Light strikes and misfires....
Looking at much of the old posts about this here and on other forums it looks like maybe only earlier rifles had a problem.
I have had mine since '98. I have the Winchester 26" rifle with pistol grip. From the beginning it always fired but with very shallow primer strikes. Just lately, the rifle starting misfiring. This has escalate quickly into 50% needing to redraw the hammer and then they all go on the second hit. After all these years maybe the dirt in there and old oil is slowing the firing pin down just enough to cause the failures.
Maybe before it was just strong enough to set them off and finely it is just NOT strong enough. Not much change but enough to cause failure.
Years ago I printed off the SteveB fix and yesterday I did it.
Have any of you that own one of these Japaneses Winchester 1886 rifles found you needed to do it?
I also cleaned and re-oiled the parts. Why wouldn't I?
So today I went out back and put 50 rounds through it with three different primers, Rem9-1/2, CCI 200 and WLR. Everything worked fine. However, the fired primers still have the small, shallow, whimpy looking strike.
There are two obvious conclusions.
Are there other possibilities you can think of ???