Mike

Contact Mark Douglas for fitting. 

Good luck and keep us posted.

Tony

The gun: Winchester Model 94 AE in .45 Colt. As far as I can tell it has never been fired.

The symptom: the carrier sits up and blocks the loading gate. You cannot get a round in the side at all. Push the carrier down by hand and a round goes right in.

The history: the previous owner never figured out why it would not load. It went to two gunsmiths and came back both times with no fix. I finally tore it down myself.

The cause: the carrier spring was missing. Not broken, not worn, just not in the gun. Either it was never installed or it was lost in an earlier teardown and nobody caught it.

The part: Winchester factory original, number U346420060, listed for standard calibers. The only chambering that gets a different spring is .357 Mag, part U346421180. Under ten dollars from Midwest Gun Works.

Why it is hard to find: the factory disassembly procedure stops before the carrier spring and says further disassembly is not recommended. 

I am in complete understanding of you're statements, and have been accused of playing the banjo, while hunting deer in my younger days, back in our hunting woods in PA, on our family farm. A lot of deer and meat have been harvested over the years in that Timber.

To me the carbine and having a tang sight, may be quicker and a lot easier for some, to gather they're sight picture to squeeze some rounds off, but not for me as open sight in my younger days, when my eyesight was pretty darn good, was a lot faster and easier and a lot of fun! We also have the right set up with several thousand acres of private hunting timber, that's been in the family since the early 1950's. 

Tony

I've got a Marlin Mountie with a Williams FP receiver sight, a blank in the barrel dovetail, and Redfield Sourdough up front. To sight in, I use a .125 disk but remove it for tracking jack rabbits and cottontails underway with the hammer down. 

Same thing with my Winchester 62 and a Marble's tang sight, except there's a big fat "ivory" bead up front. 

I'll admit to my close friends there is a reason both rifles are repeaters. 

skierd said

Made it all the way to the end, and finally buggered something up. The lower tang screw got its threads mushed trying to find its way through the lever and carrier lifter. I’ll try to figure out a way to repair the threads but worst case
I’ll try to figure out a way to repair the threads but worst case I’ll source a replacement.
 
The rear sight is bent, like it was dropped with the ladder deployed and bent itself at a 45 degree angle to the lower part of the sight. Might try to replace the ladder, might just get a dovetail blank and a tang sight. 

David,

As I said before, I like what you've done to try to keep this 1900 mfg. carbine, that was you're wife's grandfathers, original. A few things I noticed that you said, so I'll whey in. These carbines we're designed as short, 20 inch barrels, for handy quick work. Putting a tang sight on this carbine just doesn't seem practical to me. I would rather try to straighten the old ladder sight and keep it original or replace it with another period correct one, as you stated. The thing is, when you get into a project like this, the hardest part is to not go too far, with trying to make it better than what it was or is. You're SRC has a lot of nice original finish remaining on it, and needs to stay as is and not get enhanced at all, as you've done a great job doing. IMHO!

Whether you source another tang screw that got buggered up, or take you're time and fix it is another choice you will decide on. It's easy to get anxious to start rushing along also and life's chores and responsibilities can demand our time, and this weighs in on our decisions. My point is the screw can be worked on and fixed without removing too much original metal from the threads. It takes time, and in many cases a nice winter project as I have a few for in climate weather days on my list myself. I would also try to re straighten the rear sight! IMHO!

I'm thinking that you're latest picture of the gap in the wood vs. the earlier picture was because of the butt stock not being tightly secured in place revealing that gap at the receiver. Possibly a rushed picture do to daily responsibilities and time limitations. That's how screws get buggered up. Assembly oil, (gun grease), while putting it back together, is a must for me, while doing this. IMHO!

I'm wondering what the letter looks like and a picture of it would be great to see, even if you want to block the letter head with you're address out as most here do. Showing that crescent rifle butt, with the trapdoor, is something we don't see a lot of, as Steve mentioned. I'm wondering how many actually left the factory like yours did, and in the third model vs. the first and second models. Maybe Bob can weigh in and let us know his thoughts or what the updated survey indicates.

You've done a great job with the re freshening of this honest example, (and keeping it all original), and were all very grateful you took the time to share it with us along the way. It's okay to put it down until time allows to carefully work on it. I've been there before, where trying to rush or hurry, near the finish line can happen. It's human nature! IMHO!

Tony

Tony

One more suggestion I would make is get a letter from the Cody Museum.  I think it would be interesting to have given how long the carbine has been in the family.  But my main interest would be to verify the buttstock.  This is a SRC and should have a carbine butt.  The rifle butt on a SRC would be special order.  Which did happen - I have a '73 SRC with a rifle butt myself (that letters).

I replaced the rear sight with a skinner peep sight. I picked up a screw set from Homestead Gun parts and was able to get the lever spring screws and tang screws replaced. I cleaned up a couple other screw heads too. 

I built some dummy 44WCF rounds to test feeding, and everything seemed to be good to go. So I decided to go for it and load it up 10 live rounds.  Starline brass, WLP, Missouri bullet company 210gr black powder bullets, and 2.2cc (36-ish grains) of 3F Swiss. 

Average velocity for the 10 rounds was 1200fps and I was able to ring an 8” steel plate consistently at 25 yards. Considering this rifle probably hasn’t been shot in 50+ years, and I have never sighted it in, and I replaced the rear site, I’m extremely happy. Exactly

IMGUR BP loads

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.

Zebulon said

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. 
  

It seems that all of the Winchester S.L.R. center fire rifles suffer that very same malady.

Bert

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.