Sako L61 Fails to Extract: Missing Extractor Fix | Over the Gunsmith's Shoulder Ep. 38

[00:00:00]Last month, Timmy had fallen in the well, and Lassie was on her way to rescue him when she got caught in a bear trap. Now, so then I start to look at the extractor and uh-oh, there is no extractor.

[00:00:13]Hey, pulling the cartridge out.

[00:00:16]Pull it back slow. We have a good fixed spring-loaded ejector.

[00:00:22]Look at that. Slow. We can test to make sure that there's going to be enough tension on that extractor to hold that case. I mean, it would just it would simply fall off. Hi, and welcome to Over the Gunsmith's Shoulder. I'm Gene Kelly, president of the American Gunsmithing Institute, and in this segment, master gunsmith Ken Brooks is going to walk you step-by-step through a gunsmithing repair. You're going to learn a lot. And if you'd like to learn to be a certified professional gunsmith, then go to americangunsmithinginstitute.com and request an information package. Now, let's learn from Ken.

[00:01:09]Welcome back to another over the shoulder. Last month, Timmy had fallen in the well, and Lassie was on her way to rescue him when she got caught in a bear trap. Now, tuning in. All right, just kidding.

[00:01:21]>> [laughter] >> Welcome to another over the shoulder.

[00:01:24]Trying to have a little fun, shake it up a little bit.

[00:01:27]We have a Seiko, Sako.

[00:01:29]And let me talk a little bit about that actually, right off the bat. Um Speaking with people who are in the know, the correct pronunciation is Sako.

[00:01:39]Um if you say Sako, only those people that know know what you're talking about. If you say Seiko, everybody knows what you're talking about, but you look like you might not know what you're talking about. So, it's a Seiko Sako, right?

[00:01:54]Uh long action. This is one of the good ones. I think this is the L61..30-06, one of my favorite calibers. Nice gun.

[00:02:01]And you can see whoever owns this one likes it because they've been using it.

[00:02:06]Neat gun.

[00:02:08]It's here for a couple things.

[00:02:10]I read on the tag. One is to grind the recoil pad to fit.

[00:02:14]Yeah, I'm not doing that on camera.

[00:02:15]Sorry. You don't get to see that. Tough.

[00:02:18]Uh but the other one is extract fails to extract. So, usually what I do is first thing I do is I pull this back and look at the chamber.

[00:02:29]And I know my head's in the way.

[00:02:32]The chamber looks pretty good. There's no rust, no pits, no not half a cartridge case in there, things like that. Looks fairly smooth. So, I start to look at the extractor and uh-oh, there is no extractor.

[00:02:45]So, that's probably why it doesn't extract.

[00:02:49]Um All right, well, I believe I have some in stock.

[00:02:53]So, let me We're going to kill camera for a minute so I can run up to inventory, see that I've got those parts, come back.

[00:03:01]Uh if I don't, we'll let you know then, but I'm pretty sure I do. So, we'll be right back. Hang on.

[00:03:08]Okay, so I do have an extractor kit, which is two extractors, which is nice, gives me an extra, a spring and a plunger.

[00:03:18]So, I'm going to go ahead and dump these out real quick.

[00:03:25]And I'm going to put one of these I believe these are the same.

[00:03:32]No, one in the foot is further to the rear. I think you guys can see that. Let me get a pointer.

[00:03:38]See how this foot sits further to the rear than this one?

[00:03:45]So, that's the reason they come as a set.

[00:03:51]There's a definite difference in them, though.

[00:03:54]So, we'll take our first extractor, and I'm just going to slide it into the bolt.

[00:04:00]Make sure the foot gets down in its hole, then I just use my finger at this point to push the extractor down because that plunger is going to be pushing it forward. The foot is going to be the pivot point, and it's going to want to rotate the claw into the bolt face.

[00:04:17]Then we can use our.30-06 dummy, and we don't have to use this. We could use anything with the right case head size. So,.270,.243,.308, what whatever, as long as the case head is correct, we can test to make sure that there's going to be enough tension on that extractor to hold that case.

[00:04:37]Now, I'm just pushing again the extractor against the cartridge case, and we have tension. If there If there was no tension, imagine there's no tension, I mean, it would just It would simply fall off.

