can anyone suggest what might be the cause of the following problem ?
to set the stage, i had a cartridge case head sepeartion at the range a few days ago.
the next cartridge to be carried from the magazine to the chamber failed to feed because the chamber had the first case (most of it) still stuck in the chamber.
the cartridges are brand new winchester brass cases that have never been fired before.
The gun was never fired with anything other than new winchester cases as i'm not big on the steel cased ammo available.
To extract the case, i plugged the bore right in front of the stuck case with a rag and filled the stuck cartridge with molten led.
after letting it cool entirely, i inserted a cleaning rod in the bore and pushed out the broken cartridge, lead and rag.
after that i cleaned the chamber with an oversized bore brush and solvent on a drill until the cleaning rags were coming out with very little dirt on them.
when i felt the entire rifle was clean, i re-assembled it and used regular gun grease to lube everything like i had done many times in the past without any problem. i did not lube the chamber although i am thinking of spraying it with graphite.
the action cycles fine with no cartridge. if i dry fire it, manually recycling the action becomes a little stiff. if i put in a dud cartridge, it will chamber fine but manually extracting it is difficult. if i dry fire the dud cartridge, manually extracting it requires A LOT OF FORCE. i have to actually whack the handle with a piece of wood then the cartridge will eject and go flying. I think it will work ok if i fire a live round but manually ejecting a round was never a problem before. any ideas what could be wrong and how to correct it ?
to set the stage, i had a cartridge case head sepeartion at the range a few days ago.
the next cartridge to be carried from the magazine to the chamber failed to feed because the chamber had the first case (most of it) still stuck in the chamber.
the cartridges are brand new winchester brass cases that have never been fired before.
The gun was never fired with anything other than new winchester cases as i'm not big on the steel cased ammo available.
To extract the case, i plugged the bore right in front of the stuck case with a rag and filled the stuck cartridge with molten led.
after letting it cool entirely, i inserted a cleaning rod in the bore and pushed out the broken cartridge, lead and rag.
after that i cleaned the chamber with an oversized bore brush and solvent on a drill until the cleaning rags were coming out with very little dirt on them.
when i felt the entire rifle was clean, i re-assembled it and used regular gun grease to lube everything like i had done many times in the past without any problem. i did not lube the chamber although i am thinking of spraying it with graphite.
the action cycles fine with no cartridge. if i dry fire it, manually recycling the action becomes a little stiff. if i put in a dud cartridge, it will chamber fine but manually extracting it is difficult. if i dry fire the dud cartridge, manually extracting it requires A LOT OF FORCE. i have to actually whack the handle with a piece of wood then the cartridge will eject and go flying. I think it will work ok if i fire a live round but manually ejecting a round was never a problem before. any ideas what could be wrong and how to correct it ?