.380 feeding cure

[flounderman]

I probably should keep this information to myself, because I love buying a gun someone can't fix, usually at a cheap price. I just bought an astra constable that the man sold for parts because it wouldn't feed. Said the ramps had been polished and he had an extra mag. I figured they had been trying to fix a part that wasn't broken and I was right. The extractor was either too much bite or too strong a spring. I used a small file and took a little off the extractor and it fed perfectly. The case was such a tight fit you could hardly force it up the bolt face into position behind the extractor. I had to do a little correction on the magazines because somebody had fixed them too. I run 15 shots out of the gun without a jam. If a semi-auto don't feed, check the fit of the case in the bolt face. Don't just look at the chamber end.

[nekshot]

I need to look at my constable, it is the most fussy pistol I have to run reloads thru it.

[Animal]

Out of 196 consecutive rounds fired from my Government RIA 1911, I had 3 failures to feed. I was using round nose cast boolits. My first thought was the feed ramp needed polishing or the magazine I was using was somehow the culprit. Instead of tooling around myself I took it straight to an armorer. He suggested polishing the bolt face and going over the extractor.

It didn't occur to me that that would be the correction. I'm glad I didn't try to fix it myself. I don't have it back yet, but we shall see how it goes.