Bonehead Assembly Mistakes

[Yanus]

Disassembled a K98 bolt without first setting the safety in the middle position.......
I like to have NEVER got the damned thing back together! My hand still hurts just thinking about it........ :banghead:

Yanus

 

[nico]

I do know that if you try and remove the reciever cover on an SKS when the bolt is back, parts fly.

I learned that too. Startled the crap out of me. I'll probably have some more to add to this list after I decosmo it today or tomorrow.

 

[TimRB]

"Disassembled a K98 bolt without first setting the safety in the middle position.......
I like to have NEVER got the damned thing back together! My hand still hurts just thinking about it........"

Not that I have ever done such a thing, but I have *heard* that an easy way to recover from this mistake is to put your bolt in a padded vise, upside down and with the rear of the bolt facing you. Make a loop out of wire or stout string and use it to pull the cocking piece back far enough to flip the safety lever over.

Tim

 

[Yanus]

Tim,
I didn't have a vice at the time. I felt like a complete idiot as soon as I unscrewd the bolt.

Yanus

 

[Azrael256]

I did the SKS one, too. It seemed like the whole spring/bolt/carrier assembly was coming straight for my crotch. As fate would have it, I had good reflexes that day, and I jumped just enough when it came apart that the whole thing hit me in the solar plexus.

USP9 magazines. They just look like they don't need that weird plastic piece that holds them together from the inside. The tabs on the side *should* be tight enough to keep the floorplate on. Wrong! Floorplate, spring, and follower come shooting out the bottom of the mag hard enough to break a glass sitting on the table.

This is the best one. I hope I'm not the first to pull this. While disassembling a 1911, it did not occur to me that disassembly is usually the exact opposite of assembly. First thing I do is yank the retaining pin, and watch as the slide in all its glory, flies across the room and narrowly misses someone's head. *whew*

 

[Navy joe]

I was standing in a gun shop when in walks a man with a gun in his hand....wait, wrong song. So anyway this man had recently bought a Ruger P345 from the shop. I know the manager, pretty knowledgeable and willing to help. Seems;' the customer's DEA ageant brother in law had torn the guy's new piece down for inspection. Well, upon reassembly it was discovered that it is bad to have the feed ramp ahead of the slide stop pin. It took about 1/2 hour to get the gun apart. It was then discovered that in his professional detail strip way the DEA fella had converted the gun to DAO. Oops! Unable to see which widget was wrong, the shop sent it back to Ruger for the guy.

Personally my dumbest was with my Jap Arisaka pawn shop find/project gun. I got the Timney trigger just the way I wanted it so I loctited the adjustment screw. When I got to the range the loctite had done it's job on everything, that trigger was not moving. Maybe a little less loctite next time.

In the PITA category I have re-assembled a M-1 carbine bolt without the tool i didn't know existed, and got the extractor back in a Makarov after a fair amount of bad language.

 

[NHBB]

my stupidest mistake was reassembling my full auto M10/45 and only putting one of the two part takedown pins back in... half way through a mag it jammed as it was separating from the receiver, scared the crap out of me after I realized what I had done.

 

[mfree]

Mmm, memories. Asides from losing the mag safety spring for about 2 hours out of my P22 (NEVER DISASSEMBLE GUNS OVER CARPET)...

How about seperating the upper and lower on a FAL (I think, the one with the rat-tail on the end fo the bolt) and then tipping the barrel up for a look...

*shoooeeeeeenk* and I managed to grab the bolt with my third hand before it hit the floor, manage to keep from dropping the rifle, and not sweep anyone while I was at it Important lessons learned...

 

[Mr Kablammo]

If you take down a Steyr M-9 and re-assemble it without the guide rod (or whatever hold the recoil spring) you can get it back apart by poking a chopstick into the hole where the guide should be. The point, IIRC, is to resent the trigger (or push something back in place) so that the slide will release. The first time it happened I was showing off the new gun to Glock owner AT SHOOTING COMPETITION. If he did not have screwdriver I would have had to drop out. Talk about humiliating...

 

[Greysand]

After one of the first times I had had taken my CZ-52 shooting, I was over at my friends house doing the whole teardown/cleaning thing w/ my buddies. Well I didn't have my little barrel extraction tool and so I decided to use a plastic chopstick. (it fit in the hole fine, and looked plenty strong) Well I had just gotten the bolt unlocked and tilted out of the slide when I heard this funny snaping sort of sound. Then to my utter amazement the barrel, recoil spring & about half a chopstick sailed 20+ feet across the room. On the down-ward end of it's ark, the barrel struck and overturned a cup of ice-tea that saturated a previously sleeping and now very startled housecat.

I was laughing so hard that it took me nearly a half hour to clean up both the ice tea and the cat. The barrel & spring were both sticky & fuzzy by the time I got to them.

But I suppose its ok. I've been told that Com-Block guns work better when liberly coated in a mixture of sugar and cat fur. Old russian secret.

 

[Turkish]

A few days ago I took apart the trigger group in my NHM-91 apart for the first time. After I finally got it back together, I did a function test then went to put the safety on and put it in the safe. Only problem was, there was no safety. It was sitting on the table I had kept all the parts on.

And Greysand, did you know the lip on the bottom of a CZ-52 mag fits into the little notch on the bottom of the barrel perfectly? Makes a nice big handle to control it all with.

 

[Correia]

I hate to admit this, since I'm supposed to be kind of a shotgun nut, but the first time I detail stripped a Mossberg 500, it took me like 40 minutes to figure out how to get the bolt and carrier back into the receiver and hooked together. Sad. Very very sad. And it really isn't even that hard, but dang Mossbergs confuse me. 870, 10 seconds. I'm done. Mossberg. It is like putting a puzzle together for some reason.

