Spring compressor (cramp in English gunsmith terms) for Lyman Deerstalker.

[webfeet]

Hi Everyone -

First of all, apologies if this is a really dumb question. Yesterday was my first day at digging inside my muzzleloaders. I've been shooting for a couple years but wanted to take a look at the internals as one of my guns has developed a squeak when cocking and uncocking the hammer.

What do you all use to compress the mainspring of your locks? For modern firearms I have various screw based devices to compress the springs of firearms I work on.

I have Lyman Deerstalkers and they use coil springs for their mainsprings. My clamps for shotgun leaf springs won't work.
I am thinking of modifying a pair of pliers so the nose of the pliers has a slot that fits around one end of the spring and I can retract the spring with that. I prefer clamps to compressing by hand as things are less likely to fly across the workshop.

Any ideas on clamps? What do you use for coil springs?

 

[Sam squanch]

I don’t own any muzzleloaders with coil springs. But I have a collection of old and new pliers, vise grips, c clamps that I have modified for different springs I’ve had to remove over the years. Just get some old pliers and experiment.

 

[Gonetocamp]

Track of the Wolf:
TOOL-VISE-COIL Coil Mainspring Vise, to safely compress a coil mainspring.
Price: $13.99

 

[webfeet]

Thank you.