Winchester Model 21 Takedown and Reassembly -- lessons learned|Winchester Shotguns|Forum|Winchester Collector

You would think I’d learned my lesson: not all double barrel shotguns use the Deeley forearm latch. Thie first time I ran into this was a few few years ago when I finally was able to buy a Browning Superposed. It was built in 1972, so it did not come with a manual but why should I care? I’d been using one double gun or another for a while. Are they not ever so easy to take down into 3 pieces by pulling the latch handle? 

No, not all of them. Specifically, the last two shotguns on my 1956 wish list, a Superposed and a Winchester 21. 

John Moses Browning was concerned the forearm of his Superposed gun might become mislaid or lost so it does not separate from the barrel assembly in the normal takedown process. You open the forearm latch, slide the forearm forward, then push the receiver’s barrel latch to the right and lift the barrel set off the receiver. The forearm stays with the barrels. You want to take it off the barrels? You better have a seriously extensive gunsmithing screwdriver bit set on hand. 

Courtesy of YouTube, I learned what to do with the Browning. A shame I didn’t learn the larger lesson. 

Fast forward to 2025 and my first and only Winchester Model 21, a 1947 Skeet gun happily built to prewar standards, e.g. finer and more extensive checkering than was soon thereafter to be the case. 

The plan was for TxGunNut and me to break the gun in with a couple of rounds of Skeet, said plan hanging fire for too long. 

For various reasons, the Winchester never got out of secure storage until last Wednesday, even though the first couple of days of the week were perfect for a round of Skeet. For those of you not familiar with North Texas Winter weather, “perfect” means no precipitation and calm. It can be very cold and still qualify but what the local cowboys call “breezy” will snatch your loaded, hard gun case off the shooting bench and send it ten yards downrange. It is relentless and you can’t hear yourself think, all the while you’re being slapped and pinched by stray objects and your own clothing. A car door can hurt you real bad. 

Still, Mike offered to pull birds for me so I could try out the Winchester. Wednesday we met up at our club range (about a 45 minute drive North for me)  despite a prairie wind that was grading up from moan to howl. 

I had read up just enough to know how to take the Winchester down and put it into an aluminum hard case. While Mike patiently stood nearby, I set the case on my truck’s tailgate and tried to put the gun back together. Couldn’t do it. Tried harder and longer, without success, all the while becoming increasingly concerned about this floppy leaf spring sticking up out of

the inletting and wondering where it was supposed to go when I pressed the beavertail forearm into place. No clue. Mike looked at it and asked if it might be broken. After about twenty minutes of trying not to bend the spring or break the very expensive-looking, thin and colorful forearm – while getting beaten up by the howling wind — we concluded wisdom was the better part of valor and closed the gun up in its case. 

Back home, I was unable to find an exploded drawing of the Model 21 forearm assembly. Lots of illustrations of the receiver only. However, the “Tennessee Gunsmith” has a long, interesting video illustrating the job of making a replacement forearm from scratch for a Model 21, the original forearm of which had been cracked. I learned several things: 

1.  The leaf spring of concern is called the “forearm roller latch spring”. It holds tension on the latch when closed. The tip of the spring fits into an angle of a protrusion attached to the bottom of barrel set. 

2. Mine is not broken but the reassembly should always  be undertaken carefully, to avoid cracking off very expensive wood or distorting the spring.

3. The Model 21 should not be taken down unless the hammers are cocked. Doing so with uncocked hammers greatly increases the risk of damage if you are hamhanded. 

4. The milling required to create the forearm latch inletting is complex, multilayered,  requires an extrordinarily high level of skill and is very time consuming, compared to any other forearm design this gunsmith had seen. The work he turned out was beautiful but the price tag must have been frightening. 

The video gave me my first real insight into why the Model 21 was not and could never be a production item.