 

[vis35]

A bonehead disassembly mistake….
Browning A5, first time I took one apart, they have a very powerful barrel return spring, it has the ability to throw the barrel all the way across the basement (the long way too! ), darn barrel rang like a bell when it landed on the cement floor!

 

[Azrael256]

Mossberg. It is like putting a puzzle together for some reason.

No, really, it is. It's the thinking man's shotgun... or the swearing man's shotgun... I forget which. When I first disassembled mine, I think I was about 14, it took me a good half hour to do the very same thing. I got it all back together, and was very proud of myself. I held it up proudly... until dad mentioned that the foregrip was sitting on the table. Kinda hard to work the action that way. Every time I clean it, I have to put it together, and then get the trigger assembly in there real quick before those little feed rails fall into the action. It usually takes two or three tries. I think they could've come up with something a little bit better. When it's good and fouled, I have to shake those rails out, but when it's good and oiled... *plink*

 

[Silent-Snail]

Well it took me forever to figure out that in order to remove the trigger assembly on the Yugo SKS the safty(sp? too tired to remember) needs to be engaged in the safe position. By forever I mean THREE MONTHS> :banghead: ah well live and learn, then get Luvs

 

[BenW]

Not that I have ever done such a thing, but I have *heard* that an easy way to recover from this mistake is to put your bolt in a padded vise, upside down and with the rear of the bolt facing you. Make a loop out of wire or stout string and use it to pull the cocking piece back far enough to flip the safety lever over.

Been there, done that. TWICE IN A ROW.

Also, when you put the fore end retainer back on a 98/22, it only goes on in one direction, no matter how hard you hit it with a hammer going in the other direction. Note that wood shavings coming out from under the retainer are a hint to stop hammering.

 

[Teufelhunden]

I don't seem to have much luck with non-captive recoil springs in pistols. One of the first times I was sitting in the armory putting a Beretta M9 (92FS) back together, my finger slipped off of the end of the guiderod before I had it hooked on the barrel block. It shot past the armorer's head with a good couple inches of clearance and impacted a concrete block wall with a most unpleasant clang behind him. A couple of days later, I had another Marine repeat my mistake, except his aim was a little better and he plunked me in the middle of the chest with the guiderod.

This one's not really assembly, more of modification, but I'll go with it anyway. When I was attempting to put Larry Nesseth's excellent TS-100 peep sight on my SKS I misread his directions. He mentions that you have to drive out a pin holding the old rear sight in place, BUT (and this turns out to be a vital but), some of the sights simply had little 'ears' milled on them, so you can just slide those out. Evidently I fixated on the whole pin concept, so out come the punches and hammers. Two hours, 1 broken punch, 2 bent punches and one skinless knuckle later, I whacked the top of the old sight out of frustration and noticed that it dropped down in the channels cuts for the 'ears' and I was able to slide it out by hand. This ended out being good because we were getting close to 'Dremel Time"...

-Teuf

 

[LiquidTension]

Launched the slide of a S&W 41 onto the tile floor...bad part is it wasn't even my gun Guy was sitting right next to me too.

When you break open a FAL, the bolt and carrier will fall out - even if you forgot it was in there when you turned it up

Forgot to put the extractor back in my Pro Carry after cleaning once....noticed it before I got up from the bench though.

Launched a recoil spring and guide rod from a Marlin 60...naturally I didn't find it until after I'd ordered new ones.

I still haven't figured out how to reassemble a Mk II in less than 15 minutes

 

[GRB]

Upstate NY at my uncle's farms some years ago with the Remington 870 and a slug barrel. I was just taking it easy around the house when I saw a flock of Canada Geese make a pass over his pond. I hurriedly grabbed the 870 and took off the 20 inch barrel replacing it witha 28 inch job. I loaded 3 rounds into the magazine and headed toward the pond hoping the geese would return. As I got to the pond some had already landed and others started coming in - I wasn't even under any cover, they just came in. As I got just within range, the ones already on the pond took off, the others put on the air brakes and tried liftoff. I took aim at a nice fat one and squeezed off a perfect shot - or so I thouhgt. Just as I shot, I saw something of a blur go sailing out from the front of the 870. I thought boy that must have been a bad load for me to see the shot. Then it, whatever it was, landed in the water about 20 or 25 yards in front of me. I took a good look at the gun after realizing I had not hit anything and after I unloaded it. As I was unloading I realized there was no pressure on the round remaing in the magazine tube.

Have you guessed yet?

When I put the 28 inch barrel on the gun, I forgot to replace the magazine cap. The ammo I loaded into the mag had pressure on it because the inner retention pressure cap stayed in place, at least until I fired one off; then that cap along with the mag spring went sailing. Those geese were probably laughing all the way to their most southern stopover. I had a good laugh too as did the guy who gave me the replacement spring and inner mag cap.

That was the biggest bonehead reassembly move I have ever pulled although there have been some lesser ones.

 

[Farnham]

Glock 17 slides will go on a Glock 26 frame...but they don't come off so good...

The firing pin of a Mauser bolt WILL penetrate a beer can if not controlled...

Mossberg shotguns were designed by Chinese puzzle master monks...

S/F

Farnham

 

[Feanaro]

Worst assembly mistake? Tried to insert a Yugo Mauser bolt after unknowingly twisting it into the "fired" position. Forgot the safety. :banghead: I couldn't figure out what was wrong so I gave it a whack... then I noticed it was hitting the wood. Duh! The stock still has a mark from that.

Most painful mistake was trying to fully disassemble said Yugo bolt. I got the web of my right hand stuck in the threading! I couldn't undo it given the position of my hands so I just yanked. The whole time I did what I do best: curse loudly and colorfully. Profanity makes everything feel much better.