Nostrum Damus SASS #110702

yes, that's the one

Nice improv. OLG is right about the other springs, but the lever spring and plunger are super easy to replace. I don't have the opened action in front of me, so forgive me for doing this purely by memory. On the right side of the receiver, you will see the end of a solid pin that goes in at an angle. That pin captures the plunger and lever spring in their channel. You push out the pin and, if you are not paying attention, the lever spring goes flying into Never Never Found Again Land. The plunger is under the spring, as it is the plunger that makes contact with the lever's vertical shaft, not the spring itself. The plunger may or may not fall out with the spring, but if not it is easy to get out with a light rap on the receiver. When you reassemble it, you just need to get the spring past the passageway for the pin, and push the pin back in to prevent the spring from flying away again. I REALLY APOLOGIZE if I am not remembering this correctly, but I'm not taking my gun apart to check!! The sear springs are easy to swap, too, if a bit fiddly and fidgety. You just need to have patience. A small pick with a curved end helps too. Good luck.

WD-40 is not a penetrating oil; it is a corrosion inhibitor that works by eliminating water molecules (though kerosene works better). Soaking with PB Blaster, KROIL, etc. is recommended before trying to get that last screw out.

nice boots, not my size though

Like J.D. Daily, my go-to source for magazines. Recently they were the ONLY seller in the country with new 15-round magazines for FN's new Reflex 9mm pistol in stock.

Everyone talks about availability of powders, more particularly, the lack thereof. But I'm finding lots of different powders in stock right now from a number of reputable retailers, but of course they are all rather pricey and you have to pay the HAZMAT shipping charge.

Carefully pry the front end of each hammer spring pin from its seat in the hammer. Remove each spring/pin assembly. There's no need to remove the rear spring support bracket from the action. Securely grab the flange at the front of the assembly; remove the threaded cylindrical nut from the rear of the pin. (It may be quite difficult to remove the first time.) Swap out the original hammer spring for the new lighter one. All of the removal and reinstallation of that threaded cylindrical nut is easier if you take off the spring tension. I did it by drilling a hole in a small block of hardwood, large enough for the cylindrical nut to pass through, but small enough so that the rear spring collar does not. By putting the spring assembly rear end up in the vise, I can easily compress the spring and hold it in that position while I spin off the nut. I hope that helps.

Hmmm. Of course you are correct. In any event, there's no real reason to take it off to see and work on the action.

I use RCBS die set 21451 and it works just fine to roll crimp enough to take the bell out of the case mouth and sufficiently grab the bullet. I haven't seen any bullet movement within the case when firing other rounds chambered in my H&R or IJ pocket pistols.

The hammered version is a whole different ball of wax, obviously, and much easier to fix the issue.

The trigger guard is not removable from the action -- it is part of the action.

MD -- re-read Step 1 of my step-by-step above. They are false side plates. So, both the side plates AND the buttstock must be removed to gain access to the action.

I store it cocked even after the work I did.

