Lee Loader

The spring was tensioned to the desired length, and tempered to a blue color. At least that was what I tried, the spring now is pretty colorfull... but I realized with the first coil that the spring does "work" when heated,the pre-tension was reduced significantly. I'll let it sit in the jib for a few days before assembling it, and hope I didn't heat it to a point where it got too soft and loses its spring properties. I'll see that in a few days.

Good luck!

Fyodor,

I want to encourage you to stick with your plan and to seek a source of carbon for your steel spring and do more research on heating treating spring steel and such. I'm going to do some research myself when I get back from the hospital today if I don't forget. There's more information on heat treatments of steel and the use of carbon than one might think. I believe with time and patience, you can and will achieve your goal.

Dave

Results:

The spring is broken beyond repair.



When I took it off the jig, it wasn't exactly straigth, but OK. I already saw that it was more stretched on one side than on the rest of its length. The spring did assemble quite well, and it did compress when I loaded the gun. I was a bit confused why it would compress LESS than before the treatment, it should be identical. Well, when I pulled the spring out again, it was obvious:

On the end where the spring was more stretched, I obviously overheatet it. That was where I started the procedure, and I thought I need to heat it up for a few seconds. After only afew curls I realized that the desired blue tempering color did show after about a second, and would vanish again after about four seconds. So This section of the spring was softened permanently, and wasn't usable as a spring any more. It was mangled to a strange shape while loading the magazine, blocking the last shell from being inserted. The rest of the spring, after I found out the correct treatment, performed quite well. Unfortunately it's not long enough.

But have a look for yourself:

Dang it!

How easy is it to get another?

Well, the problem is the costs. Until I can hold the spring in my hands over here in Germany, the USD Price has doubled or tripled. Especially when I don't need any other parts, shipping costs is a real show stopper.

In total one spring costs me about 80 dollars, including shipping, import taxes and customs. I'll try to find a used one, but that might take a while.

At least I learned from that: I now know how not to do it, and I got a founded guess of how to do it. And the jig worked better than I thought.

Fyodor wrote:Well, the problem is the costs. Until I can hold the spring in my hands over here in Germany, the USD Price has doubled or tripled. Especially when I don't need any other parts, shipping costs is a real show stopper.

In total one spring costs me about 80 dollars, including shipping, import taxes and customs. I'll try to find a used one, but that might take a while.

At least I learned from that: I now know how not to do it, and I got a founded guess of how to do it. And the jig worked better than I thought.

I never tried winding a compression spring that long before. When I was active in radio control airplanes I made landing gears and springs from wire I got at the hobby shop in 4 foot lengths. They called it music wire. You could wind it around a shaft that would give you the proper OD. Then hold it in your fixture and try the heat treating again. It is available in many diameters.

That's something I thought about, too. But I couldn't get spring steel wire in rolls, the pieces you can get her usually are one meter (the feet).

Fyodor,

Is this the conversion kit you bought? If not, it may be worth it to read over this ad, which contains some important information related to the Model 1897 and issues with shotgun shell lengths.

http://www.uniquetek.com/site/696296/product/T1413

Here are pictures of each type. Notice how the followers are different. This may be the real solution to why you're having problems getting the six rounds to fit and operate properly. You may have the wrong version.

Take down version: http://onlineoutpost.net/product/win-97 ... onversion/

Solid frame version: http://onlineoutpost.net/product/win-97 ... onversion/

Yes, that's the one I bought. As you know, the length printed on the shotgun shells indicates the length of the emty hull after firing. Because in Cowboy Action it's important to reload fast, I use ammo that doesn't have the common star crimp, but a roll crimp. Which means, before firing it's even longer than a standard, star crimped 12ga/70mm (2-3/4"). So even with the six rounds conversion I could only load five. I know that my choise of ammo makes this problem worse, but I really like that ammo otherwise. It just drops even from a dirty chamber.

Currently I solved this problem by using an ultra short 12ga/63,5mm (2-1/2") S&B practical sport cartridge. But that ammo has a lot more lead and powder in it than I need for Cowboy Action, the increased recoil increases pickup time.