I was reminded today of the importance of detail stripping your slide from time to time, if not all the time when cleaning:
Today at the range, I had a couple failures to fire, which were remedied by recocking the gun and firing. It happened again, and this gave me a chance to practice tapping the bottom of the magazine, racking the slide, and continuing to fire...
...but I wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on.
My suspicion was that something was blocking the firing pin, as the hammer hits with a good deal of force on my CZ Kadet conversion (.22 LR).
Removing the firing pin during maintenance, I found old, caked gunpowder everywhere, including clogging the firing pin hole.
I dutifully got out the .22 rifle mop, soaked it in some MP-7 Bore Cleaning Gel, and swabbed her out, inside and face. Then cleaned the pin, spring and back plate...lightly oiled.... and put it all back together.
Voila!
When manually engaging the firing pin using a punch, the operation is dramatically smoother than it was before I cleaned. Moreover, the firing pin hole is now wide open.
Based on this observation, I'm 99.95% certain that I will not have a non-ammo related failure to fire now that the weapon is cleaned.
Note: The firing pin had never been cleaning in 750 rounds fired. (doh!)
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I now follow a similar practice on the 1911, taking the slide apart and cleaning the firing pin and channel as well as the extractor... I found a lot of gunk in there after only 200 rounds today.
Moral of the story: Learn to detail strip your weapon and clean thoroughly.
It's one thing to have a failure to fire when plinking at the range - you'd hate to be let down if you truly needed your weapon.
Today at the range, I had a couple failures to fire, which were remedied by recocking the gun and firing. It happened again, and this gave me a chance to practice tapping the bottom of the magazine, racking the slide, and continuing to fire...
...but I wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on.
My suspicion was that something was blocking the firing pin, as the hammer hits with a good deal of force on my CZ Kadet conversion (.22 LR).
Removing the firing pin during maintenance, I found old, caked gunpowder everywhere, including clogging the firing pin hole.
I dutifully got out the .22 rifle mop, soaked it in some MP-7 Bore Cleaning Gel, and swabbed her out, inside and face. Then cleaned the pin, spring and back plate...lightly oiled.... and put it all back together.
Voila!
When manually engaging the firing pin using a punch, the operation is dramatically smoother than it was before I cleaned. Moreover, the firing pin hole is now wide open.
Based on this observation, I'm 99.95% certain that I will not have a non-ammo related failure to fire now that the weapon is cleaned.
Note: The firing pin had never been cleaning in 750 rounds fired. (doh!)
-
I now follow a similar practice on the 1911, taking the slide apart and cleaning the firing pin and channel as well as the extractor... I found a lot of gunk in there after only 200 rounds today.
Moral of the story: Learn to detail strip your weapon and clean thoroughly.
It's one thing to have a failure to fire when plinking at the range - you'd hate to be let down if you truly needed your weapon.