singles, quite a few doubles have a complicated disassembly routine. In the most complex, the receiver is a sandwich of breechblock and upper tang, with the safety button on the upper tang. The lower tang is a plate that contains the triggers. Some doubles will have fake sidelocks, plates on the sides that look like they are the locks, but are only cosmetic. Unless you know the sequence of screws to remove, you could be loosening something that is supposed to stay tight. And getting it back together with the safety linkage properly engaging the button and bearing against the triggers, can be a frustrating struggle.
I'm not saying you shouldn't take it apart, but you should do so only with written instructions. If your shotgun doesn't have an owners manual, take it to a gunsmith who can properly disassemble it. Explain right up front that you are not looking for a “strip and clean,” but instructions. He will probably charge you as much or a little more to teach as he would to simply clean. Pay attention and take notes.
Hammer guns stayed around so long at the end of the 19th century because you could easily see if it was loaded or cocked. Even if it was loaded, if the hammers weren't cocked, the barrels couldn't be fired.
The shotguns that will be a bear to take apart will be the imported doubles from Spain and England. Because of the difficulty in disassembly of the “sandwich” design, manufacturers have made doubles that have the stock held on with a single throughbolt.
The most common double that uses a stock bolt is the Savage 311. In many parts of the country, when you say “double” everyone will take that to mean “311.” While somewhat heavy and not particularly sleek, the 311 has the advantage of being tougher than a two-dollar steak, I have never seen a 311 broken except through utter neglect, or deliberate abuse or experimentation. All doubles that use a stock bolt must be disassembled by first removing the bolt and stock. To find out if yours is such a double, remove the recoil pad or buttplate and look. If there is a large diameter hole and a bolt or screw head at the bottom, there is your answer.
This is a double, showing one method of locking reinforcement, the center extension.
This view shows the disassembly latch on a Weatherby forearm.
Lift the latch with a fingertip…
…and lift the lever and pivot the forearm away from the barrels.
The forward lump on the bottom barrel secures the forearm.
This is a photo of a Weatherby Orion, showing the over/under design and the Merkel locking lugs on either side of the upper barrel.
A solidly-made shotgun that is given good maintenance will outlast the best of us.
It is easy to see how to remove the firing pins in this gun. All you have to do is grind a special screwdriver to span the pin and engage the nut.
Oil the cocking rod (the dark bar) and put high-pressure grease on the barrel pivot, the hooked knob on the side.
The Ruger, with its lower locking lugs.
One suggestion about scrubbing these receivers; there may be delicate parts or small springs in there. When you first pull the stock off, look carefully at the location of the springs and parts. It is a good idea to make a drawing of the proper orientation of the parts. One early trick I learned was that if a shotgun had been disassembled, or parts had fallen off, the easiest way to determine where the parts went was to compare the one I was working on with an operating example. (This also the reason gunsmiths end up with a couple of hundred guns as a “personal” battery.) You don't have the luxury of owning two of each of your shotguns just to have a working sample with which to compare. Make drawings that are clear to you.
Once you have scrubbed the insides clean and dried them, you have to lubricate them. It may be years until you open that particular shotgun again, and all of the surfaces have to be protected. Oil or other lubricants only protect where they coat. Give the internals a complete coating of all parts, and let the receiver drip out onto a paper towel for a few hours or overnight. The gunsmith who taught me, Dan McDonald, said “Oil is cheap and rust is expensive. Coat the surfaces and let it drip,” Once the excess has dripped off, then reinstall the stock.
As with the single-shot, use a high-pressure grease to coat the hingepin. Ail side-by-side doubles, and some over-unders use a pin that passes through the receiver from side to side. Some over-unders (the Browning Superposed is an early example) use a pair of trunnions on the sides of the interior of the front of the receiver. Circular hollows on the sides of the barrel assembly ride over these trunnions. Grease both sides.
Pumps
The first pump shotgun to be seen in any quantities was the Spencer. It established the pattern for pump shotguns to come, being a hammerless model with a tubular magazine under the barrel and a front slide to work the action. The design was complicated and required intricate machining, making it more expensive than contemporary doubles. Economic difficulties put Spencer out of business and the remaining parts were marketed by Bannerman. An odd design, but one that enabled the shooter to clean the bore from the chamber, was the Burgess. Built just about when the Winchester design by Browning was coming onto the market, the Burgess differed from other pumps (and the 1897) in two ways: The pump to operate the mechanism was not up front, and it didn't come apart into two pieces. Taking a pump apart for storage and transport was considered an important part of its marketing. Shooters and hunters a century ago traveled to the range or the hunting grounds by horse, buggy, streetcar or bicycle. Even in the 1930s my father, who lived in the city, could take a streetcar to the edge of town to practice or hunt. The contemporary doubles came apart into a compact package. A pump that did not was at a disadvantage in the sales arena.
Early pump shotguns came apart right at the front of the receiver.
The operating handle of the Burgess was a sliding part of the pistol grip. It and the trigger moved back and forward to cycle the action. It seems odd now, but back then there was no established “right” way to work the action,
