The past couple weeks I’ve been playing with New-To-Me rifles:  cleaning, sighting-in, and testing loads.  Most of it has been a pleasure.  If I had a place to store them, I’m thinking I’d enjoy buying Winchesters that could use a tune-up and getting them shooting accurately.  Trouble is, I’m not one for selling a firearm after we’ve been intimate, so the house would become quite cluttered–can’t have that, now can we!

So, Saturday found me shooting a few rifles.  The 1894 .32 W.S. complained a bit–tight chambering, sticky extraction.    This is the rifle I bought that arrived with a broken firing pin.  The seller is a good person, and didn’t know of the break–he doesn’t figure into this as a negative.  The rifle has been fired very little and hasn’t been cycled much–quite the change from most of my Winchesters.  A different feel for me when I cycle it–not as smooth as I’m used to, and it takes slightly more effort than my older ones.

(From the slow (wordy) start here, this might become a lengthy post!)

But because of the broken pin, and my lack of familiarity with the rifle, it has a clouded halo.  This morning was the first chance I had to dig into the problem. –Okay, I’m going to cut to the chase–

–Thought the friction stud/spring was too stiff, and there was a definitely a catch in its movement.  Fixed that.  Not too stiff.

–Thought the Link was too tight at its rear against the receiver.  No bent pin. Winchester wouldn’t drill the pin hole too far back, and they wouldn’t release a rifle that was too tight in its workings!  Lightly polished where it would eventually wear smooth.

–Thought maybe the surfaces of the breech bolt and the locking bolt where they rub had a problem.  No.

–Took a look at the new firing pin.  Nothing too long or too rough.

–All this time of taking the action apart and putting it back together to test this and that.  And all the time, I’d been using a spent case from Saturday’s shooting.  AND THEN the DUH! moment–I had been shooting two .32’s, and perhaps this case had come from the other (larger?) chambered rifle–perhaps my reloads were not sized for smooth functioning in THIS rifle.

Inserted a New case in the chamber.  The action closed easily, and ejection was a breeze.  Seems I need to find the solution in the reloading area, instead of at the rifle end of the process. 

I do believe I have stepped over a line.  The “wisdom” that comes with experience and age is now waning.  Might not be too long before “they” take away my reloading privileges.

BUT–what if the next time I shoot this rifle, it locks up!  For certain, if that happens, “they” will come and put my trigger-finger in a straight-jacket–the end of the World!

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Afterthoughts–no need for you folks to answer.

Why, after the cartridge was fired, would the case stick a bit?  Seems in firing, the case would expand to the chamber’s limits and then slightly ease off the walls.  –Maybe there is a burr in the chamber.  Maybe the sizing lube wasn’t cleaned off the case as well as it should have been cleaned, so the heat/lube in the chamber is. . . .

I’ll reload cartridges to the proper size for this chamber.  Shoot it this week, and see what happens.

Can’t believe I looked for the problem at the rifle end instead of starting the process at the reloading end–losing my senses.