I have been working in my spare time in the evenings and weekends for the last few months, an hour hear and an hour there, to clean up and "Meriden-ize" a Parker Repro A-1 Special that was "In-the-white".
The Repros were modeled after very late Remington manufactured guns, when frame sculpting got a little less refined than earlier guns. When I really got to studying the lines of the gun, I found a lot of areas to be relatively crudely finished, ie: contour lines that were not true and straight. I set off to re-shaping the frame and refining the lines. My goal was for the gun to look as true to early Meriden manufacture as possible.
The shoe filing on the bottom of the frame was deepened and lengthen back towards the trigger plate. The belly of the frame and forend iron were brought up a LOT and then the radius in front of the trigger plate was defined. The sides of the frame around the hinge pin were also thinned up along with the forend iron.
I rounded up and better defined the front of the side panels on the frame. Also, the bottom of the side panels was brought up by nearly 1/8" and a very hard line was used to break the bottom of this panel. The radius under the panel was taken in for a better transition into the trigger plate.
The trigger plate was converted to accept double triggers vs. the SST that was in it. This process is explained in another thread.
The breech end of the barrels were rounded over at the corners a good deal. This was all taken down to make a seamless transition into the breech balls. The triple beaded fences were also cleaned up and taken in tighter on top and bottom sides.
A major area of refinement was the top lever and the top of the frame where the sighting plane starts. The Later Parkers, and the Repros had a very thick top lever which allowed the concave sighting plane to come very far back onto the top lever. I took the top lever WAY down in thickness and re-contoured it to move the start of the sight plane up closer to the rib extension.
The thumb pad on the top lever was also reduced in size by nearly 50% for a much more streamlined look. Both of these made a world of difference in the side profile of the gun.
The top of the frame behind the bolsters was re-contoured and the line between them and the side panels was refined and sharpened up.
The top tang bevel was sharpened up at the front, and then extended down the full length of the tang as it was simply left flat previously.
Finally a new safety button was made from scratch in the original A-1 style which truly sets the gun apart from the pack.
All of this work also removed about 1 oz. of metal from the frame. Another benefit.
All of the definition of the frame lines makes things a lot easier when it comes time for engraving, so that the border work can be good and true.
Enjoy some photos below of before and after the work above was performed. This work in all was about 20 hours of time.
Left Side Before
Before 3.jpg
Before 5.jpeg
Left Side After
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Bottom Before
Before 11.jpeg
Before 9.jpeg
Bottom After
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Top Before
Before 6.jpg
Top After
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Safety Button Before
Before 7.jpg
Safety Button After
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Bottom Quarter Before
Before 8.jpg
Bottom Quarter After
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A few more afters
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01-22-2019, 03:19 PM
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