winchester 1886 extra light miss fire

[pgavey]

Hi, i purchased this 45-70 about 3 years ago. nib. at a gun show in medicine hat
I have shot it about 50-60 times and had 3 miss fires .I have tried Remington325 gr and a few others. I would hate for this to happen with a charging griss. I understand it has a link to the rebound hammer set up.
Has anyone else had the same problem? I found a blog about grinding this rebound feature off. What are your thoughts? Phil.

[wapitiwarior]

Never had that problem with the first two I shot, one was a friends and the other I owned for several years. I sold that one and would like to purchase another one day. I asked my friend about your issue and he did not experiance it either so sorry cant help.

[244Ack]

This is quite a common problem with the rebounding hammers on the win design. The 94"s are a real problem also. You need to remove some metal off the lower prongs on the hammer strut. The upper prongs on the strut give the energy to the firing pin and the lower prongs give energy to make the hammer rebound to the half cock notch. It is a fine balance and prone to problems. Remove the hammer strut and remove 25 th 40 thous off the bottom prongs. Make sure to keep the edges rounded as before.This will decrease the force for the rebound feature but still leave enough to rebound to the half cock notch. If you take too much off, the hammer will still rebound off the firing pin but not lock back at half cock. Almost every winchester I have with the rebounding hammer has had this problem.
If you have some old Handloader magazines, dave Scoville has a great article decribing the same problem on the 1886 win. It was the Nov 2003 magazine if my memory serves.
PM me if you have any more questions, been down that road many times

[pgavey]

Thanks for the reply's. I just had a friend load up 100 rounds for me.I am presently in Comox for a winter break. I will give them a good test when i get back to Med Hat. I think i will probably have to cut and grind. I have a matching pair of Browning NIB of the same 45-70 one grade 1 and grade 4. I sure like the hammer set up a lot better without the Safety and rebound *****.
I bought these a couple of years ago out of the USA and had Clay at Prophet
River import them for me.