Extraction & Ejection issues!

[ithacaartist]

My stainless P.08 9mm was doing that, and how! Whatever it was hitting was actually digging up a burr on one leg of the V. I indexed a few rounds with a sharpie and determined they were hitting on the left side of the upper. I looked at the extractor and its claws looked lop-sided, the left one was lower.

The extractor itself is like an real P.08, but without the little ears on the side. I'd heard their specs were, ahem, a little lax, and the extractor as a whole wasn't strictly symmetrical; it seemed to move OK, nonetheless. I dressed the left claw back a bit with a needle file, reassembled, and it did better--leaving mostly a shiny V, and no more burr.

The fact that I was able to file it back disturbs me, too, because it means the part is not very hard. It's shaped like a new model extractor, but without the ears. (I should probably see if a spare repro is close enough to fit after its ears were removed.) It seemed to make sense that the low-side claw would pull the case to that side on the way out.

Another thing I thought about was how the tip of the ejector encounters the shell. When observing that the rim is held in the well on the breech face at top dead center, it would follow that a poke at the exact opposite side of the rim would rotate the round straight up. Now, if the poke were on the lower, right edge of the rim, it seems to me that the round would similarly rotate up, but also be biased to the side away from the poke. This might explain the reputation for banging against the left side, as well?

Replacing the extractor spring sounds helpful, I might try that, to see what difference it makes.