Stevens 94C mainspring -- extremely hard to cock

[desmobob]

I have an old .410 94C that is very hard to cock. I've never handled another one so I don't know if it's typical or not, but it seems unusually stiff. I took off the buttstock and gave everything a thorough cleaning and lubricating and it had no effect. It functions and fires OK but the stiff spring kind of takes the fun out of plinking with it.

I put the gun back in the closet but got thinking about it recently and pulled it out. Again, I took off the buttstock and very carefully went over all the action with spray solvent and lubricant. No change.

The only thing I could guess was that someone had installed the wrong mainspring in it. It looks very thick, but I looked at the parts schematic for the gun and the spring does look correct. I hesitated to try and remove the spring because it seems like it might be under a lot of tension.

Any ideas?

 

[Col. Harrumph]

Maybe the plunger is installed upside down?

 

[Clemson]

I have one of those in the shop right now. The owner did not know that there was supposed to be a spur on the hammer. The spur broke off relatively cleanly, but it left him with a small piece of hammer to grab and pull back. Shown below with the replacement hammer not yet installed. StevensHammer by jakefromclemson, on Flickr

 

[desmobob]

My hammer is intact. Maybe I have an unrealistic expectation of the hammer pull? I'm a big guy and the hammer is difficult enough for me to pull that if I was walking through the woods with the gun and a grouse got up, I'm not sure I could cock the hammer as I was raising the gun for a shot. (Not that I'll be grouse hunting with the Stevens .410.) I can barely cock it with the pad of my thumb on the hammer. I have to slide my thumb over/across it so my thumb's joint is over the hammer. Is that normal?

 

[Carl N. Brown]

This made me go back to the gun cabinet of forgotten toys and do a check.

In single barrel hammer fired shotguns, I have a Springfield 94 (a kissing cousin of the Stevens 94C) and a more modern New England SB1 (related to the H&R Topper).

The '94 requires about twice the muscle power to pull the hammer back compared to the SB1.

Teal deer stuff. My '94 is in 12ga 2 3/4", has a Tennite stock (a very early WWII era plastic) and is light as a feather in spite of having a 30" barrel. I don't shoot high brass express shells in it.

 

[desmobob]

Thanks for sharing that. I'm not going to worry about it one second longer. My 94C also sits in the "cabinet of forgotten toys." Every so often, I think about it and take it out; I even shot a round of all-singles skeet with it a few years ago. Odds are, it will spend the rest of my life in the cabinet, to get pulled out and fondled when I'm feeling nostalgic. For that kind of use, the hammer cocking force is just fine.