbl-barrel-shotgun?page=2

Thanks for all the responses! With the insight gained from Researchers post I was able to get it apart and discover that the previous “Smith” had not gotten the vertical leg of the top lever aligned with its machined hole in the trigger plate. The result was a top lever higher than the top of the receiver, and the top lever would not return to center when released. Once I was able to get it properly aligned, it worked like a champ.

Truly appreciate everyone’s help!

John

Now how about giving folks here the name of this incompetent clod so we all know who to avoid.

Steve