Rossi Rifleman

My Rossi single shot 223 is very hard to open after firing just two rounds. Thank does any one else have this problem ? My rifle will not fire factory ammo only My own reloads and I reload then at the minimum powder load. thanks sherman

sherman wrote:My rifle will not fire factory ammo only My own reloads...

Could you expand on this Sherman? Will the cartridges not chamber or are you experiencing light primer strikes? With either question, specifically what brand of ammo have you tried?

If you purchased the rifle new, maybe it ought to be returned?

The rifle is two years old . I have used federal and my reloads . the round will chamber and sometimes fire and after it fires . The breech will not open until the gun cools down. sometimes 30 mins. or more

The chamber might be undersized. If it were mine, I would do one of two things. Either return it to Rossi or get rid of it. These rifles are tough to work on plus being unable to chamber a round is not an easy fix as a DIY project. If you need to rent a reamer to correct the chamber fit, you are looking at $88. That is a lot of money for a rifle that is worth $230 to $260 at best.

I've worked and worked at ending the light primer strikes on my rifle. Taking everything apart to polish, bend, and adjust is time consuming and you need to build a set of drift pins, for every pin, before you start. It is with my FFL now, I'm going to get rid of it. I might send it back to RossiUSA but is an "A. Rossi" rifle so they won't touch it.

I've seen some primer set-back in single shot break open rifles. Possibly this is an occurrence of your using very light loads, the primer may be slightly extruding into the firing pin hole. I had this occur with a 17 Rem in a Contender barrel. A friend suggested that I simply recock the hammer, pull the trigger and let it hit the primer, driving it back into its pocket. And it worked! This led me to using Remington primers exclusively with that barrel since the Rems had the hardest cup material and didn't extrude into the firing pin hole.

I had a new england single in .223 that I hsd to do this in

My Rossi snigle in 7.62 has a weird qwerk every once in a while. It won't open after firing and all I have to do is put it back to safe and it opens.

Okay, full disclosure, new to Rossi SS (I just got a Wizard in 243 Win) but not necessarily new to SS rifles and pistols. With the 2 #1's, the Sharps and numerous Contender barrels I've always tried to get a very slight crush fit between the ammo and the gun. Not shaving brass off the head of the case, but a slight resistance to closing. When I started this practice if you will I've never had a failure to extract or what I'd call a difficult opening. If a case is slightly short on head space due to excess sizing in shouldered case (setting the shoulder back) or a too long chamber, the firing pin strike will push the case deeper into the chamber, possibly resulting in a miss fire. If not and it goes bang a lot happens in the first few micro seconds after ignition, the case expands to grip the chamber walls and also starts to stretch back toward the breach face and because it's not fully supported at the time of ignition the primer backs out of the pocket. If the load is down toward the minimum there's a chance that the case head will not "hit' the breach face hard enough to fully reseat the primer - gun can then become tough to open. Moral of the story is sometimes minimum loads can cause almost as much trouble as maximum loads.

RD, I'd be kind of curious how you light strike problems have resolved them selves if they have. Most of the light strike problems I've seen at the range over the past couple of years have been new reloaders creating excessive head space.

Just some thoughts and observations from the firing line.

Curt
makin' smoke and raising my carbon foot print one cartridge at a time

Ohio3Wheels wrote:RD, I'd be kind of curious how you light strike problems have resolved them selves if they have. Most of the light strike problems I've seen at the range over the past couple of years have been new reloaders creating excessive head space.

I sold it after it left me standing with a snap on one too many hogs. It was always intermittent, both factory and reloaded ammo. My Wizard never gave me a problem, just the Single Shot.