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p22 won't fire, any thoughts?

3K views 5 replies 2 participants last post by  MGMike 
#1 ·
Howdy,

I recently tore down my p22 to modify the extractor per one of the posts here. Upon doing so, the hammer and spring were removed and reassembled.

Now, the first time I put it back together, I somehow didn't get the bottom leg of the hammer spring into its slot on the outside of the action. Naturally this didn't give the hammer enough force to fire anything (doh). After not firing a couple rounds, I tore it back down and noticed my mistake. (Also, while stripping it, noticed that the hammer had a lot of free play.)

After reassembly (with the spring installed correctly this time), the slack was out of the hammer. Now the pistol is firing much better than before!... but still not good enough.

Now my firing pin is making good contact with the casing. The first shot (in SA) will fire most of the time. The second shot will fire sometimes (call it 30%). Once it fails to fire, it will not fire from DA will less than 8 pulls.

A quick interlude for a disclaimer. I am well aware that it's not the most brilliant of ideas, attempting to fire the same round multiple times. I did this after safely ejecting the rounds which failed to fire and examining them against fire casings. My objective was to discover what follows.

If a round fails to fire on the first shot, pulling the hammer back and firing SA will result in a correct firing of the bullet after the 3rd try... every time.

This leads me to believe the following:

My hammer is not striking the firing pin with enough force to fire the round. This is further evidenced by comparing the casings of fired and not fired rounds. The round which fired correctly has a slightly deeper indentation from the firing pin than the round which failed to fire.

Having disassembled my P22 again, it does not appear that my hammer spring is cracked or misshapen. Is it possible for a hammer spring to be worn, or cracked in such a way that it's not visible on the outside? Am I missing something else here?

Any help would be much appreciated, and thank you for taking the time to read this far.
 
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#2 ·
This is only a wild guess, and I don't think anybody here could tell you for sure, but my suspicion is that you've still don't have it correctly reassembled.

Just out of curiosity, and only because I am fascinated: Why was disassembly of the hammer and its spring necessary for an extractor modification? And why was the extractor modification necessary?

M
 
#3 ·
It wasn't necessary to remove the hammer and spring, it tried to come out once I opened the action to remove the extractor.
I was modifying the extractor to try to keep the fired cases from hitting my wife in the head (somehow at least 2 hit her every time she shoots, but they almost never hit me :confused: ). I didn't feel comfortable trying to file the extractor with it inside the action, so I removed it to work it on the bench.
 
#6 ·
Rule 32 of Gunsmithing: Never try to modify a gun that is working correctly so that your wife can shoot it. If it doesn't suit her, buy her a different gun.

Before you do anything else, scrub out the chamber with a bronze brush rotated by hand to get rid of any carbon, wax or lead buildup, which might be impeding chambering and "cushioning" the firing pin indent. Then buy some good USA-made ammo (Winchester, Federal, CCI) to establish a baseline of performance, especially for reliable ignition.

If you're still having a problem after that, send the gun back to S&W.

M
 
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