apis mellifera
User


Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: WV
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Where in WV? Answer by PM if you wish...

I am just outside Charleston.

I had a Mauser. It's not really for shooting, but one day, I could not control my curiosity and decided to fire a clip of 10 rounds from it.

The first two rounds fired OK. On the 3rd round, the hammer dropped, but no bang. I cocked the hammer again, pulled the trigger, still no bang. What's wrong, firing pin broken :confused: So I pulled the bolt open, and I felt I had to exert bigger force than usual. When the bolt was opened, an empty cartridge case flied to the ground. No wonder it did not bang.

Starting from there, it became a "bolt action" pistol. Every round fired, but every time the gun failed to eject, and the extractor of the gun was functional -- while I pull the bolt open manually, the empty case did fly out. What could be wrong with this....

On my way to home, I thought a few possibilities. The ammo is definitely good. I only shoot factory ammo and never had a problem with the brand in the past. The gun is matching... forced matching?? Geez... I inspected, not supposed to be, but it would not hurt to check again. The more I thought about this, the faster I drove -- wanted to return home quickly to check...

Arrived home, I disassembled the gun, checked the numbers again, perfect, definitely not artist work. Then, what's wrong with this...

When I looked at the ejected empty cartridge case, ...., well, something did look not right here -- it has excessive scratching on it wall. Trying to insert the case back into the chamber, it could only go half way in!! That's the problem, the gun's bore was worn, its chamber was a little bit oversized, and the cartridge case expanded excessively during firing caused bolt open failure!!

After knowing the problem, I feel much better. It has a chamber issue, but for a C&R pistol over 100 years old with worn bore, not a surprise at all. But this type of "problem" is hard to find in visual inspection.

Was this a C96 broom? .30 or 9mm? Did you get it straightened out?
dju

A collectible 7,63mm Conehammer. Most of my guns have excellent bore, I have never had any problem with those, but this one's bore and chamber were worn. In future, I will still sticky on guns with excellent bore, it could be more than accuracy :) But for this one, I will leave it alone. My workaround was lightly oil the cartridge before shooting, that works. If never shoot, then, it's not a problem at all. And, I don't shoot a lot from it anyway, due to the cost. Most collectors never shoot this variation.

Good commercial ammo with brass cases, not steel? .30 Mauser ammo, not .30 Tokerov?
I'm just wondering if the chamber, rather than being worn, is pitted from rust. Sometimes a light bit of polishing may be in order.
It just seems odd that a bore and chamber could be so worn as to create ejection problems. Usually if anything is that worn it is the rifling around the muzzle, caused by excessive cleaning from the muzzle end with steel cleaning rods. And only on weapons that show a lot of wear from years of use.
Just thinkng aloud.
dju

I only shoot Serbian made PPU 7,63mm ammo. The gun is expensive, no reason to cut corner on shooting incorrect Tokarev to save a few cents per round. My ammo consumption is not huge anyway.

The gun works marginally. The first two shots worked, because the very small amount of residual oil in chamber. Later it failed due to chamber was dry -- the bolt could only extract the empty case out half way, or case extracted out but the bolt lost steam to go back further. So, I polished 10 rounds with a thin layer grease to guarantee the chamber being "wet" on every shot, and that worked.

I bet this type of issue is common on C&R, regardless of gun type. Quite a few videos on youtube.com showed people met similar issue -- hammer dropped, no bang, open the bolt manually, empty case dropped out. If they have no solution yet, then, lubricate the ammo may help :)

No intention to hijack the topic. Since we're on a disputable subject... shooting or not shooting.... and I felt this particular bore/chamber issue is not limited to a single type of C&R. I saved two empty cases. The one on the left was fired from a small ring hammer 7,63mm excellent bore, the case is still in near new shape, almost no scratches on it after shooting. The one the right was fired from a cone hammer 7,63mm fair bore, scratches are very visible.

And, the other FN 1900 acquired at Thanksgiving worked perfectly. I test fired a box from it. The only problem was one ejected case somehow jumped into my collar. Fortunately, .32ACP ejected case was not very hot.

Just thought this again... say, when cartridge case is sticky inside the chamber, great stress must be put on the extractor. No wonder #1 easy to break part on C&R is the extractor!!