Close the lever very slowly and watch the breech block as it gets close to top dead center. The  breech block should then lower slightly and at the same time the lever should bottom out on the little web in the lower tang. Also, when you fire the gun do you get a center hit on the primer? if not it might be a problem with the link.

rr2241x seems to be having trouble when he opens the action all the way.

The movement of the lever and therefore the block and hammer is stopped by surfaces on the pivot area of the lever. You'll see a stop surface on the lever where the curved surface stops and drops down to the pivot area. this ledge stops against a surface on the reciever just in front of the pivot. Hold the gun upside down and watch the pivot area while you open the action. You'll see the two areas come into contact when the lever is fully open.

If the spur of the hammer is dropping into the receiver when fully opened, there are several things that could be happening. One, the hammer spur has been bent down, possibly to provide thumb clearance with a scope. Two, a shorter link has been installed to adjust firing pin alignment and it pulls the block too low. Three, someone has "adjusted" the lever stop surfaces on the pivot. 

One solution I've used when I've had to bend the hammer spur for a low mounted scope is to file the hammer slot in the frame. It needs to be extended to the rear enough for the hammer to clear on its way back up. The hammer flops around when the block is lowered and the shape of the spur guides it into the slot but catches on the way back up.

  That's a nice piece of lumber on the forend. What's the butstock look like?

What kind (make) of a tang sight is that?

Bigskybob wrote on Feb 12^th, 2018 at 9:24am:


The tang sight looks like a WRA 38 pattern. There were repro copies made of it.