Thank you so much.  Pic 1

Springs....maybe

I'll re-post them for you. Hang on.

    Joe.

The smaller spring looks like the normal trigger spring.  The larger one is an "I dunno".   Doesn't look to me like it belongs to a Model 44 at all.  Maybe from a mid-range Favorite that did us a cantilever spring?   

Can you post a pic of the hammer?   That will help a lot.  

Phil

Many thanks to Westerner for resizing the pics.  I took them with my smarter than me phone and had no idea they would turn out that big.   

What you describe is exactly the hammer/spring arrangement found in Hopkins and Allen rifles, carried over from the 1887 Bay State from which they were derived.  They called it a "rebounding hammer".  The shape of the hammer where the spring bears on it is entirely different from the Stevens.

My calibrated eyeball tells me that your hammer is, (or started out as) the standard Stevens 44 hammer, and I stand by my recommendation that Wisner's 12AB spring is correct.  I did not see in your earlier pics the buttress screw on the lower tang, against which it rests, so you will have to recreate that.  (See the pics I posted.)

However, the condition of the full-cock notch on your hammer is pretty poor.   Can you easily touch the hammer notch with a file?  If so the case hardening has been compromised by the heat of that brazing, and even if you manage to reform the notch it's going to wear at a dangerous rate.  The amount of deformation of the notch suggests to me that the case hardened surface is or was worn through anyway.

Restoring yours can be done.  It will probably need three steps.  First, roughly reform the notch with a file, then case-harden the hammer, and finally set the angle of the notch in a stoning jig.    A lot more labor than I'd be happy doing, even though I'm tooled up for it,  when finding another hammer (and possible trigger) would be much easier.  

Here's a closeup of a reasonably good hammer out of one of my 44 projects.  

I had a revelation about why there is braze on that hammer.  It's right in the area where the finger on the link which pushes the hammer to halfcock when the action is opened would bear.  Likely the gun wasn't going to halfcock, so Parkenfarker thought to add a little metal where it would to some good.   

Which reminds me to suggest, JerryB,  that you check out the condition of the link, link pins, and the corresponding holes in the breechblock and lever. How much play? And look to the finger on the link.  Is it worn or damaged?    Maybe now a pic of the link is in order?   

Don't let us discourage you!  There's not much to a Model 44 that can't be restored.

CPA does not sell 44 parts. At least they had nothing when I needed a spring. Some parts interchange. 


      Joe.