Disassembly Instructions

Doing OK so far on disassembly. Per Lugerlou, I did not take the pins out of the breech lock and toggle links. (well, I made a half-hearted attempt but they didn't budge).

I have taken everything part except the recoil lever, mainspring and mainspring guide.

It needed a good cleaning. I know it has only one cleaning in the past 60 years and I did it after shooting it 12+ years ago and I didn't totally disassemble it, just a basic field strip. It is just a few years short of 100 years old.

Lots of black sludge under the extracor and light rust/sludge in nooks in the frame, behind the ejector, trigger bar and the various holes for parts/pins.

I did not have a hold open latch as expected and don't seem to have a magazine catch? Is this right?

I'm on a roll and am considering taking out the mainspring to clean around there. Recoil lever pin wouldn't come out but I put CLP around the pins to soak in & loosen it.

Somebody stop me before I try it! Is it really that hard to get back together??

Good suggestion. Hopefully I won't need help but may

I'm in with both feet now. I was perusing the spring/guide rod reinstallation instructions that Ron suggested. I thought I'd see just how strong that spring was and inserted a punch to test it. Without a lot of effort the hook end of the guide rod came off the recoil lever so I thought I'd go whole hog.

Glad I did. My purpose in all this was to give it a complete cleaning & lube so it will be protected against rust and if I didn't clean there, I'd always wonder if there was a spot I couldn't see that was eating away at it.

Getting the spring & guide rod out was fairly easy. Cleaned everything real good and used Thor's assembly instruction. I got to the part where the hook of the guide rod is over the spring. I inserted the hook end into the frame but that's as far as I got.

The punch I had been using is short and it's just not long enough for me to grip the other end to compress the spring and get the guide rod end into the frame. Looks like I'll have to finish another day when I get a better tool.

I think I've used close to 200 Q-Tips cleaning nooks & crannies of various parts, particularly the frame. This pistol will be clean and well lubed when I'm done. Thanks for all the help. Will report back when I get the next steps done.

How about magazine disassembly? I looked at it for a little bit but didn't see right off how to take out the spring and follower.

OK, I'm just about done here. The mainspring and guide rod weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, but certainly a challenge. Thanks to Ron Wood for steering me to the mainspring installation instructions by "Thor". The hardest part was getting the guide rod hook over the spring and putting it all back in the frame.

It went a bit slow as I'd never done it before and I had forgetten some of the parts alignment from the disassembly. A bit of trial & error and the parts all finally went in without damaging anything.

The pistol is extremely clean now and well lubed. I wanted to shoot it again but since it is so clean and lubed, I'll wait a good while. Not ready to do all that cleaning all over again. I've got it just the way I wanted it & now I have no concerns about any unseen rust & corrosion.

Now for the ultimate newbie question - I've got everything together except the side plate & locking bolt. Does the coupling link go in front of or behind the recoil lever? Believe I need to push on the barrel to close the locking bolt and I encountered a lot of resistance so I didn't want to push on it too hard. Looks like it goes in front of the recoil lever. Don't want to break anything now that I'm so close. Thanks again!

All done. Thanks to all. I didn't have the locking bolt in all the way so I flailed around a bit. I wasn't sure if it needed to be all the way in first as it wouldn't go in all the way. Finally got a flat end of a plastic pen and pushed hard and it popped in. I apparently managed to put a light perfectly horizonal scratch across the rearmost of the 3 proof marks on the left side of the frame, probably with the slide plate with the locking bolt not fully in. Oh well, not too bad. I suppose the good I did outweighed it.

So, if there is no easy way to disassemble the magazine without a chance of messing it up, I guess I'm done. Wish I owned another. Now that I'm past the learning curve, a 2nd one would take about 1/4 of the time.

I took a toothbrush to the grips and brushed them down real good. They are dark and some of the light brown came through. I considered cleaning them with Murphy's Oil Soap (for wood) and putting tung oil on them but was uncertain what the results would be.

Guess it's time to clean the holster next and move on to my Dad's Ithaca 1911 from WWWII or the Mauser 98K I got from SOG last year.

Any holster cleaning product suggestions?