Replacing Forend
 

Dean,

The hammers are cocked. When the barrels are attached to the receiver I cannot attach the forend. I can remove the barrels from the receiver, pull the extractors out on the barrels to the ejected position and am able to attach the forend. With the forend attached, using a block of wood, I attempt to push each extractor back into the recess position but they will not lock and stay in the recess position.

Denis Potter posted on this thread explaining this solution.

Problem solved. The hammers on the forend were not fully cocked,even though they appeared to be. Lesson learned.

Reattaching the foreend success
 

Y’all saved my evening reading this thread. Just picked up a 1911 grade 3 from my favorite gun shop this afternoon. Took it apart to lubricate the pivots and add some crystalline wax. Then, ut oh could not get the fore end back on. Found a small piece of wood moulding and resolved as noted. Just mailed the research letter application and check to Chuck to get the history on this beauty. Will bust some clays tomorrow. The forum is a great tool for those of us who like the old stuff. Mike

Fox, LC Smith, and Parker Bros. among other fine American and English double guns have small re-assembly techniques and tricks-of-the-trade.
It might be a good idea to permanently post assembly/re-assembly detailed instructions
so marked under the Parker General Discussion-if these are not posted elsewhere. It might save time and in some cases preserve Parker forends...along with hammers or extractors against unnecessary damage.

Measure twice, cut once.

I’ve had the idea of a little video library for just these types of issues. Even with the very good explanations here, I’ve had some difficulty getting a Forend put back on. Hope to have some discussion at the Southern about how we might go about a video project.

Reattaching the forend
 

I have occasionally had this problem and I have solved it by having the gun with the barrels on it standing up on its butt. Then I put the forend tightly against the barrels and forcefully start pushing it down toward the receiver. It takes some strength to do this, but it recocks the ejectors and the forend will then latch onto the barrels. It's kind of like the dowel method but using the gun to do it instead of the dowel.

I recently had a similar problem on my DHE 20. The ejector hammer would not recock. After many hours of trying dowels and the corner of my work bench. I gave up and sent it to Darlington Gun Works. Turns out the ejector sear was broken. They fixed it and had the gun back to me in 2 weeks. The price was very reasonable and the ejectors work fine. The folks at Darlington are really good to work with.

Joe Breda of Breda Machine made a bunch of ejector hammers and they look and act just like originals. They do need some fitting though.





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I solved the problem by staying away from guns with ejectors.

Ejectors? As we used to say on the farm--useless as tits on a boar hog