How I Got My Armi-Sport Spencer Working, The Issues I Had and How I Resolved Them

It was one year ago this week that I picked up my Armi-Sport Spencer Rifle from Mid Tenn Guns & Ammo. I already had the finest Spencer in the world a Romano Spencer from Larry Romano, but I wanted a Spencer rifle. I'd willingly pay the money for a Romano, but Larry makes perfect replicas of the 1860 model and I wanted the 1865 model for Cowboy Shooting (The Single Action Shooting Society).

By the way – yet another shameless plug – if you're in the Middle Tennessee area and looking for a good gun store see Darrell at Mid Tenn Guns & Ammo. A good man and knowledgeable about guns, particularly Cowboy guns and all things concealed carry.

The difference? Well the 1860 model had a blade extractor, which makes it very difficult to single load cartridges into the Spencer. The version Spencer that Armi-Sport uses the lane extractor, and is a breeze to single load.

So why all this trouble? Well I as I said I Cowboy shoot. Cowboy Shooting is a combined arms competition where shooters use single action pistols, approved lever or pump action rifles and double barreled, or 1897 Winchester type shotguns, shot on the clock. All weapons must be either reproductions designed before 1900, or modern hand guns such as the Ruger BlackHawk, that follow the same general mechanical principles as weapons before 1900. Typically you have 5 rounds in two pistols, ten rounds in a rifle and 2 to 6 rounds for the shotgun. 

I love using the old guns for cowboy shooting and I wanted to use the Spencer at a Cowboy shoot.  Since the Spencer holds only seven rounds, and you usually need 10 for a cowboy match, you either reload three rounds by extracting the tube-magazine follower, and dropping in more rounds on the clock, or you single load rounds on the clock. Since you're shooting  seven  out of the gun, then only need three more, it ends up being much faster to single load them than to take out the magazine follower, drop only three rounds in (there are penalties for loading more than you need into a rifle magazine), replace the follower and shoot. If you were shooting seven then loading and shooting an additional seven it would be faster to load seven rounds in the mag.  But for 10 rounds, loading single shots after emptying the mag is faster. You may want to check out this YouTube link to see some Cowboy shooting.  Sorry I couldn't find one using a Spencer.  I am using a Henry though.

The Armi-Sport has the lane extractor, so I ordered one through my buddy Darrell Morris at Mid Tenn Guns and Ammo. I went up on Saturday a year a go this last week and picked it up. I couldn't wait to get it home. I had bought Armi-Sport 56-50 brass, had loaded up some rounds and was ready to try it out. Went to the range loaded the mag with seven bright brass rounds and worked the lever.

At least I tried to work the lever. The weapon would not feed. Well I'm not a Spencer rookie. I know all about the importance of cartridge length to the the smooth feeding from the mag. So I went back home and tried all kinds of lengths – no good. I called Darrell and he had me bring the gun back.

Thus started a three month odyssey. Darrell called the distributor and was told that they would not take the gun back. The only choice was to send it to Armi-Sport directly to get it fixed. I want to say right here that Darrell was prepared to take the gun back and eat the loss, but I was OK sending it back to Armi-Sport, besides it wasn't Darrell's fault and he offered to make it good. We sent the gun to Armi-Sport. They fixed the feeding problem, but it took a lot of time, three months like I said. I have heard that it has since gotten much better and their US facility has hired better Gunsmiths so the turn around is faster. When I got it back it cycled out of the magazine, but the gun had other issues

I went to back to the folks at the Spencer Shooting Society and discovered that the many of the Armi-Sport Spencers have had a lot quality control issues. The following is a summary of issues reported on the Forum, and again I suggest you visit the Forum and read the posts for yourself.

• Barrel not being secured to the receiver 
• Working the lever brings action past the action stop 
• The action was really rough and sometimes would get stuck and not complete its downward cycle* 
• Cartridges would not smoothly chamber – they could be forced, but the brass would show score lines which for me ended up being burs around the slot for the lane extractor.* 
• The slot on the magazine tube had burrs that caused the follower to not more freely.* 
• The trigger pull was 20+ lbs. The hammer felt sometimes like I would have to use two hands to cock it.* 

*Issues I had with my Armi-Sport Spencer.  

