There are some really smart and handy people on this forum. I'm hoping someone can help me out. I've got a Winchester 1897 shotgun I'm trying to clean up but there's a screw I can't get loose. I'll attach a picture of it. The head of the screw is about 3/16" diameter. I don't know the diameter of the shaft. I've tried Kroil as a penetrating oil both on the screw and along the cross-pin that the screw retains. I've also tried lite hammering on the screwdriver bit to see if I can loosen it up. Do you have other suggestions on how I might get this screw out?
As oil gets old - really old - it turns into hard gum not unlike the consistency of thread locker, from just gummy to all out hard and crumbly. Penetrating oil rarely has enough time to soak clear down in already gummed up threads - that might take 6 months or a year. The good news is it softens easily with heat. Don‘t experiment with heat sources you aren’t familiar with, some people burn their eye brows off with a small propane flame, but you have to warm clear down to the threads to about 150 degrees. I heat until I can touch it, but too hot to hold - about like being left in the sun in a hot car. A hair drier would work eventually. An iron on a screw head never worked for me because the mass of metal around the screw draws the heat out so quickly.
It’s really a challenge to explain how hard to hit a screwdriver to help jar it loose. Little tap tap tap that wouldn’t break a window is too soft, and enough force to drive a big framing nail is too hard, but it’s a firm controlled smack. Again, the place to practice this is not on a firearm. If you ever run across really old or rusty Singer sewing machines headed for the junk pile, they are full of frozen screws similar in hardness to the best firearm screws and are perfect to practice on.
If you can fixture the gun so it’s properly aligned in the drill press this can help, but don’t do this if it can’t be done well - too many times people don’t get good alignment, or it moves, and the screwdriver bit cams out screwing up the head. If you’ve never done this, I wouldn’t practice for the first time on a hard to replace old screw.
Your bit has to fit the slot tight, but not tight in width - has to - and a lot of straight downward pressure is a must - order the correct bit from Brownells. Short ratchets have plenty of turning torque, but keeping them straight and applying downward pressure is very hard, so most of us just use a screwdriver handle for that size.
Old screws are hard to replace - be very careful, or take it someone. The cost to remove a single screw won’t be that much.
