Brendan and I had some fun shooting one of my two Remington 141s this past Saturday. It's an oldie but certainly is a goodie and once I get some better glass for it, I think I will use it or the other for hunting larger game here in Tejas Texas. Tonight, I took it out of its case and decided to give it a good cleaning. I cleaned it last Thursday or Friday prior to the range but wanted to give it a good going over again because until I can afford a new scope for it, it may be put away in storage. Now, I've only taken it down and then reassembled it once before and that was just taking out the takedown screw, pulling apart the stock and trigger group from the receiver, taking out the bolt, cleaning what I could and then slapping it back together. Each time I did it, I watched the below video on YouTube:
I appreciate the gentleman's effort in putting that out there for the rest of us who needed some help with a 141 but I have to say while it helped me a good deal, it also confused me quite a bit. The reason for the confusion was not so much due to his lack of using the correct names for parts but that I did what he said and held - what he called - "a little lever assembly" and also called "that little rod"(the ejector plate) and that did not do a thing to help get the bolt assembly meshed with the action slide assembly (part names as per the book I am about to mention) this second time around. Yes. it did seem to work the first time but now that I have found out a little bit more about the 141 via the book: The Gun Digest book of Firearms Assembly/Disassemby Part IV: Centerfire Rifles - I realize that holding the ejector plate (as the book called it - no mention of a part with that name in my copy of the Remington 141 manual) in place either had little or nothing to do with meshing those two assemblies and that the first time I put it back together the striker (firing pin) was probably cocked. This time it was decocked but I had no clue that was a problem. An assembly tip in my book was that the striker (firing pin) has to be cocked in order to mesh the bolt to the action slide assembly. Once I got that done, meshing the parts was easy.
Now there is a lot more to disassembly and assembly than taking it apart and removing the bolt. I got a bit adventurous and decided that I was also going to completely take aprt the bolt assembly. I mostly did that because I thought for sure there must have been a pin or spring that I knocked out of the bolt, or something I knocked out of alignment, that was preventing me from being able to get it back together. That was after watching that video but before I looked in my book. The ejector plate, in the video, seemed to be under spring tension when he moved it; however on my bolt it was loose as a goose. Well, I figured let me detail strip the bolt to see if i could figure what was wrong. used the directions in the book along with the, in my opinion, terribly low quality photos they used to illustrate the process. Well, I got it apart in no time. Getting it back together was another story, that took me around an hour or more. I really need to get a vise, that third hand would have been a big help tonight. Anyway, I did manage to assemble the bolt and used all the pieces when doing so (that is a good thing).
Another part of a detail strip of this rifle would be to remove the action slide assembly and the magazine. That requires a bit more work but looks none too difficult to take apart but may wind up being a bit difficult to put back together. I did not try itt tonight after it having taken me an hour or more to assemble the bolt. I'll leave that until next time.
If I become somewhat comfortable at taking it down and slapping it back together and can do it with some good degree of reliability, I intend to make a video of how to do it. First though, I'll have to go through all my boxes to look for my camera, the one that I can mount to a mini-tripod I have around here somewhere. Then I will set it up with some decent lighting and give it a shot. I promise to try to use proper nomenclature when describing what I am doing and not to call the receiver the chamber assembly nor call it the breech and I will try to call parts by not more than one name so as to avoid confusion. Now, please believe me, I am not ragging on the guy who made that video; I have made a few of my own where I called a part by the wrong name; I am just trying to point out what does and does not make a firearms assembly/disassembly video easier to understand in my experience. I cannot speak badly at all of the man who made that video especially since it was his first such attempt. It's too bad, in my estimation, that he did not make any more informative firearms videos; I am betting he would have improved greatly and gotten very good at it. His heart was certainly in the right place. Anyway, as I said, his video helped me despite it also confusing me a bit and I am grateful for the help.
All the best,
Glenn B
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