I am cleaning up a very early G&H '03 and bringing it back to original with a Lyman 48S and getting rid of the non original optical sights. It has a Stith mount that I know nothing about. There are what look like very small hex screws in various places, but I'm afraid to try to loosen them. The disassembly of this mount is not an obvious procedure. Can anyone supply me with copies or a scan of the Stith installation instructions? This is not the Stith "No Drill" mount.
eightbore,
I can't help with Stith instructions, but suggest you might want to closely inspect for signs of taper pins, which were pretty common during the time period Stith was a popular mount.
Mike
Thanks skeettx for the reference. I found that brochure on the net for no charge, but it didn't give me any information on how to dismantle the complicated mount. Der Ami, I will look the mount over with a magnifier for signs of pins and screws.
eightbore,
Taper pins were common on side mounts, not so much on top mounts. What made me think of it was your statement that small hex screws were used.
Mike
Looking at the pictures in Strobels they show a master mount and a dovetail mount. The dovetail mount is pretty straight forward and uses a base mounted on the action by screws. The master mount is similar to the old Bausch & Lomb mount and appears to be mounted with screws. Hopefully its not the one that mounting screws are in an angle.
I have had a number of Stith mounts over the years and Stith seemed to have a thing for hex screws. He used them to create composite parts which another manufacturer would have made one piece. This is particularly true of the front mounts which make use of the dovetail slot in the barrel created for the rear sight.
Most Stith mounts are fastened to the receiver using the factory drill and tapped holes for receiver sights and are held on with the same sort of ordinary screws used by those sights. I would ignore the hex screws and simply remove the slotted screws, if any.
I figured it out and got the monstrosity off my wonderful old Springfield. Unfortunately there is a menagerie of holes in the front ring and elsewhere. My mount is not the style that uses the front sight dovetail. Once I turned the big wheel until the screw came detached, the scope slid out of the spring retainer and all the hex screws were exposed. Then everything came apart with no problems. What an engineering nightmare.
I cleaned up all the metal parts of the old Griffin and Howe '03. Now that the rust is gone, I'll have to decide whether to replace the drilled out action with another 1924 action without holes. I know it wouldn't be original, but there would be no way to identify it as a replacement since there is no engraving on the action itself. Presently, I will probably just install plug screws in the Stith holes and reinstall a 48S base, which I found in my junk box. I need a top for the 48 and screws to mount the base. Can anyone help me with those? The wood is ready for stripping, with no obvious damage. There are no marks on the wood that would indicate who the original stocker was, probably Seymour Griffin. The original trap buttplate cleaned up nicely, and the screws are not bad at all.
This gun was found on a table full of rusty military rifles at a Richmond, Virginia show a couple of decades ago. My gun show buddy bought it and never did the restoration, and recently agreed that I should own it. It is G&H #109, which, according to Michael Petrov, would have been or might have been the ninth 30-06 made at G&H after the founding. The barrel is the original Poldi Anticorro part octagon ribbed variation. The floorplate and guard are fully engraved with gold inlaid initials which Bob Beach and Griffin and Howe cannot identify.
I washed the wood with Murphy's oil soap, scrubbed some more with Linspeed and 000 steel wool, wiped it down and applied one final coat to dry. All metal is derusted and waxed, all scope mount screw holes are plugged, the gun reassembled with screws straight. The old scope is filed away, permanently, along with related parts. My Lyman 48S is mounted and everything is ready for testfire. Virgil Griffin apparently did a great job of inletting because I needed some whacks from a plastic hammer to get the metal back into the wood. For a 97 year old rifle, the restoration was a piece of cake. The gold inlaid initials are RDT. Thanks again for all advice received on this thread.