Parker Brothers Shotguns, Part Two

My tastes are simple. I am always satisfied by the very best there is. Unfortunately, I can’t afford that so I come as close as I can. Last time we looked at some history of the Parker Brothers shotguns and how to tell a real Parker from the fakes. This time we’ll look at some common repairs you may find are needed on a used gun.

Stock Work I have covered major stock repair in several articles and rather than bore the reader with yet another description of how to use threaded rod to hold stocks broken at the wrist together, let’s look at some of the more common crack, dent, and scratch repairs found on most old guns that have spent a considerable time in the field in their long lives. Most double guns of any age and use will show cracking behind the receiver and/or tang.

This is mainly because the design of the double is almost a perfect splitting wedge. You take a fine piece of walnut, hollow out the end for a depth of three inches or so to hide the action parts in, and bolt a heavy, hard-kicking machine on it. As if that weren’t enough, you put an upper and lower tang on it just to be sure it concentrates all that force in one spot in I found a surprise under this broken buttplate. A group of signatures and the date 1892. The gun was made in 1890. I wonder who those fellows were?

As found, this once proud Parker GH was broken, battered, and held together with cord, nails, and a nut and bolt. the middle of the wood. The only thing worse is to put a sideplate on it like the old L. C. Smith so you then have all four sides being hammered on and nothing more than four little fingers of wood to stop them.

Then, just in case we have somehow contrived everything to take a couple hundred years of punishment without splitting, we oil the bores and the interior workings and stand the gun in the corner of a closet or a gun cabinet resting on its butt. Now we come to the scientific part of the whole thing. There is this force called gravity. It pulls everything down toward the center of the earth. Apples from trees, gun parts from benches, and oil from barrels and action parts. To get to the center of the earth that oil

After stripping the remaining finish, pulling out the nails that could be pulled, and removing the bolt and nut, the stock is immersed in turpentine for two weeks to leach the oil out so glue can stick to the wood for repair. Apiece of the toe was broken off so anew piece of walnut was shaped and glued in place. Final fitting is done after the glue sets up. must first pass through the stock.

The stock, however, is porous wood that traps the oil and holds on to it until it rots and pieces of the stock along with the oil in them fall to the ground. While waiting for the wood to rot the oil soaks into it and makes it soft, making it easier to split. It also will keep glue from holding the wood together when you try to repair it. Like the toe, aside had been chipped off the pistol grip. The area was flattened and apiece of walnut was glued in place.

After allowing the glue to set the repaired grip section was contoured to blend in. All of that was just to get you to understand why that beautiful, carefully finished piece of cracked walnut has nuts and bolts, nails, and wood screws going through it. Some previous owner tried to fix it and stop it from cracking further. He carefully spread the cracks and dropped whatever glue he had around the house into the cracks and clamped them closed.

Unfortunately, the oil in the wood would not allow the glue to stick to the wood. It acted as a release agent and the next time he shot the gun the cracks reopened and got worse. No matter how many times he tried or what glue he used the results were always the same. Your results will be equally poor unless you get the oil out of the wood.

Finally, in frustration our intrepid hero who didn’t know to get the oil out first gave up on glue, got desperate, and resorted to the wood screw, nails, and—in the case with the gun in the pictures here—a nut and bolt. It worked, after a fashion, for awhile. The cracking stopped but the wood continued to soften and the gun went from a thing of beauty to an embarrassment. Lucky you, for if it had worked chances are you wouldn’t now own the gun at the price paid. So, how do you do it right?

First, strip all the finish off the stock and get it down to bare wood. You will probably notice that the wood near the receiver is much darker than near the buttplate. That dark color is oil and dirt. The farther down the stock it extends the longer the oil has had to leech into the wood or the more oil was used. The oil will have penetrated all the way through

Using a drill press and a Magna- Tip bit that fits the slot, the screwdriver bit is held in place vertically and the downward pressure from the drill press will keep the bit from camming out of the slot. Atrick I learned on You Tube. Using a gluing clamp and apiece of dowel rod, the mainspring is held under compression with the holes aligned, making inserting the pin an easy task.

The pin is pushed half way through and then the other side is compressed and aligned so the pin can go through the rest of the way. the stock in the really bad areas and only part way in the rest of the stock. Nothing done strictly on the surface will fix this but I like to start off by scrubbing the stock under a running tap with hot water, soap, and a good, stiff brush. You will see your rinse water running off dark brown.

