Does anyone know how to work with these?  I finally decided to put together one of the actions i bought a year ago.  I've got the diagram, sorted out all the parts, and started in.

I can't seem to figure out how to put together the hammer assembly.  It has a barrel nut (brass cylinder, cross drilled) that fits into a rounded area in the breech block, in front of the hammer.  The hammer is slotted, so that a screw can go through the hammer (back to front) and screw into the barrel nut in the breech block.  The slot is wide enough at the back at the hammer for a coil spring, which fits around the screw.  The whole thing works as the main spring, with the screw bearing on the receiver and compressing the spring when the hammer is cocked back.  Not a very good description, it is a bit complicated.

I can't seem to find a way to compress the spring, thread in the screw to the barrel nut, and line up the barrel nut in the breech block at the same time to get it put together.  I can't even put the barrel nut on the screw when it's in the hammer, because the spring is too strong and long to compress by hand.  I think if I could get it together that far, I could compress it and put it into the breech block as an assembly. It appears that the problems may be 
1)  Too strong a spring 
2)  Too long a spring
3)  Too big spring diameter (hangs up in hammer bad) 


 Is there a trick to this, or do I need to make a jig to compress and hold the spring so I can then align the barrel nut and thread in the screw to it?  Does anyone know how long and how big diameter the spring should be?  I have 4 of these, they are all identical, and none of the parts work well, so it's not just one set of parts.

Thanks,
dave

Bluesteel45,

Thanks for the reply back.  What you said about length makes sense, that's what I come up with, although I come up with the spring being nearly twice as long as it needs.  When I assemble the hammer without the spring and cock it back, it has to have a compressed length of about 1/2 inch.  The uncompressed spring is easily 1.5 inches, and will only compress about 50%.

It's also too big around, so I'll probably just get a new spring to use.  If I could find my little drawer cabinet with springs in my storage unit, I'd have a good chance of making this work.....  I unpacked some stuff today, found 4 of the cabinets, and none were the right one.  Sometimes it's hard to locate springs, so I have a large supply of ones I have scrapped out and saved for years.

Thanks again,
dave

dave, glad everything worked out for you. my fathers was the proper diameter, just too long. now, if he could just get used to that #!*?"*# safety . just no way to put an intermediate "half cock' position on that thing. not to mention its overall heft......geeeeeez!!!!..........blue