My brother has had the Mod 17 for quite sometime, minus it never had a barrel. I just found a bbl for it last week. We then installed the bbl and took it outside to fire it. However the bbl is not related to the problem that we experienced.
The problem is the bolt is not locking up when in battery. Loaded or not you can shuck the the forstock at any time, in this case the the forstock release button on the trigger guard serves no purpose.
Since this 20 gage was made between 1921-1933, I'm wondering if back during that era, the bolt lockup mechanism has been modified to allow rapid fire by holding the trigger back and then constantly working the slide.
We fired it a few times and it did ok, but I don't like the fact ,I'm afraid it could be fire while out of batery.
Regardless, what can be done to fix this battery lockup issue? TIA