Ted;
Are you saying it actually takes the recoil of firing a shell to set the extractors? The only means I had at present to get a tight fit was to use this previously fired shell.
As I am seeing it as I open the lever the top bolt dropping down presses the barrel's extractor out forcing it's break from the chamber, but only moves it about 1/8". There is then grooves in the action flat which the extractor hooks on the breech block ride in which have a bump at their forward end to hold the hook up against the rim. Problem is the hooks run off the bump before they have pulled the hull any further than the extractor pushes, at which point they are only held up by spring tension. This spring tension is not sufficient to keep them engaged with the rim so they jump it leaving the hull in the chamber still stuck.
As the breech would be holding the shell in the chamber while firing allowing no more movement than the amount of head space of the shell rim vs rim depth. I truly cannot see how firing the shell would alleviate the sticking problem at all. This would all appear to me to be strictly a mechanical feature after the shell had been fired, which should be duplicated by the process I used.
Once that very short forced movement has ended then all other extraction is simply a matter of a straight pull of the opening lever with no mechanical advantage given it. I am simply unable to detect any advantage of this action design in handling swollen shells. Understand I like the design, just not for this reason. With either factory or properly resized shells there is absolutely no problem with extraction & ejection. I do like the method of puling the fired hull/s from the chamber where they are so easy to pick off by hand to save or just to not liter. Much better than catching ejected hulls from break open ejectors. As my hunting practices do not put me in many of those "Hot Spots" where rapid reloading is a necessity for a break open gun I normally prefer plain extractors & just pick the fired hulls out by hand.
I will say when it comes to the Darnes I do always value your knowledge of them highly.
