After reading the replies and further investigation, I no longer believe that the firing pin is engaged whilst the bolt is not home.I was surprised to realise that when I pulled the trigger the hammer was realised and the firing pin engaged etc. Clearly this would allow for a round to be fired - if all the right conditions were in place - out of breach
I was going to have a play with some empty cases with primers in, then decided that playing with sparks in the loft was possibly going to earn me a place on the Darwin awards, so rather painfully, I had to use my Mk1 finger. Clearly I could not get the bolt to close any closer to the breach than the width of my finger, but at that distance to pin does not appear to be hit.
I would like to have tried with something that allowed me to close the bolt almost home but still not touching, but the best I could come up with was using blue tack but after a frustrating search was informed that it had been thrown out as the children were eating it?
Similar occurs with my shotgun, which is even more painful on the finger, but not of course with the bolt action.
Having taken the rifle apart yesterday I got a good understanding of how it all works. Sliding the bolt back wards and for wards without the upper assembly in place was very informative and made me realise just what a good bit of engineering this is.
I think the subject of cleaning the buffer tube spring has been covered before, but I found that after cleaning the bolt was much easier to manipulate.
(The small post that keeps the spring in place can be pushed down with a flat blade screwdriver - it is sprung). Just how often this Will need to be cleaned remains to be seen
I am convinced that the magazine is at the source of my problems, or more to the point the feed lips. With the top assembly off, I could see how the bolt was picking up some snap cap rounds. Rounds on the right hand side of the magazine wear proving difficult to catch on the rear and were sometimes getting caught along their case and moved out by friction.
On reassembling the rifle and putting many dozens of snap caps though it, I could see that is is always the right hand bullet that causes the feed problem. On this occasion, every single last round failed to feed.
I had a tentative go with the pliers to try and get the lips to move slightly, but they are actually quite rigid (unlike Glock mags), so I decided not to force anything and contact SGC to see what they think.
DM
