A Second Life for the Remington 32

The Remington 32 was developed by Crawford Loomis in 1930- 1932 and quickly became very popular among American shooters. From the technical standpoint, it had some interesting features such as atop sliding bolt and mechanical selective single trigger of anew type. The steel receiver of this gun promised considerable strength and reliability. Despite these nice features, the gun had a number of weak points. The manufacturing was expensive and cumbersome.

The action did not have any reasonable means of blocking the intermediate "third pull," hence these guns often suffered from "doubling," or shooting both shells after the first pull. This forced gunsmiths who attempted to fix this problem to increase tension of the sear springs beyond the normal limits, creating a trigger pull of 7 pounds and more. Needless to say that many skeet and trap shooters, sensitive to heavy trigger pull, became quite unhappy.

The other weakness of this action is the considerable interdependency among the parts. For example, any trigger job changes the sear-hammer engagement, which immediately affects the position of the sear, which in turn affects the timing of the trigger pull and often creates a problem for proper functioning of the switchover from barrel to barrel. Finally, the whole group of internal parts is assembled between two thin plates made with soft steel.

This makes maintenance of this gun even more difficult, since after disassembling these parts several times they become loose and change tolerances. The production of the Remington 32 was terminated in 1942. In the early 1950s, a group of designers from the German gunmaker Krieghoff recognized the advantages of this gun, and found a way to solve most of the aforementioned problems. The result of this work was the well-known K-32.

Today, American clay-target shooters enjoy the most versatile shotguns made by Krieghoff. Although there are a number of shotgun models, their basic principles stem from the Remington 32, Figure 1. Figure 2. and despite the difference in parts and quality of manufacturing, the receivers of the Remington M32 and the Krieghoff K-32 are almost identical. Practically no parts exist for the original Remington. This means that in difficult cases the Remington 32 can be repaired with parts from the Krieghoff.

Moreover, if the Remington’s frame is in good condition, installing these parts can essentially give you a gun with the Krieghoff’s reliability, block of the third pull, as well as other advantages. The installation of those parts, however, is not straightforward,and some of the steps can create challenges. In this article, I’ll share my experience with those who may want to give a second life to the Remington 32 by transplanting parts from its descendants, the Krieghoff K-32 and K-80. What To Do with the Old 32?

The story I want to tell here began when I received an old Remington 32 (a later R-32) for repair. The gun was doubling and often misfiring. The condition, which I call "low hammer," resulted in the barrels springing back at every opening of the breech. The gun had been retired along time ago after several repair attempts. The action (Figure 1) carried clear signs of these previous, intensive repairs.

Figure 2 shows Krieghoff’s K-80 action for comparison. This action provides an example to follow for the conversion of R-32. Later in this article I will refer to numbers on this photo. The problems on the Remington turned out to be difficult to eliminate. Some parts had been heavily filed and, of course, had to be retired. All my attempts to find spare parts for this gun were unsuccessful, except for a few parts that were too expensive available through the network of gunsmiths.

In such cases, I usually go to the milling machine and make new parts. This case, however, was different, since the simple reproduction of original parts would not eliminate the design problems mentioned above. In other words, after all my efforts in making new parts, I might still face the same problems. This thought just would not let me work on this gun. Then, a few days later, I was fixing a Krieghoff and started thinking about the similarities between the two actions.

I asked myself: "Why couldn’t I install the Krieghoff parts into the Remington and end its problems?" This solution seemed so obvious that I was surprised the Figure 6. Figure 3. Figure 4. idea had not occurred to me earlier. The only obstacle might be that the customer would not want to pay for such expensive parts. Fortunately, the chances of a successful operation seemed so promising that customer agreed. I should mention here that the receiver was in a very good condition despite the age of the gun.

Quite often this means that mechanical problems limited the usage of the gun. This transplant project completely changed my attitude toward the old Remington, and I became enthusiastic about giving it anew and better life. Preparation of the Frame I started with installing sideplates. Two recesses should be milled out on each side—not difficult, but quite a job that requires precision. The bottoms of the recesses have to be absolutely parallel with the sides of the action.

Figure 3 shows the process of testing to ensure the action is horizontal in the milling vise prior to cutting the recesses. Figure 4 shows the setup of the mill for this operation. The Krieghoff’s sideplates are precisely made, Figure 7. Figure 5. and are 2 mm thick, while the original sideplates of the Remington are quite soft and 1.32 mm thick. This means that the original slots on the bottom strap of the frame should be enlarged to accept the new sideplates. The process of doing that is shown in Figure 5.

The correct installation of these plates is very important, since all the other parts except the hammers are attached to them. In other words, the position of the plates determines the critical distances between hammers and sears as well as trigger and sears. In addition, the pin shafts with C-clips have to be square with both plates. These considerations forced me to fix the top of the plates with screws rather than the pins used in the K-80.

This had to be done to avoid potential drift of the hole when drilling for the pin through the action. The screws, on other hand, were installed in independent holes (Figure 6, #1) after completing the adjustment of the plates. The original two holes at the bottom of each side were perfectly positioned for the new plates, but securing them with standard K-80 pin-screws created the first surprise. There was not enough metal around Figure 8.