Now not all Armi-Sport Spencers have issues, but enough had problems that the issues hit some of the Spencer sites on the web. The good news is, according to Two Flints, the Spencer Shooting Society's moderator and Spencer expert, Armi-Sport has made a better commitment to quality control and the 2012 run will be of better quality.

After reading all the posts on Spencer issues experienced by members of the Spencer Shooting Society, and reading about the tips and tricks they used to fix them, I started working on my gun. I'm a fair jack-leg gunsmith (at least I think I am) and I took my time. The tools and materials were simple, mostly I used 240, 320 and 400 grit sanding paper, a calipers, a Dremel tool with 240 grit sanding drums and finishing abrasive buffs. I used the Dremel tool only a few times, 90% of the time I hand sanded.

I started on the upper block. I noticed it fit very tightly against the sides of the receiver had too sharp a top edge on the firing pin face, which actually cut into lead of the bullet, causing tough feeding. I had to round over the top of the block as well as some rounding on the sides of the block. This helped make the action smoother, but it still would get caught up and jam. After working it free a couple of times and carefully observing the action as well as looking at the scratch marks on the block, I discovered that the front of the trigger bar (where the short screw secures the trigger bar to the frame) was miss-shaped (almost square) and would drag on the top of the block. I reshaped it by rounding the piece and the action got better. I also took a 400 grit paper to some areas on the top of the block where I could see scratch marks from where the block would drag on the back of the receiver and gently smooth those areas down. This all took 20 solid hours. I want to stress I hand sanded the block in order to not take too much off any surface. I did use a Dremel tool to round over the trigger bar.

I next started on the chamber. I discovered that it had burrs around where the lane extractor slot interfaces with the chamber. I rigged a dowel with some sand paper and gently worked the burrs out until rounds would slide in and out with ease. It took about 6 hours. Sadly I have no good picture of this.

Burs on the magazine tube slot was interfering with the free movement of follower. It had burrs on the slot where the follower screw rides in the slot. I used sand paper and worked out the burs until the follower would move smoothly up and down the slot. This took about 4 hours.

Lastly I worked on the trigger/ hammer spring until I had a nice smooth trigger pull of ~ 5lbs. I hand sanded the spring so I didn't have issues with heating up the metal. I refit it very often to make sure it was strong enough to fire the primer. This work was the longest, perhaps 30 hours total over multiple days. When I was done the trigger pull was a crisp 5.5 pounds.

While doing all this I really want to stress that I took my time and carefully worked on each piece, refitting the part I was working on many, many times to make sure all was well and I didn't take too much metal off. I spent ~ 50 hours working on the gun in total.

I took the gun to the range and after using 15 rounds to sight it in I shot this last 5 round group.

After shooting it I made one more mod as suggested by forum members, which was to rework the back sight's notch for a better, deeper sight picture, for the Spencer's sight, as well as my Sharps have lousy sight pictures. I've noticed other repros have bad sight pictures as well, I wonder if the originals were as bad?

Overall I am pleased with the results and am impressed with the accuracy of the weapon. I was pleased that after 20 rounds of 777 (black powder substitute) it fed just as smooth on round 20 as round one. Although I had to spend a lot of time on it I am very happy with the results. I like working on guns so all the work wasn't really a hardship. I now have 700 rounds through the piece and have used it in one living history event and one SASS match. It has always been reliable and cycled and ejected rounds smoothly. I'm still working out loads and bullets to use, but I've gotten good accuracy at 50 (3 inch groups) and 100 yards (5 inch groups). I plan to use the gun at my Cowboy Shooting Club (Wartrace Regulators) long range shoot (200 yards).

Even after all the work and trouble I am very happy with my Armi-Sport Spencer. We will see if the 2012 Armi-Sport production run takes care of some of the issues with earlier runs had. Even with the problems I am please with the gun.