doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com FIndings on cracking my alpha/omega Parker

First of all, you can't trust J. B. Wood (or perhaps his layout editor). Says and pictures right there in the Gun Digest Disassembly No. V that you can get the stock off a Parker with the sears in place. (I checked the pic closely and the tails are showing and the stock is coming off?) Well, it don't work that way unless maybe half the web in the inletting is missing. This stock is very healthy for 90 yrs. old and as Jim Akins says, the sear axle has to come out.

So I pull the trigger plate (this well before the sear interference lesson) and that connecting rod that sits on the cocking tumbler (don't know the correct terms and don't really care at present) falls out. So I look at the orientation of that for a bit and I find the lever trip and get that out and then I'm looking for a spring underneath and find it's internal to the gizmozis. So I take a quick look and comparison of the sears and hammer notches, put them back in and then find I can't put the barrels and forend back on and cock it without all the extra crap under the hood in place plus the trigger plate. (Don't need no trigger plate with the Fox; you just raise the sears by hand.) So I finally get a sequence for getting hooks hooked and all the other stuff that has to seat against the spring loaded plunger (unlocking slide or some such?) and get it back to where it will cock hammers with the stock off. Now I can really hear the sears set. As I thought, the right hand is very late and here's the reason. Right sear is a nice shiny replacement and the chisel end is a bit longer than the Old Reliable original to its left. So I'm thinking that the best plan for me is to correct by duping the length, shape of the left. Left looks more worn than I've ever seen in a Fox or Ithaca but the pull seems heavy enuf. The jar off Sunday suggests that the engagement angle on the "new" sear also isn't a match for the hammer notch. All the screws and pins have been out of this one obviously and isn't gummed up inside so Ted S.'s "all bets off" scenario is operative: worked on by "civilian" like myself. I don't think there's anything wrong with the cocking train and I'm breating a sigh of relief over that. Expensive education!!!! Wish I had Bobby Brook or Jim standing over my shoulder to keep me from messing this up worse than it is already.

jack

Keep us posted Jack. I've been deep inside several of my Parkers but never found any of them to have been brutalized or mistreated. It's quite a sport isn't it??

Rabbit:
My comiseration. The Parker is one of my leading candidates for the "Rube Goldberg Award" of double gun designs ever invented. And NO, you can't get the buttstock off an undamaged Parker without FIRST removing the sears. Mr. Wood must have been smoking something powerful when he did that section -- or just horsed the stocks off like most American 'smiths.

Nonetheless, experience is still the best teacher. For an accurate take-down sequence check the lamented Double Gun Classics online mag. Printed versions are available from Cornell Publications.

Best, Kensal

I owned one that would come off with the sears still in place. I certainly can't say that someone hadn't removed some wood from the stock face, though.

It has been awhile since i have been in a Parker but the sears had to come out on the 8 or 10 i removed stock from.

Based on my experience with the one Parker I've been intimately involved with, truer words were never spoken. Very, very nicely done but boy what a contraption!! I have yet to decide on a value judgement based on this though--depends on what day you ask me.

A few years ago a gentleman on the Parker collectors website posted instructions for complete disassembly/reassembly of a parker that I found EXTREMELY helpful. I'll look for it and post if I can find it, but it might be worth looking it up yourself if you can.

Mon cher Lapin,

How would you compare the Parker vis-à-vis the Idéal experience?

JC

Trop de choses! I think I can deal with the new sear seating late AND jarring off by dressing it but I'm puzzled how to deal with hardening it. No temper colors on it; all bright steel. Assume it's not mild, low carbon but who knows? I'll probably try water quench and temper it down to straw.

jack

IF, and that is a great big if, it was produced out of some kind of decent tool steel, say, O1, since it's everywhere, you might get away with just letting it be, and not shooting it every day for the next thirty years.
How Parker's ever got the nickname of "Old Reliable", with all that stuff inside is beyond me. Plus, so very many of them are seen wearing the fashionable bolt 'twixt the split in the head of the stock that we are left to wonder who's gun was the "old unreliable"?
Anyway, good luck. You paid a small enough price that some sear train hardware and a fitting of same by someone in the know shouldn't be that painful. Maybe.


Best,
Ted

I was told by "someone in the know" that if I ever looked inside a Parker I'd never own one....