Rossi Rifleman

Not normal. There is an alignment issue.

Thanks fellas, the shaved area indicated the bullets were contacting something at about 7 oclock position as if looking into the mag tube from the breech end. I could feel the bullets catch on it during filling the mag, if I didnt push them with enough momentum some would hang up totally. After fillling the mag, I cycled them onto the lifter and picked the rounds out of the action before chambering, isolating it as the magazine issue.

Turns out the store I got it has an in-house gunsmith so they took it apart today. A pile of shavings debris fell out when he opened it up. Said he addressed the bevel or sharp edge and it is now cyling without shaving the bullets, I will get it tomorrow and get full details, see if it really is so.

Hi Gas Guzzler, regards alignment, what does that mean? if its not fixed I might look at that too.

And they bungled it. Smith turns out to be a amateur who just works there are couple of days a week. He loosened the gate in some way which leaves it hanging slightly open, can see the last cartridge rim in the magazine through the gap. Feeding is now very poor as some part of the load gate or apparatus it is part of is interfering with the lifters movement. He wanted to have another shot at it, but I took it off these clowns and am taking to my usual gunsmith. This should all be warranty work but I dont want to risk sending the gun back further up the chain as the state the distributors are in is heavily locked down here in Australia. May not get it back for ages. So I will foot the bill to get it operational.

I can't speak to GG's exact thought but if the cartridge is getting that shaved going into the mag tube then the cartridge is bearing pretty hard on something be it the edge of the tube or there's a raised edge on the tube that does not align with the opening in the frame or there's a burr on the frame itself clipping the edge of the bullet as it gets pushed into the mag or the like.

Or I should say there may have been. Since the 'smith' was into the gun it might have been addressed.

The loading gate may be as simple as the screw not being tightened up that holds it in place. I won't borrow trouble by getting into worst case issues on that one.

Thanks for your comments archer. The gun store offered me a complete refund so I go in this week to hand the gun back. I reneged on my earlier resolution to learn to smooth these things up. If this was some special project gun from the 1800's that would be different. But these things are 650 USD new guns here. Thats no longer chump change. I could buy 2 new Howa 223 bolt rifles here for that price, and both would have quality as advertised.

I'm glad you are being taken care of with regard to the gun. Wish you had gotten a good one from the start.

Sorry about your troubles and bad experiences. I'm not a pro gunsmith, but I'm a pretty good DIY tinkerer. I wish I could have got my hands on it for you. I've had good luck tuning up my four Rossi's.