Don,t get guys all emotional with my silly antics, but I,m just a curious 52 yo physician who has discovered more joy in exploring weapons, experimenting, designing, , ballistics, gunsmithing more than shooting or collecting.
Just want to share my findings.
1) my original Astra slide seems to have more than .05” head space, thus with all things being equal: firing pin/spring, extractor the ignition is not consistent with some ammo.
The alternative slide works like a champ, I believe it has head space about right, somewhere in the .04-.045 “ range
As you can see even with the naked eye the top one is bigger.
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Question, would a bit longer firing pin compensate for the extra head space and make it more reliable? Or that is not good enough fix?
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2) just for fun I tried to shoot .22 blanks and make them cycle. They won,t feed in any of my .22LR weapons- too short to feed. But with .22 short Astra cub setup they are practically the same size and manually feed /cycle just fine.
Like in Hollywood I made a choke, an adjustable one for my threaded barrel and screwed in the set screw gradually closing the side hole ( the same diameter as barrel)and increasing back pressure. When I closed about 2/3”- the gun started to cycle and quite reliably.
