Easing break action on Stoeger O/U

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Iloverevolvers

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My wife and I purchased a 12ga Stoeger O/U Double Defense shotgun a few months ago. The gun has one trigger that first fires the lower barrel, then, with another squeeze of the trigger, the top barrel.

From the time of its purchase to today the gun has had a difficult action to break open to reload after shooting. My wife has to really struggle to reload. It is her gun, so I'd like to correct this situation.

I've done some searching for how to ease an O/U's action. Today I removed the stock, examined the parts of the receiver during cocking, and polished the metal mating/rubbing surfaces on the forend and reciever, as well as carefully greasing the metal parts of the action that rub together when the action breaks open and closes. Doing that polishing and greasing has really has helped "ease" the action, both opening and closing, IF the action is opened and closed without firing or dry-firing; in other words, without re-cocking the hammers. My wife can do that quite easily.

However, after firing or dry-firing the gun, when the action is opened to insert two more shells, when the barrel assembly breaks open to the point where the two hammer springs start to be compressed, compressing the springs further to firing position is what is IMO making things so difficult.

I think the way to make things easier for my wife is to either replace the two springs with springs that take less force to compress (maybe even "progressive" springs, if they exist), or somehow weaken the springs by either removing a coil or two from each spring or somehow changing their "temper". I think replacing with weaker springs is probably the best way to go, as long as the hammers still strike the firing pins hard enough for them to dent the primers enough to fire the shell.

Has anyone run into this problem with a single-trigger O/U Stoeger 12ga shotgun and, if so, what was the proper way to make those hammers easier to ####?

While I'm typing, how difficult is it to break open the action and re-load an expensive O/U after firing?

Thanks.
 
Buy her a pump or semi auto... it will be way easier.

I can almost guarantee if you weaken the hammer springs you will have misfires...

Bottom barrels on an O/U will be the first to misfire...
 
guntech said:
Buy her a pump or semi auto... it will be way easier.

I can almost guarantee if you weaken the hammer springs you will have misfires...

Bottom barrels on an O/U will be the first to misfire...
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Thanks for your advice.

Is this problem common to all O/Us or just to Stoeger O/Us? I ask because I've never owned another O/U, but I have watched Youtube videos of other people, small women included, and they seem to have absolutely no problem opening and reloading their guns. Even I have some difficulty cocking the hammers, and I am no weakling. Again, opening and closing the action with the hammers already cocked is pretty easy. I find it hard to believe that the effort required to #### our gun is normal.

Another thing that I noticed today was that the large pin that actually goes through the wall under the firing pins pushes the bar that, in turn, pushes both hammer springs a fair bit more than is necessary to #### the hammers. I think that that pin could be a bit shorter and not push as far and still #### the hammers with a good margin of safety. If that pin was indeed a bit shorter, the angle at which the barrel-assembly+forend assembly would first touch the pin would be more acute, and, in that position, it would provide more leverage to compress the springs.

Any thoughts on how difficult it should normally be to #### an O/U and also on the possibility of shortening that large pin to make cocking easier?

Thanks again.
 
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Longer barrels help when opening and cocking an O/U... you can kind of 'flip' the action up when breaking it and the weight of the longer barrels helps...

I have never encountered this model but the vast majority of O/U's are tight when new and once cocked are easier... that's normal.

Maybe buy some spare parts before altering what you have.

Taking this to a gunsmith who has worked on lots of trap guns may be of benefit.
 
guntech said:
Longer barrels help when opening and cocking an O/U... you can kind of 'flip' the action up when breaking it and the weight of the longer barrels helps...

I have never encountered this model but the vast majority of O/U's are tight when new and once cocked are easier... that's normal.

Maybe buy some spare parts before altering what you have.

Taking this to a gunsmith who has worked on lots of trap guns may be of benefit.
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Thanks for the comments, guntech.

I particularly thought your last two comments were very useful. The two hammer springs cannot be more than a few dollars each, so I could remove the originals, leave them exactly as they are and do whatever experimenting with the new springs. (I will add that the craters the firing pins make in the primers is really deep -- unnecessarily so, IMO. This is very far from a light strike.)

