Posted by John Liles on September 7, 2015, 7:05 am, in reply to "Re: Frozen Top Lever"
Hello Jerry, I'm sorry for casting doubt upon your stocker, especially since it's you! Having spent years rehabilitating mechanical bascule and swing span highway bridges, I do pretty well mechanically myself,but my hat really goes off to the guys that can take a beautiful wood blank and turn it into a stock for a side-lock shotgun. In answer to your questions above, removing the trigger plate will always cause the vertical leg of the top lever to be offset in the direction of top lever spring effort. This will always cause some degree of top lever binding. If the top lever is bound up all the way to the right (with the breech face facing away from you), make sure you depress the small button (pin) that is engaged by the rib extension from the barrels in the rectangular recess between the firing pins. That pin is what causes the top lever to return to center when the barrels are installed and the action is closed. Depress the pin at the same time you try to move the top lever toward center. If it turns out that the button was the reason that the lever was rigidly stuck, great, but you still will need to properly orient the top lever vertical leg before final re-assembly. There are several ways to skin that cat. Our technical adviser David Williamson has some great photos of a jig he produced that makes the process a walk in the park. Hopefully he'll post a picture or two here. It's been a while since this topic has been covered so now's a good time to reintroduce the topic for those who've wandered in since it was last discussed. If you'd like, feel free to click on my email above and I'll be glad to offer what help I can via email. This will be a great project for you! John