It might just be a question of cleaning...or of "cleaning up" after a previous owner neglected cleaning. One of the many maladies that my pore old Skimin and Wood had when I got it [Curse Montana "one-gallus duck hunters" and "gun butchers"!] was a dragging firing pin. It turned out that corrosion had gotten into the firing pin hole to the point that the firing pin had become peened from passing through the corrosion. A "dressing off" of the firing pin and the hole put things to rights.
One aspect of gun cleaning that is mentioned in Thomas and Churchill, for example, that I have never seen in American treatises is the cleaning of firing pin holes. The British sources most often recommend applying light coating of oil with a matchstick. This practice would seem to be a simple and reasonable precaution against a potentially troublesome and expensive set of problems.
Last edited by Dingelfutz; 02/15/11 09:26 AM.