Taking the gun to a gunsmith who's worked on lots of O/Us is an excellent idea. I would expand this idea to people who've shot clay targets extensively (unfortunately I don't know a single one). Either the gunsmith or the experienced shooter should be able to tell whether or not our gun is anywhere near normal the first time they #### our gun and perhaps be able to tell of previous guns they've handled that were similar and maybe even how the condtion was corrected. I'll do the latter before doing anything with the springs. Sounds like a plan. :)

In case you are interested in seeing a video demonstration of the exact problem my wife and I are experiencing, have a look at the following video, starting at 3 minutes 50 seconds. Notice that the shooter is no weakling and the effort he expends. Then imagine my 5'3", 120lb wife trying to do the same.
h.........ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkOZ-hYYllY
I must have worked the cocking mechanism at least 500 times, using snap caps, and there has been no lessening of the effort to #### the gun. I hope that this situation is NOT in fact "normal" for this gun.

Last night I wrote to Stoeger about this 3-month-old gun's problem. I anxiously await their reply.

Thanks again.
 
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There is some good info on the internet regarding doing a similar fix on Baikal doubles. It involves shortening the springs a few coils and equally important, polishing the channels the springs ride in. Its a relatively inexpensive shotgun, go at it and report back.
 
cosmic said:
There is some good info on the internet regarding doing a similar fix on Baikal doubles. It involves shortening the springs a few coils and equally important, polishing the channels the springs ride in. Its a relatively inexpensive shotgun, go at it and report back.
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Thanks! I'll do a bit of searching around for the Baikal-double information you suggest. If you have a link, or links, please post it/them.

I'm first going to wait to hear back from Stoeger. That should take no more than a couple of more days. If no satisfaction there, I'll find a gunsmith or O/U-experienced owner and see what they have to say about the action.

If still no satisfaction, I'll order from Stoeger two replacement springs to have at hand in case I really mess up the orginals.

I should have mentioned that as the gun is being cocked, it feels somewhat "rough" to carry through with what IMO should be glass-smooth cocking. Something is causing that roughness.

Then I'll remove the originals, polish everything in the chain of parts from the push-pin to the small indentations in the hammers in which the springs pivot, to the pivoting end of the springs; put everything back together before modifying the springs, then test the action to see if what I've done has at least lessened the problem. If it hasn't, then I'll gradually modify the springs. I'm not going to touch anything on the hammers having to do with the action of the trigger. The trigger pull is fine exactly the way it is.

I'll post again when there's something new to report.

Thanks again.
 
I took some steps that have dramatically reduced the effort to #### the gun WITHOUT modifying the hammer springs in any way.

1. I removed the stock and then screwed the stock's securing screw into the exposed receiver, so that I could use it as a lever to open and close the action.

2. I secured the two sears up high enough so that the hammers could completely cycle without touching the sears.

3. I put a stack of small pieces of duct tape adjacent to the lever pin so that when the action was almost closed it would hit the tape instead of the pin, which would have caused the lever to close. Using this method, the action remained open thoughout the coming ordeal.

4. With the barrel pointing downward, slightly plus or minus plumb, muzzles resting on a kneeling pad, using the stock bolt as a kind of water-pump handle, I opened and closed the action, simulating cocking the gun but without the sears catching the hammers, close to 2,000 times. (Worked up a bit of a sweat.)

The above dramatically decreased the effort to open the gun with the hammers cocked (now, if the gun is held horizontally, the action literally falls completely open of its own weight, but still without sloppines). It also dramatically reduced the effort to #### the hammers.

But in order to further lessen the effort to #### the hammers, to be brief, I removed the springs and hammers; polished the ends of the springs' where they meet the hammers; fine-sanded then polished to a mirror finish the rounded part of each hammer where the hammer-cocking cam pushes the hammers back to under the sears; polished to a mirror finish the hammer pin (which also serves as the pivot for the two firing pin plungers). As well as I could, I polished and geased the pivot-pins' holes through the hammers and plungers; I greased the craters/points on the rear of the hammers where the ends of the now-polished springs fit in and pivot.

I did not want to remove the trigger, so I could not remove the hammer-cocking cam from the gun, but where the two ends of the cam meet and push the hammers back was already pretty well polished from wear, so I did not think it necessary to remove the trigger in order to remove the cam.

The shaft of the cocking-cam is pretty loosely fitted in the hole through the wall in front of the hammers, so all I did was liberally grease the shaft and the faces of the ends that contact the now-polished part of the hammers.

After re-assembling the reciever parts and releasing the sears, I installed the stock and the barrel assembly. I then cocked the gun and noticed a dramatic lessening of the effort to do that, as well as smoothness to do it.