This is a mixture The Vspring for the top lever is cut out of 1095 spring steel, ready to be heated, bent, and heat treated. This is a very inexact way to make a spring but works in an emergency. A supplier for correctly-made and heat-treated springs is listed in the article. Small pins were impossible to remove without further damaging the surface. They were driven deeper into the wood so the area could be checkered over. of stain and oil and dirt and simply speeds the process.

I’ve tried heating and wiping the oil off, I’ve tried oven cleaner after letting the stock sit in the sun. I’ve scrubbed it with pretty much every super cleaner on the market and in time oil always leached back to the surface. The only method that has worked for me is to immerse the stock in a solvent for extended periods of time. Paint thinner works as does mineral spirits but I like old fashioned turpentine the best.

It stinks and you will need to leave it in the garage or some covered space so the wife doesn’t kick you and your witch’s brew out of the house. I will let it soak for at least two weeks, sometimes longer. As the solvent dissolves the oil near the surface, the oil floats out of the wood, the solvent leaches in and is exposed to more oil until, theoretically, all the oil is now in the solution in the tank and no longer in the wood. The tank will have gone from clear to a dark gray.

Once the stock is as near oil free as it is ever going to be, hang it in a place with good ventilation for another two weeks for the solvent to evaporate out. Now you can spread the cracks and force in as much good wood glue as you can into the cracks and clamp the stock together. When cured, that treatment should hold up for years, or least none of mine have split again and I have been using this method for at least the last three decades. Dents can be steamed out with a wet rag and a hot iron and gouges.

Nail holes and screw holes can be filled with a mixture of sanding dust and glue. Carefully clean out any dirt remaining in the gouge or hole. With the sanding dust or sawdust in a container, mix in wood glue and make a paste, then use a scraper to force the paste into the hole. Once

With the pistol grip recheckered, the pins are much less noticeable. dry sand, stain and refinish with the rest of the stock. The filled holes will show up as dark spots but will look a whole lot better than the screw and nail heads. I have heard that there is nowa clear wood glue on the market and I’d like to try that to see if I can get it to match the rest of the stock color better. Unfortunately, I haven’t be able to find it locally.

Other Parts One of the most common problems I seem to encounter with the Parker guns is a broken or very weak top lever spring. For years I have made the flat Vsprings from 1095 spring stock I get from Brownells. I’ve done this only because I could never find anyone that had the springs. Spring making is an art and as far as artists go, I’m a fair mechanic.

In other words, not very good but I have made some serviceable springs by cutting and filing the spring steel to shape, No longer some collector’s dream because it has been altered and refinished, I have a Parker I can be proud of and shoot with black powder shotshells only. heating it to red hot, and bending it to the shape I want. I will then let it cool, file it to fit, reheat it to red, and quench it in oil. Once cool I leave the oil on it and set the oil on the part on fire and let it burn itself out.

This seems to anneal it well enough that the spring works in the gun without collapsing or breaking. I give any credit for this working to the steel and not the author. I recently discovered that Wolff Gunsprings (GunSprings.com, has an assortment of Vsprings for old revolvers that might have a size that would work here. Bob’s Gunparts (gun-parts.com, gunparts@hsnp. com, in Royal, Arkansas actually has springs in stock that can be fitted to the Parker.

These seem to be made by guys that know what they are doing and I strongly advise you buy your springs there. The disassembly of the Parker is reasonably straightforward and if you have any doubt, I suggest You Tube for a video in how to disassemble and assemble the gun. I could find no written assembly/disassembly instructions but could find You Tube videos demonstrating this so I could study the procedure before I messed it up.

One of the best reassembly tips I ever picked up was on a You Tube video that showed how to use a gluing clamp and apiece of dowel or drill rod to compress the mainsprings and hold them in place as you line up the holes and insert the pin. That sure has saved me a lot of cussing and searching for parts that took off to unexplored places in my shop. As a final tip, I owe this one to my mentor and friend Reid Coffield, the retired Gunsmithing editor for Shooting Times.

This pertains to any stock work where you need to match the color of one part to another, such as a refinished buttstock to a forend. Reid cleverly took every stock stain he could lay his hands on and stained a section of plain walnut with it and labeled a Popsicle stick with the name of the stain he used. He got some interesting results from light to dark.

Now, when he wants to match a color he pulls out his test board, lays it alongside the piece he is trying to match, and uses the stain that matches rather than guessing and fiddling trying to darken or lighten it. In case you are wondering when your gun was made, the Parker Gun Collectors Association (ParkerGuns.org, Wells MA 04090) has a webpage with a link to the year each serial number range was produced. AG