[00:04:50]The next thing I like to check is the inclined plane or the bevel on the the extractor hook.

[00:04:57]And I want to make sure that the flat up here doesn't extend into the breech face.

[00:05:03]Cuz if it did, the cartridge would hit on that flat and wouldn't want to push the extractor out of the way. So, with extractor all the way down, again, just using my finger This This is just rough stuff, just quick to see, am I going to need to do anything right off the bat?

[00:05:20]Then the cartridge goes onto the breech face, hits the inclined plane, which cams the extractor out of the way, and then it will snap over. Again, extractor is spring-loaded forward.

[00:05:32]Good. So, it it it looks like it's going to work, you know, without doing a bunch of craziness.

[00:05:39]So, first thing I'm going to do now is I'm going to actually take the firing pin out.

[00:05:45]On this one, I can just rotate it clockwise, and the firing pin comes right out. Now, we don't have to worry about anything even though that's a dummy. Don't have to worry about that much.

[00:05:54]All right, you can see the extractor in the back of the extractor where the plunger is going to come forward and the extractor fits over the the foot. There's a notch there for the extractor. I said extractor. For the plunger to fit over the extractor foot.

[00:06:09]The extractor plunger is what retains our extractor in the bolt. Can't come straight out because again, the plunger is over the top of it sitting on that shelf.

[00:06:20]The next thing I want to make sure is that when I go to remove the plunger spring and extractor, I have some way of getting a knife edge screwdriver or something in front of the plunger [snorts] so I can push the plunger back into the bolt.

[00:06:38]And the plunger sticks up above the extractor as you can see there.

[00:06:44]So, that should not be a problem.

[00:06:47]On some of the earlier SAKOs, just so you know, there'll be a groove right here.

[00:06:54]>> [snorts] >> And if this plunger was smaller, I would take a cutoff disc and cut a little groove there and that's simply so you can take a dental pick or something, put it in that groove, slide it down, get it get it in front of that plunger and push the plunger back so the extractor can come out of the gun.

[00:07:13]So, with all that being said, put our spring on our plunger.

[00:07:25]Make sure our plunger fits and it does.

[00:07:29]What I'm going to do is I'm going to use the extractor to just push straight back and compressing the spring and the plunger until the extractor fits in its hole.

[00:07:36]But sometimes I put my thumb right here just so we don't launch out. It shouldn't because the extractor plunger is already in its hole, but I get more leverage this way. So, All right.

[00:07:53]Now, one thing I want to check before I go any further, All right, I'm going to use my punch to compress the plunger and spring, and you can see that the plunger, that's all the way down as far as I can compress it. The plunger doesn't go all the way in the hole into its hole, back into the bolt.

[00:08:12]So, there's not enough room for this to move back to snap down into place.

[00:08:17]So, I am going to need to shorten that plunger.

[00:08:31]Okay, so, like I said, I'm going to have to shorten this plunger.

[00:08:36]And how do I do that? You will usually I just put it in my little lathe. I got a little lathe here for doing just that.

[00:08:42]I don't have to go a long ways. I just got to do a little bit.

[00:08:52]All right.

[00:08:54]The next time you see me, I'll be at the lathe.

[00:08:56]All right, so, basically I got the little plunger in the the lathe here, and this lathe I don't do a lot of precise machining. I can cut, you know, and make firing pins, re-tip things. So, please don't send me all your hate mail about I got powder and filings on my lathe. Yeah, I've been This is what this lathe has been used for for 35 years, so.

[00:09:20]>> [snorts] >> All right, I'm just going to simply shorten it up with the file. Unless that plunger is super hard.

[00:09:33]Hard, but not uncuttable. So, more like a spring, which is nice.

[00:09:39]It's kind of what we want. Something's going to last.

[00:09:42]Have some flex.

[00:09:45]Just take off a little bit.

[00:09:47]Break that edge.

[00:09:55]And we'll go try it again.

[00:10:00]So, there's the plunger in our spring.

[00:10:05]And try to keep your fingers out of the way so the camera can see.

[00:10:09]So, everybody knows what you're doing.

[00:10:12]Repeat the process of the extractor going back and down.

[00:10:20]There we go.

[00:10:22]All right. So, plunger's resting on our extractor. Our extractor is spring-loaded towards the breech face where that case go.