I handed the gun to my wife and, in short, she is now able to #### the gun with far less effort, although some effort is still necessary because of the nature of the beast. (The shooter in that video would definitely be a happy camper with our gun.)

A couple of days ago I had sent a warranty service request to Stoeger and they had approved it. I would have had to pay for shipping to Stoeger; they would have supposedly eased the action and then they would have paid the return shipping. My wife now agrees with me that because of my machinations, warranty service will no longer be necessary.

The good thing about "tuning" the gun myself is that I learned a great deal about my first O/U gun. Short of doing a "trigger job", I believe that I can now deal with just about any action issue myself.

Our gun was apparently a diamond in the very rough. All it took was some polishing to get all the guns facets correct and let its hidden beauty shine through. :)
 
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So, if I follow your post, although you did do numerous polish and buff, you attribute most of the improvement to compressing and releasing those coil springs a couple thousand times?? I have a Stoeger double barrel coach gun that has similar symptoms - maybe I will just make up a jig (piston in tube or pipe idea?) to hold the springs outside the arm on my work bench and compress and release them - is that what you think you did?
 
Potashminer said:
So, if I follow your post, although you did do numerous polish and buff, you attribute most of the improvement to compressing and releasing those coil springs a couple thousand times?? I have a Stoeger double barrel coach gun that has similar symptoms - maybe I will just make up a jig (piston in tube or pipe idea?) to hold the springs outside the arm on my work bench and compress and release them - is that what you think you did?
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I believe that all of the fine-sanding, polishing and greasing of all the components I mentioned, combined with the on-the-gun compression of the two springs all contributed in unison to the nice result. The rounded part of the hammers against which the cocking cam presses was especially rough, so I think that smoothing and polishing that part alone contributed greatly to the easier, smoother result, but I can't prove that.

On our gun, the hammer springs only compress maybe 1/2", probably less, when cocking, on a spring that is more or less 3" long, so, IMO, not really that much compression per inch of spring. Therefore, I do not think that the springs got that much "weaker" in 2,000 small compressions. However, I did not actually test the force required to compress each spring (with each spring removed from the gun and installed in some kind of test rig) before and after the compressions, so I really can't say for sure if the force to compress remained the same or decreased (it almost certainly did not increase).

However, if one did want to weaken the springs a bit by themselves, like you suggest, I think that a relatively simple apparatus could be manufactured, DIY, that one could use to compress a spring to its maximum compressability (to the point where all the coils are all just touching their neighbors). For example, maybe one could fabricate a rig from the typical hand excerciser, or something like you suggest. One would test the force to compress before starting, then test periodically as the number of cycles rises. As long as the springs do not lose length along with resistance to compression, weakening the springs would probably make the gun even easier to ####. If the springs lose length, then the spring assemblies run the risk of popping out of their places in the hammers. Of course one would have to periodically make sure that the firing pins would still dent the primers adequately. Again, it would be good to have a spare set of springs at hand should anything go wrong with the set that one is trying to weaken.

Good luck.
 
Hey, I just noticed something definiately OT, but IMO worth mentioning. My post count is "657" on every one of my posts in this thread. Is this normal?

Edit: now it's 658. Weird.

Edit again: Now I understand. Every single post I've ever made will now indicate my total number of posts, not the total at the time I made each individual post. Must be my medication that has affected my brain.
 
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Well - I would guess the springs have a pre-load before you compress them, so its hard to speculate on their state of stress. However, it is possible that the stresses have relaxed somewhat from the cycles you induced. This would reduce the cocking force. Have you had a chance to shoot it in its new state.
 
cosmic said:
Well - I would guess the springs have a pre-load before you compress them, so its hard to speculate on their state of stress. However, it is possible that the stresses have relaxed somewhat from the cycles you induced. This would reduce the cocking force. Have you had a chance to shoot it in its new state.
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No, I have not had the chance to shoot the gun in its present happy state. Yes, the springs have some pre-load in their spring assemblies (shown here: h.....ttps://www.midwestgunworks.com/page/mgwi/prod/32632 ). However, I understand that 2000 cycles (4000 rounds, if each cycle is two rounds) is not that many cycles/rounds for, say, an O/U clay-shooting gun. Again, whether the springs have weakened from new to after 2,000 cycles I do not know, but probably have to at least some minor extent. I hope that others more experienced on this subject will chime in here.
 
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