doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Any experience with repairing Savage/Valmet O/U?

I'm about done with the severe stock issues on a Savage/Valmet 333 "Skeet" 12 ga. O/U that I'm making into a "beater/rainy day/loaner/take me to Baja" gun. The only problem I can find with the metal is that the safety doesn't work, even non-automatically. The rest of the features: ejectors, cocking indicators, and trigger selector all work fine.

Since this gun was originally radically restocked as a skeet gun, I suspect that the safety was deliberately deactivated (clay shooters do this sometimes, don't they?).

Does anybody know if it is normal to do this with a Valmet action without discarding the safety parts? Easy to re-activate? I have found replacement safety parts for the gun, but would like to know if it is usually possible to just re-connect parts within the mechanism to get the safety back to "automatic" function. If I'm gonna use it in the field, I need a safety, especially if I'm going to loan it to anybody.

Any insights or sources of info or Valmet savvy 'smith's contacts gratefully accepted.

Mike Armstrong

Automatic safeties are a pox on double guns. Leave it alone. I deactivated most automatic safeties on most of my guns. Chances are the previous owner of yours did the same, They have no place on a target gun. JM2CW Chopper

Don't know if this helps, but here are pics of my 333 with safety operating normal.

Thanks, Patriot. Now I can at least tell if it is all there, and that will tell me whether to buy new parts or just start tinkering.

Chopper, I understand your position, all right--it makes some sense, especially if you're mainly a clay shooter. But only if ALL the guns one uses (and that has to include my friends and wife and brother and sons in my case) work the same way. Much easier to fix this one than start tearing apart the rest of my guns and ask my hunting buddies to do the same. Not gonna happen.