Attention: Model 07 Gurus, Semi-Gurus, and Virtual Gurus|Page 3|Restoration, Repair and Maintenance|Forum|Winchester Collector

In looking over this thread, I see I left the issue hanging about why my 07 wouldn’t fire at the range. Everybody who participated knows what happened via messaging and emails but, for the sake of posterity,  the problem was a sticky internal safety lever. When carrying to the range, I broke the 07 down and stowed it in a Boyt takedown case. It hadn’t been taken down very much over its life and the fit is very stiff and the edges of the parts sharp and unworn. Apparently, it is possible to reassemble the two halves, cinch down the takedown screw and not have the internal lever retract because the two halves are not quite aligned. Three of us looked the gun over when it failed to fire and saw nothing untoward. 

In any event, I brushed a lot of Kroil into and around the little lever assembly, dried everything off, sprayed all the moving surfaces with BreakFree CLP and let it set overnight. I reassembled the gun and function checked it with the 10 dummy rounds I’d made up, pulling the trigger on each chambered round to hear it strike the dead primer. I carried it to the range assembled. 

At the range, it fired everything I fed it. I really didn’t keep track of where the slugs landed because I was more interested in where the brass was landing. I finally figured out the ejection port needed to be centered in and up against the open end of the brass catcher net, to trap the flying cases, which are ejected at high velocity in random directions from the port. But the gun itself never failed to fire, eject and reload smoothly. 

Confirmed. 

I will say my late “police rifle” style 1907 was very comfortable to shoot compared to a much older one I once owned. I suspect that gun had a worn out buffer. Although I think it would still be a handful if modified to full auto, the late Saul Lebman’s conversions were probably not as impractical as I once believed. Because shooting at moving vehicles was a popular Prohibition Era sport, I think the ballistics of the .351 just might have provided that extra edge. 

To me, the design of the 1907 (and I presume the 1905 and 1910, as well) action shows off the remarkable talent of T. C. Johnson in evading the network of interlocking patents awarded to JMB to protect the Browning long recoil action. 

What is not often mentioned about Johnson is his sense of esthetics, which he apparently passed on to the junior members of the Gun Design Department. Until 1964,  almost all of the really new and particularly the top line, guns created by the department on his watch or as a result of his tutelage, were remarkably sleek and pleasing to the eye. The Model 54 and subsequent 70, the 52 Sporting and 75 Sporting, the Models 12, 50 and 59 shotguns, and the 88 and 100 rifles — even the Model 37 shotgun was a standout among its competitors. The exception, for some reason, was the Model 61 hammerless. Although it’s my next favorite rimfire repeater, it is a little awkward-looking compared to Pedersen’s Remington Model 12 and 121.