Many thanks for your responses to my first set of questions. I'm a shooter of old rifles, not a collector or smith, and want to shoot this rifle. I've taken the receiver apart. It has a center fire block that hasn't as far as I can tell been converted from rimfire. The extractor is marked "25 RF" on one side and "EX" on the other. The plunger/spring for the lever does not impinge of the extractor. DeHaas book says the plunger pushs against a "special link" in the section on favorites but doesn't say one way or the other about the link used in the plunger type of 44. The shape of the link is different in this 44 than the one in the 44 drawing in DeHaas book. Part of the link does touch the extractor.  Given that any or all parts in the receiver can be replacements, what can I look at next? The extractor seems to match Wisners no 3 as shown in his web site, but could a different extractor, cartridge aside, be needed?

If the thing actually works, you might try firing a shot or two, after having a gunsmith check it out.  All the extractor has to do is lever the empty out far enough to be grasped by the fingers and removed.  If it shoots and extracts, a little stiffness is better than a little sloppiness.

A too-well-fitted Stevens extractor will lock up when the shot is fired and a cleaning rod will be needed to remove the empty case.  Both the 44 and 44-1/2 extractors swing through an arc which is actually higher as the shell comes out than when the extractor is in its slot in the barrel.  A little bit of judicious rounding and polishing of the interior top edge of the extractor might be needed if it is a tight running fit on the lever pin.  The tolerances in the original parts usually took care of this problem, allowing the extractor to sit a few thousandths low in the barrel slot.

Is the breechblock bushed for a centerfire firing pin?  If it is a centerfire already, somebody might have had a largely complete action and bought an extractor from Wisner or Numrich, and then found a barrel online and had it modified for the extractor.

I’d be interested in a picture or two of this specimen.  The marks on the extractor are typical, although sometimes the “EX” is stamped on the front of the receiver.  The meaning of this mark is unknown, last I read.  Maybe Stevens had Extraterrestrials on the work force.  Some of the variations in manufacture certainly suggest this.

No part of the link should ever contact the extractor. Is the link perhaps installed upside down?

In a properly assembled 6:00 extractor 44, the top edge of the slot in the breechblock, at the front, will contact the extractor as the breechblock starts to open.  This camming feature will break loose even a very sticky case. The only single shot I've ever heard of that has primary extraction.   

uscra112 wrote on Nov 16^th, 2018 at 11:29am:


Yes, but no substitute for shooting it, which will shortcut endless speculation, enjoyable as that may be.

uscra112 wrote on Nov 18^th, 2018 at 2:05am:


You did!  Because I thought of asking you why you didn't have some more made up with the correct hole spacing. Shouldn't be a hard job to repro with all the gee-whiz machine tools now in use; probably less difficult than the Stevens extractors sold by Wisner's.