Modifying the Stevens 311 to Enhance Usability

[W.R.Buchanan]

I have had an old *** Stevens 311 Double Barrel 12ga. Shotgun in my safe for many years. I have wanted to cut the barrels and make it into a 20" barreled "Coach Gun" to use as a simple Home Defense Gun my wife could conceivably use in an emergency.

Cutting the barrels off was the easy part and took all of 10 minutes to cut and grind the ends square.

Then a couple of design deficiencies reared their ugly heads.

First: the barrels don't stay far enough down after cocking to get spent rounds out and new ones in. You have to compress the Hammer Springs to their limits in order to make this happen. which pretty much eliminates any form of fast loading or reloading. The gun will NOT stay open on its own it reverts back to the "Hammers on the Sears" position as soon as you release the barrels, thus you need three hands to load it!

There is a fix on the internet for this which involves re-profiling the cocking lever to allow the barrels to drop lower, but it is poorly explained and the sketch is literally on a piece of notebook paper with some scrawled writing as explanation.

I can get thru this part.

The second problem is that after firing the firing pins don't retract and the gun is a bear to open prompting many to literally break the gun in half over their knee to open it. This is pure BS!

I know that these guns were essentially inexpensive versions of the excellent Fox model B, however they kind of missed something in the translation.

Does anyone have any decent solutions to these two problems? The internet is virtually no help at all on this subject as is You Tube. I figure someone in the Cowboy Action Shooting Crowd might have some answers.

Randy

[Blackwater]

Sounds to me like it's been through some abuse to be quite THAT hard to break open. Some gentle polishing of the worn spots might help a little. The firing pins may need some retraction springs to keep them from being broken off some time? The rest is all about spring tensions and smoothness, mostly. They CAN be very decent usin' guns.

[Calamity Jake]

The 311 opening problem is not and easy fix, a good gunsmith will have to weld and recut the sears to fix the problem.
Have him put lighter hammer springs in while he's in there.

[pietro]

.

IME, when a double gun is very hard to open, it's usually due to the FP tips not retracting soon enough, staying engaged with the dent they put in the primer(s).

You 311 doesn't recock/etc like it did with the original length barrels because by cutting the barrels shorter, you've lost at least 50% of the leverage had with the original bbl length.

The only way I know of to achieve a (partial) remedy for the hard cocking is to lighten the MS pressure on the hammers, taking care not to remove too much pressure & cause mis-firing from light hammer strikes.


.

[gnoahhh]

Short of selling it and starting over with something better adapted to your task of home defense, check and make sure that the firing pin return springs are in place. If they aren't, you can get new springs from Numrich and install them yourself. I did that with a 311 (inherited from my father or I wouldn't have messed with it), and even accomplished it without dismantling the action- albeit only with a lot of cussing, but I did it. Once the firing pins are retracting on their own it opens a lot easier after firing.

As far as being a real bear to open the whole way and staying open for easy reloading- there's really no way around that without some extensive modifications as stated above. For that reason alone I can think of a couple other cheap(ish) doubles that would serve the purpose better. The last thing you (or your wife) want is to fumble with a reload in a panic situation. I would snag a gun with ejectors for that purpose.

[bob208]

there was a simple fix for it on the cowboy shooters site. it has to do with removing a spring under the forearm. the stevens were made not to open all the way. because it was common practice to carry a double open over the arm a little added safety.