One of my favorite rifles, a 2006 1895 stainless, has had an issue from time to time with "click, no bang", usually at a bad time.
Many years ago, I removed the little spring that forces the rear piece of the firing pin, thinking it was causing too much drag. The 2 piece firing pin safety still worked as it should. It seemed to have fixed my problem, until recently.
Fast forward to last year, I came across a deal on CCI 34 primers. So, I bought a bunch of it. It is designed for military cartridges, and I have those rifles too. Hey, the 45-70 gov't was once a military cartridge too, right?Anyway, these primers are supposed to be harder cup to prevent slam firing.
The "click, no bang" problem reared it's ugly head again when I was aiming at a coyote. After that, the rifle went into the safe for the remainder of the deer season for lack of trust. The 444 needed some exercise, anyway.
So here is what I have learned since then, I thought some here may find it useful. And if anyone has anything to contribute, please do. I am not a gun smith, but I do my own trigger jobs, etc., and have done so for 30 plus years since I started shooting IHMSA silhouettes.
I found the cartridge that didn't fire, months later. I had ejected it for another round, and came back after hunting season to find it. It had a very light firing pin dimple.
Here are some things I have learned.
1- Dirty rifle. The bolt, firing pin channel, and firing pin were clean as a whistle. The gun, bore, and chamber are relatively clean. What I found dirty was the top of the locking bolt, that part that pushes up on the rear section of the firing pin. It had some sticky powder residue that may have been causing drag on the firing pin. I don't have photo, but you have to remove the rifle bolt to see it. Make sure it is clean on top.
2- Dirty brass. I am a lazy hand loader. I like to resize brass, throw into the vibratory cleaner, remove, and load. What I found after studying my problem opened my eyes. There was crud built up on some of the rims, on top. I assume it is powder residue, but could also be lube from sizing and crud from old tumbling media. The vibratory cleaner doesn't clean the top of the rims very well. I am guessing the crud on top of the rim could cushion the blow of the firing pin, which could be part of the problem. Not to be ignored, the primer pockets were dirty, and could be cushioning the blow of the firing pin as well.
3- Possibly a weak main spring (hammer spring)? I bought a spring "kit" made by Palo Verde Gunworks, sold at Brownell's. The idea was to go to a heavier main spring and help the reliability issue with this rifle. A neat little kit consisting of a mainspring, and various washers and bushings, there are 7 different combinations. I loaded up a box of primed brass, no powder or bullets, primer only. I used a digital trigger pull gauge to measure both hammer pull, and trigger pull. I found that every combination of this kit was weaker than the original main spring. In other words, this kit will give you lighter trigger pulls at the expense of weaker hammer power. This may be ok for some applications, but not for me. The original main spring gets reinstalled. I ended up putting in my own brass washer with the original mainspring to give a little extra hammer power.
I have not concluded all of my problems are gone, but I think they are. Range time will tell.
What I found, specifically, is that the hammer pull (not trigger pull) required to make CCI 34 pop, unreliably, is 3lb 4oz. Any less, it won't pop.
With the stock main spring, the hammer pull is 4lb 8oz. With my added washer, my hammer pull is boosted to 4lb 14oz, and the measured trigger pull is 3lb 1oz. If I added any more washers, or a thicker washer, the trigger pull starts to stack up and get unacceptable to me.
So there you go. At this point, my rifle has a decent trigger at 3lb 1oz, and should be reliable. And I will be looking carefully at the top of the rims from now on, as well as dirty primer pockets.
Dan
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