Iver Johnson Hercules

[fox-charlie]

This may be a bit off the mark but possibly one of the subscribers may have info regarding disassembly of the subject shotgun. It's a 16 Ga double trigger that is misfiring on the left barrel. I'm not sure of its age. Possibly someone could reference a website.

I've hunted too many seasons with the old girl and hate to give her up--too many memories. She doesn't have quite the heritage of a Fox but has been an excellant shooter.

She was purchased at a time in my life when money was tight and I needed a good hunting gun. Thanks, Paul.

[Fin2Feather]

If you don't get the answers you're looking for here you might want to post this at www.doublegunshop.com. I imagine someone there has experience with your IJ.

[eightbore]

I own an Iver Johnson Super Trap that was failing to fire one barrel. I took it to a "more than good" gunsmith who returned it to me with the message that he couldn't find anything wrong. However, it has worked flawlessly since. I suspect he cleaned it out in the area of the hammer fall and didn't want to charge me.

[fullchoke16]

On most of these vintage American guns,similar problems are cured by cleaning as Bill mentioned. If you are going to get into it yourself, take the barrels off and put the action, upside down in a padded vise. Remove the trigger plate screws with a ground to size screwdriver. If they have never been out before, you'll want to soak the screws with PB Blaster or some other sort of penetrating oil first. The trigger plate will be pretty tight, if you need to bump it loose, use a rubber or plastic hammer to avoid stupid marks. Having never had an IJ apart myself I would stop disassembly at this point because now you'll have a window open to the innards and you'll be able to see if you have anything broken or more likely a layer of rust mixed with powder fouling and golden rod type debris. Take it out of the vise (making sure not to loose any small springs, etc.) and turn the action nose down and spray hell out of it with degreaser until it comes clean. Blow it out with compressed air and repeat until you think you have it pretty clean. Give it a shot of your favorite lubricant and blow the excess of with air. Reassemble with care and give it a try before getting any deeper into it. Of course if you find evidence of broken parts,you've got bigger fish to fry. Hope this helps. Fred