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Figure 9. the holes (Figure 6, #2) to cut the 3 mm threads the Krieghoff’s screws have. Therefore, I made new ones out of 3-56 fillister-head screws, which are 2.5 mm thick. The diameter of the shaft part of both the original and these new screws is 2 mm (Figure 7). Cocking Levers and Rods The installation of the main springs, cocking rods, and hammers did not present any problems.

However, later it turned out that the slightly thinner noses of the K-80 rods (Figure 8, #2) did not trip the ejectors, so I installed original ones (Figure 8, #1), which eliminated this problem. I was unable to install K-80 cocking levers, since their holes and pins were of much smaller diameter than that of the Remington. The original levers, however, did not push the hammers far enough to engage them with the sears.

The natural solution would be to make new levers with increased shoulders (shown with the arrow in Figure 9) to push the hammers further, which I did. However, the internal housing for the levers inside the action did not have space to increase the shoulders enough. Figure 12. Figure 13. Figure 10. This matter required more adjustment than I would have expected. Finally, I had to add a bit of steel approximately 1 mm thick to the step of the cocking rod ( Figure 10) to completely solve this problem.

Top Lever Spring Support The top lever rod and spring were easy to replace; however, the small support block (#6) of the K-80 has different post dimensions than the one for the R-32, and could not have been installed on the action. I used the original one. It also did not go easy, since holes for the sear-plungers in the original support block had inappropriate angles. Figure 11 shows the R-32 (left) and K-80 (right) blocks. The thin rods are inserted into holes to show the difference in angles.

This turned out to be important, because with this configuration the sears didn’t have enough movement to engage with the hammers. So, I had to braze those holes and drill the other ones with the proper angle. Selector Pear/Sear Adjustment The selector pear (#9) is responsible for switching from barrel to barrel Figure 11. by moving from the used sear to the unused one. It also responds to selector position by moving under the specified sear.

In general, this mechanism is quite reliable, but requires some adjustments. There are two variables to adjust. One is the distance (d) from pear to each sear (Figure 12). This distance has some tolerance within which it works reliably, but cannot be greater or smaller than this tolerance. In the first case, the trigger will have too long an idle travel and the inertia block or sears may interfere with the safety parts.

In the case of too short a distance between pear and sears, the switch from barrel to barrel and selector would not work. In my case, the best distance ford was about 1 mm, which enabled the free movement of the pear under both sears. The other variable to adjust is the pair of angles of the pear’s turn in traveling from sear to sear. These angles can be adjusted by the small cross-pin (11) holding the pear in place.

By regulating the length of the left and right shoulders of the pin, the turn of the pear should be adjusted to satisfy the following Figure 14.

Figure 15. Figure 16. conditions. First, the pear must reliably engage with the sear and not slip toward the other sear during the trigger pull. This means that the angle should be no less than required. Second, the pear cannot go too far under the first sear, which results in an inability to switch to the other sear after the shot. Safety Inertia Block Installation of the safety button on the R-32 had to overcome several obstacles.

First, the original slot in the frame was too narrow, and I had to make it wider by milling (Figure 13). Second, the frame itself in this area was too thick, and I had to mill it out. You can see it on Figure 17. Third, the spur of the safety button was too short and did not engage with the spur on the inertia block, and I had to extend it by brazing on apiece of steel (Figure 14). The inertia block on the Krieghoff plays two very important roles. First, it blocks the "third pull," which prevents doubling.

Problems with the third pull have been ongoing since the first single triggers on shotguns. The third pull happens unwillingly during counter-recoil, when the gun moves forward, and the finger just pulls the same trigger again. It cannot be controlled by the shooter. The logic of this device is easy to understand. Before the shot, the inertia block is resting between the safety-button spur (8) and the post (5).

When, after the first shot, the gun moves back, this inertia block stays still leaning against the safety-button spur. When the gun moves forward into counter-recoil, the inertia block Figure 17. goes underneath the post (5) and locks the trigger. Figure 15 illustrates this situation. For reliable functioning, the distance between the inertia block and the post should be minimal, usually about 0.01 inch (0.25 mm); otherwise the trigger is not locked completely and may not have enough motion to drop the hammer.

Periodically, I have to deal with Krieghoff shotguns having this problem of block-post adjustment. Usually it results in doubling. I turned the post on the lathe. For rigid attachment, the tight hole was drilled for the post through the frame. Finally, the post beside the screw was secured by a roll pin. The other role of the inertia block is to work as an element of the safety device. When the safety button is manually moved back ( Figure 16), the block goes under the post and locks the trigger.

It also performs another safety action when the top lever is turned right for opening the gun. In this case, the rod (7) pushes the inertia block under the post, disabling the trigger for the period of reloading. Notice that it does not move the safety button. The ready action of the Remington 32 after transplantation of the new parts is shown in Figure 17. Conclusions Some time ago, The Remington Model 32 gave life to the Krieghoff designs.

Now Krieghoff can give life to old Remingtons by providing new and improved parts. Some shooters have asked me if it’s worth doing. I think it’s a worthwhile modification, since after the transplantation of new parts, the old Remington essentially becomes identical to the Krieghoff. ■