08-27-2016, 12:54 AM
While the forum was down, I did some looking at and thinking about the feed ramp -- I came to believe that even thought the feed ramp and the chassis don't align, that the feed ramp and the magazine were in close proximity and should work satisfactorily. So I started researching failure to feed jams, and most people thought that it was a weak magazine spring issue.
I took it to the range and tried different numbers of cartridges in the magazine. I discovered that I could put 5 rounds in the 10 round magazine, and it would feed correctly. Above that number, and the cartridges would nosedive and jam. That correlated with the information I'd read about weak magazine springs.
I adjusted the angle of the magazine pusher block to emphasize the upward tilt of the cartridge as it reached the top of the magazine.
So I ordered some more music wire from Amazon and experimented with different stiffnesses of magazine spring. The first one I made was so stiff I couldn't fill the magazine with cartridges. A few springs later I made one which I could fill, and it still pushed hard enough to get a whole to feed.
At the same time, I decided to re-wind the ejector spring because it was too tight in it's pocket, and made scraping noises when manually depressed. It works much better now and extracts more reliably with the smaller spring.
At the range a couple of days ago, I put about 100 rounds through it and found that it fed and ejected pretty reliably. I had 3 feed jams in which the cartridge angle would go too high and would stovepipe an un-fired cartridge. Not sure how to solve that.
The 2 new problems that came to light were failure to fire (on probably 20 occasions) and poor accuracy.
My next action steps will be to disassemble, clean, polish and lubricate the trigger and hammer assemblies. Hopefully that will cause the hammer to hit the primers just a little harder.
After that, it's a couple of machining jobs: I want to make a new, taller rear site post, which is in a dovetail. That should enable me to fix the elevation problem, and I can adjust the side-to-side aim by moving the rear site in the dovetail.
The second job will be to bore the front of the slide for a bushing designed to tighten the relationship between the barrel and the receiver. Right now, it's comically floppy.... the front of the barrel moves up and down perhaps 1/8" if you wiggle it.
I took it to the range and tried different numbers of cartridges in the magazine. I discovered that I could put 5 rounds in the 10 round magazine, and it would feed correctly. Above that number, and the cartridges would nosedive and jam. That correlated with the information I'd read about weak magazine springs.
I adjusted the angle of the magazine pusher block to emphasize the upward tilt of the cartridge as it reached the top of the magazine.
So I ordered some more music wire from Amazon and experimented with different stiffnesses of magazine spring. The first one I made was so stiff I couldn't fill the magazine with cartridges. A few springs later I made one which I could fill, and it still pushed hard enough to get a whole to feed.
At the same time, I decided to re-wind the ejector spring because it was too tight in it's pocket, and made scraping noises when manually depressed. It works much better now and extracts more reliably with the smaller spring.
At the range a couple of days ago, I put about 100 rounds through it and found that it fed and ejected pretty reliably. I had 3 feed jams in which the cartridge angle would go too high and would stovepipe an un-fired cartridge. Not sure how to solve that.
The 2 new problems that came to light were failure to fire (on probably 20 occasions) and poor accuracy.
My next action steps will be to disassemble, clean, polish and lubricate the trigger and hammer assemblies. Hopefully that will cause the hammer to hit the primers just a little harder.
After that, it's a couple of machining jobs: I want to make a new, taller rear site post, which is in a dovetail. That should enable me to fix the elevation problem, and I can adjust the side-to-side aim by moving the rear site in the dovetail.
The second job will be to bore the front of the slide for a bushing designed to tighten the relationship between the barrel and the receiver. Right now, it's comically floppy.... the front of the barrel moves up and down perhaps 1/8" if you wiggle it.