[00:10:34]All right. Well, the bullet gave it a little extra. It has tension. Doesn't fall off. Doesn't fall off. You swing it If I swing it hard, yeah, it does. But, we've got pretty good tension there.

[00:10:45]So, let's All right. Firing pin out of the gun.

[00:10:51]Not that it matters. We're using a dummy cartridge here..30-06, which is the chambering.

[00:10:56]Unless they improved it or did something else.

[00:10:59]Going to slide the bolt forward. We want it to close just like that cuz we want that inclined plane on the face of that extractor hook. I got that extra extractor I can point it out. We want this inclined plane to push to the the rim of the case to hit that.

[00:11:16]Push this out so the extractor will snap over.

[00:11:19]Which I believe it did. We won't know until we open the gun.

[00:11:24]Hey. Pulling the cartridge out.

[00:11:27]Pull it back slow. We have a good fixed spring-loaded ejector.

[00:11:32]Look at that. Slow.

[00:11:36]I'll do that again. I'm going to do it several times.

[00:11:38]Slow, comes back. Barely falls out.

[00:11:43]You're in a hurry, grizzly bear's after you. Woo! Loses it all over the world.

[00:11:50]And then you're just practicing.

[00:11:52]Yeah.

[00:11:53]Not a problem.

[00:11:56]Look at that.

[00:11:58]Well, now the test is to go shoot it. Make sure everything works.

[00:12:05]Um so, let's talk a little bit about a couple little things that I see and things that come up.

[00:12:10]Okay? This I'm pretty sure this is going to work. I'm happy. Um I can come in here. I can pull this plunger back and remove that if need. So, a couple things just to be aware of.

[00:12:21]Um so, this kit I bought was just uh ex- Sako extractor generic kit.

[00:12:28]Um the machining, the way everything looks, it looks like it's original Sako parts.

[00:12:35]I don't know that it is.

[00:12:37]With that being said, you can notice that we've got a little bit of side-to-side movement of our extractor in the machined out area for it in the bolt.

[00:12:48]It's not going to hurt anything. I'm not worried about that. The plunger is a little smaller in diameter than the hole.

[00:12:55]If you were so inclined, you could make a plunger that's essentially this length, uh the large section that length, the small section that fits in the spring that length, uh and then make just the head here a little larger in diameter.

[00:13:16]Now, what I want to do is I want to push this down.

[00:13:20]So, I'm going to have Robert zoom in on that. And if you watch, if I push that down, the plunger moves down and the extractor. See that?

[00:13:30]That's because there's the plunger is a little undersized in the hole. It can do that. If it was tight, plunger couldn't move.

[00:13:39]So, would this work? Is this going to work? Yeah, absolutely. This is going to work. Uh and the test would be, of course, to test fire, which I will do.

[00:13:48]You guys aren't going to get to watch that. That I'm sorry.

[00:13:51]Um if this were my gun, would I make an oversized plunger? Probably.

[00:14:01]Probably. This is going to work.

[00:14:03]Um I'm going to test fire it, and if it doesn't, then at that point I'll figure out why it doesn't work. But it I mean, it's going to work. The extractor holds onto the case.

[00:14:13]Pulls it straight back. There's no weirdness there. It's not a semi-automatic. It's not working at Mach 2 speeds. It's hunter speed, right?

[00:14:24]So, I think this is going to work just fine.

[00:14:28]I just wanted you guys to be aware of it. One other thing that I'd like to do is often I will polish this, but we can see that it's snapping over. It's not a problem.

[00:14:37]Um you don't have to. Sometimes we I already covered when we put it in that I want to make sure that that bevel does not extend into the breech face where the flat on the extractor will hit the case.

[00:14:50]That bevel will.

[00:14:52]So, it if the extractor extended into the breech face too far, then you can polish that and extend that bevel outward.

[00:15:03]All right. Seemed like a lot of long-winded stuff in there.

[00:15:06]Um I'm going to put this together and put it in the test fire pile.

[00:15:11]And we will see you guys next time.

[00:15:15]I'll have an update on Lassie.

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[00:15:29]If you're interested in training to be a real gunsmith, go check out the American Gunsmithing Institute.com or for your own firearms training, AmericanGunsmith.com.