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Had a pretty good day to take the little Marathon 32 cal out. Only had about 3 hours to test it out. First outing did not go so well with lots of mis/no fires, from a lot of cap/nipple issues. Since that last outing I have received 4 new nipples, 2 from Knight and 2 from TOW. I first ordered the knight Red Hots since I have never had an issue with them. The nipples in this rifle are 6mm x 1mm. I had 2 spare 1/4 x 28 nipples but that's all, no metric. When I got the new Nipples, One was a 6mm x .75 in a package marked as 6mm x 1mm and the other was correct. :evil: I found that even this new knight nipple let the caps fall of as soon as they are pulled out of the TDC straight line capper. All of the other Knight 1/4 x 28s I have did not do that. The Metric part is not the cause of it but seems these were smaller on the cone side, so I ordered a couple from TOW. I pinched the CCi Mag #11 caps but still had problems firing them. In the mean time I tried filing the cone just enough to hold the caps since the old Pinch trick was still not enough. Then I found that the Plunger in this action would still not fire of the caps. I could clearly see that the first stroke of the plunger would "Seat" the cap and the second would fire the cap. So gave up on that working, and suspected from my PMs with Sabotloader that the TOW nipples would cause the same issue. Last week I also located one shop here that actually had some #10 Remington caps in stock, so when work took me close by I stopped and picked up a tin. I found that the #10 was still slightly loose on the original nipple but a slight pinch kept them on well, but Much better fit then the #11's. I then pinched and loaded my TDC capper with 12 pinched caps and all stayed on the nipple and Fired immediately. 8) So looks like there were really 2 issues combined to cause this ignition issue. First the nipple was too small for the #11 cap causing them to fall off or fall back and tilt and an angle, and second the bolt spring is quite small in diameter and has only a short throw so was not strong enough to "Seat" and Fire in one stroke. I even tried stretching the spring a bit too. There really was no documentation with this rifle so have no true idea if it was meant to fire #10 or #11 caps. So today was just to really be a function test to see if the ignition issue was resolved.
I can confidently say that my ignition issues were completely resolved. I lost track of exactly how many caps I popped/fired but it was several and saw no fail to fire or hesitations. Actually I was sort of impressed at how much flame is getting to the powder. I first swabbed out the action, then placed a clean dry patch on the cleaning rod jag and ran it down to the BP and left it there and popped one Rem #10 cap. This patch shows the result. I put a fresh patch under the fired one so you could see how much burned.
Next I put the fresh patch on the jag and repeated the test but fired 3 caps.
After that I popped about 4 more caps to satisfy my curiosity and all fired instantly. So loaded up and started shooting. I used the same load for the entire session just because I was more interested in looking for more bugs and learning the quirks of this action. I did find it has some quirks that I need to keep an eye on and one I need to think about some.
The rifle was never really sighted in to shoot center and the scope has been off a couple times since last shoot. It hit low and right and to my surprise had first 2 go through the same hole and the new target, but then they dropped a couple inches to the bottom of the target. :huh?: But they started grouping there. I did bugger up a couple shots not paying attention to my grip and paying more attention to the action area but when I did it surprised me as it looks like this crappy barrel might want to shoot. I changed the scope setting up and shot 3 more in the center of the target before we called a cease fire.
I will admit I lost my concentration and dry balled the last one prior to the cease fire too. But instead of getting mad about it I realized it presented me with a new test for the rifle, Taking the barrel off to remove the breech plug and after reassembly where would POI be. WEll it was off by a couple inches! :shock: I expected a little but it was more than I did expect, see shots 1-3 on this target that are high left. So next test was to remove it from the stock, loosen the 2 screws securing the barrel, and re-secure but tighten them in reverse order (shots 4 and 5). Not real sure why I lost shot 5 so much but it was most likely something I did, since I made no other changes after that except for adjusting the scope again and shooting 6 more rounds. It looks like it wants to shoot but will have to play around with the load some more.
We called a Ceasefire so I pulled my target for the day and scrounged up some of the fired patches to see what they looked like, Not too shabby considering the condition of the bore and crown when I assembled it.
I am starting to be a little impressed with this little rifle and the way it is trying to shoot. This little guy weighs less than 6lb with the scope too!
On a side note I also found that after there was a few caps fired to get some carbon on the nipple they no longer needed to be pinched to stay on good. The one Thing I need to figure out is about cleaning the rifle "After" it is sighted in. If POI will always change after the barrel is removed and reinstalled, & I suspect it will, that will present a troublesome issue come Squirrel hunting season. The way the Breech plug and barrel are secured by the same 2 screws you can't remove the BP like we are accustomed to. I plan to try picking up some tubing to push onto the nipple and drop that in a bottle, or container of cleaner so see how that will work. Any other ideas? Just another puzzle to solve, this rifle has had a few. :wink:
I can confidently say that my ignition issues were completely resolved. I lost track of exactly how many caps I popped/fired but it was several and saw no fail to fire or hesitations. Actually I was sort of impressed at how much flame is getting to the powder. I first swabbed out the action, then placed a clean dry patch on the cleaning rod jag and ran it down to the BP and left it there and popped one Rem #10 cap. This patch shows the result. I put a fresh patch under the fired one so you could see how much burned.
Next I put the fresh patch on the jag and repeated the test but fired 3 caps.
After that I popped about 4 more caps to satisfy my curiosity and all fired instantly. So loaded up and started shooting. I used the same load for the entire session just because I was more interested in looking for more bugs and learning the quirks of this action. I did find it has some quirks that I need to keep an eye on and one I need to think about some.
The rifle was never really sighted in to shoot center and the scope has been off a couple times since last shoot. It hit low and right and to my surprise had first 2 go through the same hole and the new target, but then they dropped a couple inches to the bottom of the target. :huh?: But they started grouping there. I did bugger up a couple shots not paying attention to my grip and paying more attention to the action area but when I did it surprised me as it looks like this crappy barrel might want to shoot. I changed the scope setting up and shot 3 more in the center of the target before we called a cease fire.
I will admit I lost my concentration and dry balled the last one prior to the cease fire too. But instead of getting mad about it I realized it presented me with a new test for the rifle, Taking the barrel off to remove the breech plug and after reassembly where would POI be. WEll it was off by a couple inches! :shock: I expected a little but it was more than I did expect, see shots 1-3 on this target that are high left. So next test was to remove it from the stock, loosen the 2 screws securing the barrel, and re-secure but tighten them in reverse order (shots 4 and 5). Not real sure why I lost shot 5 so much but it was most likely something I did, since I made no other changes after that except for adjusting the scope again and shooting 6 more rounds. It looks like it wants to shoot but will have to play around with the load some more.
We called a Ceasefire so I pulled my target for the day and scrounged up some of the fired patches to see what they looked like, Not too shabby considering the condition of the bore and crown when I assembled it.
I am starting to be a little impressed with this little rifle and the way it is trying to shoot. This little guy weighs less than 6lb with the scope too!
On a side note I also found that after there was a few caps fired to get some carbon on the nipple they no longer needed to be pinched to stay on good. The one Thing I need to figure out is about cleaning the rifle "After" it is sighted in. If POI will always change after the barrel is removed and reinstalled, & I suspect it will, that will present a troublesome issue come Squirrel hunting season. The way the Breech plug and barrel are secured by the same 2 screws you can't remove the BP like we are accustomed to. I plan to try picking up some tubing to push onto the nipple and drop that in a bottle, or container of cleaner so see how that will work. Any other ideas? Just another puzzle to solve, this rifle has had a few. :wink: