Friday, June 4, 2010

Shotgun Woes

A minor woe. Remember my complaint that my semi-auto shotgun was not cycling and it failed to eject the spent case while hunting deer in the cold? Well I went skeet shooting on Memorial Day, and it was 90 degrees then, and it still fails, after extra lubrication.

So what is happening? The bolts sticks in the forward position. Clark Bros has a gunsmith on site, so after having to manually work the bolt for a string of 5 clays I trotted on back to the building. They flipped around a ring on the spring tube and sent me back. From that point on it only failed to cycle about half the time. But it still failed. MBtGE has his own Remington Model 11 and had no issues.

Now you know why I am reluctant to use this as a house gun.

So after a half frustrating skeet section I took that bad boy home to see what I could see on cleanup. When you close the bold with no shell in the chamber it still feels like it wants to stay stuck. You have to work that bold like you mean it to get it loose. The fact that it stick with no shell present probably means my chamber isn’t fouled or too tight and the shell is just standing pat and refusing to be removed in action.

The stickiness FEELS like it is by the extractor. This guy had a pretty robust extractor that fits into a groove on the barrel, AND there was shmutz on this area… So I brushed and cleaned that really well and put some grease on the area, as well as in the rails the bolt rides in… Still sticks.

Now, there is something else I can fiddle with. The Model 11/Auto-5 types are adjustable to shoot with lighter loads. I could back that down a bit.

Anyone have any other ideas before I get serious with the professional gunsmith?


[I’ve always said that a shotgun is a horrible anti-zombie weapon. You know what is a worse anti-zombie weapon? A shotgun that DOESN’T WORK RELIABLY!]

3 comments:

Tam said...

"...types are adjustable to shoot with lighter loads."

That's what that friction ring getting flipped around was for.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Well it didn't fix it.

Anonymous said...

Since the previous owner replaced the extractor I'd look at how the extraction system works. if it's mounted on the bolt, find a similar shot gun and look at the bolt and maybe compare the extractor and bolt dimensions with calipers.

Might be that the extractor has a heavy coating of finish and is binding in its channel or the securing device, ie. pin or whatever, needs to be polished, along with the pin hole thru the extractor, (I'm using the mental image of a M-1 Garand Bolt or M-1 Carbine bolt/extractor design).