I bought an excellent used Remington Mohawk 48 12 gauge recoil-operated semi automatic shotgun last month for very little money. All it needed was a good cleaning and the installation of a left hand safety. Since I do this minor maintenance quite a bit it was not a problem. During a function test at the gun club yesterday it would fire normally and function when single loaded directly into the chamber. However, it would not allow shells to be loaded into the magazine and hung up at the last 1/8th inch of the shell. I called my gunsmith, but he was unavailable.

I went online and looked for videos on disassembly and reassembly of a Mohawk 48 and there were several. This shotgun is different from my Remington Model 1100 shotguns because nothing is staked inside the receiver. Parts tend to fall out and have to be held in place to reassemble the shotgun. One needs four hands to get it back together. One video looked promising until the author tapped out the receiver pins to drop the trigger group. He then used a pair of vise grip pliers to grasp and extract them. To my mind that was gross use of the wrong tool. At that point I shut the video down and took some independent action.

I used a small punch and gently tapped the receiver pins out, removed the trigger group and checked things out inside the receiver. After about 15 minutes of trial and error I got everything back together and now shells feed easily into the magazine. I did not leave tool marks on the shotgun

My point is, I am reluctant to follow advice from anyone that uses excessive force and crude techniques to work on firearms. My gunsmith says to never force anything. I agree. All the best...
Gil

Absolutely true. There is a big difference between the common "gun butcher" and the "home craftsman ". Slow and easy, bearing quality and true workmanship in mind, is the key. Good find and good job done!

There you go again, Gil, getting all the good deals! Glad it worked out for you.

You’ve done it again Gil...scored a great bargain mate.

I agree totally with both yours and Single Shot’s attitude...if you have to forced it either in or out then you most likely have missed something, a part, that is still in place. My brother was a classic example of a home ‘butcher’. For example, he would undo tight nuts with a hammer and cold chisel then butcher up another nut to fit when putting his 1942 WLA Harley back together...and he wondered why he had problems with his bike.

When I am disassembling and reassembling anything I go slowly and methodically and will not force anything...that is a recipe for disaster.

I only break out the hammers when trying to get frozen brake rotors off


-DallanC

if you want an exercise in frustration and a test of your patience try taking apart a Browning BLR and putting it back together......only a couple of easy to shift pins (I used an appropreately sized nail and tiny wee tack hammer...dont own punches) the lever is like a sprocket wheel and underside of bolt is sawtoothed so you have to get it in just the right place. it will work one tooth out but you will have headspace/extraction/misfire issues. we must have done the lads one 10-15 times to get it just right as you working by feel and jiggle,then pop pin in and try.... definately agree you dont force anything when working with guns...the good old "get a bigger hammer" doesnt apply here.
great to hear you have scored another bargain Gil.

Recently I was watching a Youtube video on how to disassemble an SKS, which I had just picked up. I was following along, doing exactly what he was, until he said "Wait, don't do that yet." I still haven't got it fixed...

Elvis, you're right. I painfully remember when I took my Browning lever action in .22 apart in my workinggarage, where all kind of stuff is laying arround on the floor...
after several hours of searching I only had to make another case extraction pin to get it completed again. Luckely my friend has the Miroku make of that lever action and it proved to be a real good copy.
My Browning is operational again and I will never take it apart again when I'm not in a totally clean room...
that's donkey's wishdom!

Aloysius wrote:

...My Browning is operational again and I will never take it apart again when I'm not in a totally clean room... that's donkey's wishdom!

...also, when removing small springs...that are usually under tension...I now do it in a large plastic bag, that way I don’t spend an hour crawling around on the floor searching for a perfectly camouflaged spring. A friend had a spring go “sproing” when disassembling a rifle. He found the spring about 3 months later sitting happily in a channel wall rafter 3 metres above the floor in his shed.

Vince wrote:

Aloysius wrote: ...My Browning is operational again and I will never take it apart again when I'm not in a totally clean room... that's donkey's wishdom! ...also, when removing small springs...that are usually under tension...I now do it in a large plastic bag, that way I don’t spend an hour crawling around on the floor searching for a perfectly camouflaged spring. A friend had a spring go “sproing” when disassembling a rifle. He found the spring about 3 months later sitting happily in a channel wall rafter 3 metres above the floor in his shed.

What really bugs me is when someone is watching at the moment I drop something & they say "oh!" or make a noise right when I want to be listening for where it lands.