One thing that potentially makes a big difference with the Sharp-Tail SxS is the length of the cocking rods. When you watch the action (side plates removed) when the gun is cocked, you may notice a substantial amount of overtravel of the hammers past the point where they have already been engaged and retained by the sears. In my opinion, all of that overtravel is just extra work against the mainsprings and totally unnecessary. I shortened mine. I've provided these step-by-step instructions for shortening the rods (that I developed for my own work) to other pards; I make no promises whether the instructions will work for you. And be careful -- if a rod is too short by even one mil, the hammer will not be caught by the sear and you will not be able to cock the gun on that side, period. Anyway, here's what I did (and it worked): I shortened the rods only at the end that contacts the cams at the lower end of the hammer. 1. Remove the buttstock (this is simple but you need a long ratchet extension to reach the bolt inside with your 13mm (? 12mm? 13, I think) socket). To do this, carefully remove the factory rubber butt-pad with a regular Philips screwdriver through the two small holes in the pad. Remove the stock-retaining bolt -- it can be very tight. Then VERY CAREFULLY remove the side plates with the correct hollow-ground flathead screwdriver, and keep straight which screw comes out of which hole, as they are all indexed. Once the side plates and bolt are removed, VERY CAREFULLY remove the screw in the trigger guard tang using the same correct hollow-ground flathead screwdriver. The butt stock now comes off of the receiver easily. 2. You now can operate the gun and watch what's going on. Do it. Notice in particular the gap between the inside wall of the receiver and the faces of the hammers after you pull the trigger (twice). You are going to want to shorten the rods to the point where the hammers, after firing, are ALMOST BUT NOT ACTUALLY touching that inside wall of the receiver. If your cocking rods are already at this length, there's nothing more to be done and just put it all back together, hopefully after installing Shotgun Boogie's springs. 3. Due to the position of the camming surfaces, VERY TINY differences in cocking rod length are greatly multiplied at the tops of the hammers -- in other words, it will be very easy to screw up and shorten the rods too much, to the point where the grooves in the hammers will not get caught by the sears if you are not careful. 4. Initially I thought I would proceed in to shorten the rods one mil (0.001") at a time. That was a fool's errand. I decided that it would be sufficient to proceed in five mil steps. 5. Remove the cocking rods, keeping straight which is the left and which is the right side rod. Also make sure your cocking "wedge" and return spring/plunger and retaining pin holding those parts into the front end of the water table are kept apart and identified as left and right side. To do this, you just push out those retaining pins from inside to out -- they will protrude outwardly just a bit -- and just pull them out with tiny pliers. 6. Before actually trimming the rods, I first measured them with my electronic caliper and wrote down the length -- they were identical. I then made dummy rods from 3/16" round stock of EXACTLY the same length (pick up a 4' section at Home Depot for $5), testing the dummy rods (without the return spring/plunger) by reassembling the barrels to the receiver, making sure that everything appeared to work the same way with the dummy rods installed. You are going to be disassembling and then reassembling all of these parts over and over again -- just get used to it. 7. I again disassembled the barrels and removed my dummy cocking rods. And then I used my WORKSHARP Knife and Tool Sharpener -- a belt grinder -- with the red belt (P220 Medium ceramic oxide) to start shortening ONE dummy rod. I kept the face of the rod square by rotating it on its axis while grinding, and then just slightly beveled the sharp edge each incremental 0.005" step. I got the hang of how long and how much pressure to use pretty quickly. And it didn't matter if I screwed it up because I was working on a dummy rod. 8. After each shortening grind, I reassembled the whole thing with the shortened dummy rod and operated the action to see the effect of what I had just done. With each step of the process, the hammer (after firing) got closer and closer to the inside wall of the receiver. I would then disassemble and repeat the process. 9. When I was happy with the rod length on the left side, I tried that same dummy rod on the right side and -- lo and behold -- it was also where I wanted it to be on the right side. I had removed 35 mils from the starting point by then: 7 increments, 7 times disassembling and reassembling everything. I got pretty good and fast at that disassembly/reassembly. (The reason I had to do so much shortening is that on my first attempt at this, I didn't use the "dummy rod" approach and in fact shortened my original cocking rods too much. CZ-USA graciously sent me a replacement pair, but did not tell me that they were oversized in length and needed fitting by shortening -- every gun's cocking rods are hand-fitted by appropriate shortening during assembly at the factory.) 10. I then ground both REAL cocking rods to the desired length. I got them within a mil of my target length. 11. I reassembled everything and tested the gun's operation again, and loved what I saw. Since then I've proved up the whole thing at the range many times -- I can open, shuck, and close the gun using only my right hand. Pretty awesome result. I had previously chamfered the chamber mouths using a cone-shaped grinding pin on my Dremel tool, as well as removing the upper "ears" of the ejector. That's a simple job, relatively speaking. I've re-read this a couple of times and I think I've included all of the steps that I did but since I wasn't writing it down at the time, I cannot be 100% certain. I am as sure as I can be, though. I'll also candidly say that I've handled a Sharp-Tail that received Longhunter's attention and it is even better than mine, to be honest, even if only by a smidgen. He must have some secret step that I've not been able to figure out, or use even lighter or even shorter mainsprings. I tried even lighter springs but got too many light primer strikes to be usable. DISCLAIMER (AND I MEAN IT): YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY.

Your children will be grandparents before it is easy to break open if all you do is use it. It needs work. Ken Griner is said to do great work. Longhunter used to work on them but I don't know if he does his magic on these anymore. Shotgun Boogie sells his lightened spring set for it. If you want to do the work yourself, you can chamfer the chamber mouths, trim off the extractor's ears, and polish all moving parts (including the cocking rods and the extractor shaft and the tunnels those parts move within with a Dremel tool.

Amazon.

Wow, those look like rifles with revolver receivers!

Being "a one hat kinda guy" seems kinda sad ...

Thanks Bob. Mystery solved, it seems. At some point in its life, your Number 3 Russian 1st (not New, i.e., 3rd) Model had its barrel shortened, its butt swivel removed, its walnut grips replaced, its surfaces engraved, and its barrel marking (RUSSIAN MODEL) removed. It is a beautiful shooter chambered for an iconic black powder cartridge that was the forerunner of most future powerful .44 cartridges!!

Can you post a photo of the barrel marking?

It looks like a Safety Automatic Hammerless; if it has the safety lever in the face of the trigger (hard to tell from the photos), it is Second Model made 1897-1908 and black powder cartridge only. If there's no safety lever in the trigger, it is Third (or "New") Model made 1909-1941 and it is safe for smokeless powder cartridges. Neither the length of the flutes nor the horizontal cylinder stops are definitive as there are both Second Model variations and Third Model variations with both of those features. There will be a serial number, usually including a letter, under the port side grip panel, if it is indeed an Iver Johnson gun and not one of the many clones that were made in Spain, Belgium or elsewhere, which will accept IJ grip panels just fine. And if there is in fact no serial number, who knows who made it, and you are correct, assume it is NOT SAFE to shoot.