BCRider
Member
...I heard a feller say "fill" a new Rossi with metal polish or toothpaste. Cycle it alot for a while. Disassemble and clean and it will work like it should.
Folks should run away quickly from those that suggest nonsense of this sort. I'd suggest something far stronger but this IS The HIgh Road and I'm trying to be polite.
The problem is that this is a totally non selective process. Surfaces which do not need metal to be removed get shaved anyway by the abrasives. And yet at the same time this technique typically does not properly or completely remove the machining burrs that should be removed to achieve a proper slickness. And the fit of the areas that ARE good and SHOULD be low in clearance get opened up so stuff gets sloppy. And since you MUST (or darn well BETTER) fully disassemble the rifle anyway to clean out this crud you don't save much or any time at all. Finally since you're doing all this "mud slicking" without ammo in the gun some of the stuff doesn't move correctly and gets NO polishing/working so you can still have tight spots once cleaned out and feeding actual ammo. It truly is a very ignorant way to try to do an action job on a firearm.
Far better to take it apart and use easy to find fine grade knife sharpening stones to do the job right. You have to take the rifle apart anyway at least once and it's a chance to switch out the springs for the reduced power options for the main spring and ejector spring. SO while you're at it you can go over the ejector in particular to remove the burrs that seem to be standard for Rossis n that area and generally LIGHTLY chamfer off the sharp edges of the rest of the action parts. If the bolt and locking bars have somewhat coarse machine marks on them you can use the stone to top off the crests of the tooling marks. But no more than that as you do not want to remove more metal than needed to achieve a smooth feel. And taking off only the crests provides a situation where the flat crests rub against each other just fine for a smooth feel. The good news is that you're doing this where it's needed but not touching anything that does not require some attention.