Velocette

That looks good !!

That's what the optician told me as she relieved me of my hard earned !! Better still, leave it to people who know what there are doing.

Exactly, I used proper turpentine and an old toothbrush as you suggested and most of it came up pretty well. There are the odd few spots of "bruising" and slightly worn lines that would benefit from cleaning up with this. It should tidy up the few places that need it and leave a sympathetic finish. The chequering tools I mentioned from Peter Dyson were for some worse finishes than this, particularly on some fore ends which seem to wear quite badly.

Its as tight as a tick. The top lever is the right side of 5-o-clock so its had an easy life since it was last re-jointed, which it surely must have been. As far as chequering goes, I've only ever cleaned up dodgy or worn lines with a tool I made from and old screwdriver, bent to 90 degrees at the end and filed to a 60 degree V shape and tapered to work when pulling rather that pushing. Its more controllable like that.

That's an imminent project, getting a double and a single ended chequering tool from Peter Dyson and practicing on a couple of old stocks until I can revive the cuts without making it look too new. Deep but not sharp is the target. The hard bit is measuring the lines per inch through glasses which I tried to polish with rottenstone ! It didn't work and it will be next week before my new ones are ready to collect.

I think that he is saying that you have to be an experienced idiot to be able to make an idiotic statement.

😌

That was a complete attack of brain fade !! You are quite right, there should be springs in there,,,,,and there were,,,,just stuck in another magnetic dish that I put parts in and didn't notice and jumped to strange conclusions about the action. Must pay more attention !!!!!

And another thing, the strikers are, to me, very small at about 13.5mm long and have worn to very slightly different lengths so I'll make up two new ones. The action is a non-rebounding type so there are no small springs behind the strikers which means having to carefully tilt the gun backwards after firing and before opening it. I'm hoping that by cunningly shaping the striker tip the empty case passing it will reliably push it back.

Most of the rust just brushed off but I'm quite a fan of boiling rusty items in distilled water for half an hour to convert any remaining rusty pockets to black Ferric Oxide which is soft and easy to brush away. It does seem to enhance any remaining blueing or other surface treatment as well. A smear of Vaseline finishes the job. I forgot another simple but elegant detail of the action, the safety actuating arm is almost sculptural in its simplicity.

I think that you are right, to have the gun as it was intended to be so I'll get a "blank" from chambers and make up and fit a replacement spring. If needs be I'll load up some paper cases and leave them in a damp jacket pocket for a few weeks to correctly regulate the ejecting distance ! It may be that I remove the springs at times to suit where I am shooting but they will be there for the next custodian.

Thanks for that, If I thin a pair of them down a little then the ejection may not be quite as fierce. Thanks for the kind comment, just get yourself another cabinet and you could be the custodian of a few of these !

Good point, these modern plastic woke cartridges cannot get away quickly enough from the nasty bang and you can actually hear them crying as they fly past you!

The barrels are fine, the bores are clean and shiny with no dents and a few rusty marks on the outside which are nearly all under the fore end. There is plenty of choke in it too, The only thing I'm not too keen on is the "swamped " rib which together with a higher comb than I'm used to makes the gun shoot a bit high for me. This will be addressed but in the meantime, a 3/16" high piece of ultra strong magnet placed just in front of the barrel bead seems to correct things enough to use.

The plan is to make some new springs, but much weaker than the one that did work which sent a cartridge flying way over my shoulder. It was amazing just how well finished it was under the debris and an inch of Vaseline.