doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Would Appreciate An Information Source

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.

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