[NH Photo Shooter]

I have a 1920 commercial with sear safety, likely made late 20's with likely modifications later. I've been shooting it quite a bit - fun pistol indeed.

I was having way too many failures to feed, and have been working on that. The mags were hanging too low. The mag release showed no sign of excess wear, so I am assuming it was mismatched to the gun. Fixed that, and it helped. Got a Mec-Gar magazine, and that also helped.

The other thing I noticed was that a fair number of rounds were feeding almost all the way, but the bolt stopped about a quarter of an inch from battery. Upon recent close examination of the chamber, I noticed an extra little step about that far back from the step that the case headspaces on. Not large, bit quite visible, and easy to feel with a sharp probe. Testing by manually inserting rounds into the chamber of the stripped gun, with the rounds angled as they would be in feeding from the mag, I could easily see this causing the problem I was having. I polished most of it out with 220 grit on a 3/8" dowel in a drill, going very slowly. It's not quite gone, but I definitely took the edge off. This also had the effect of polishing the chamber rather nicely, and possibly enlarging it by a very small amount. It's feeding much more reliably now.

I have new springs on order from Wolff just in case a weak mainspring was contributing to the issue, but, really, I'm not dissatisfied with the reliability at this point: one or two minor failures (had to tap the toggle down) in over a hundred round test with mostly handloads.

So what I wonder is, has anyone ever noticed this before? Bad chamber reaming, or was that little step there for some reason? I'm assuming careless machining, but wonder if anyone has had any similar experience.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.