Savage mis-fires
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Looking for some help for my uncle here. It's the 9 day gun deer hunt here in Wisconsin this week. My uncle has a Savage in .300 WSM. Last year he had a misfire. At that time he was wearing a big bulky glove and figured he didn't pull the trigger straight back and the Accu Trigger safety feature caused the misfire. There was a very small dent in the primer of the round that failed to fire.
Over the summer he had the Accu Trigger replaced with a Timney of some sort I believe. Same thing happened again Sunday afternoon. Misfire with small dent in the primer. But this time he wasn't wearing a glove and no Accu Trigger to blame it on this time.
He is shooting factory loaded Federal Premium ammo. Any thoughts, on where he should start. I told him the first place I would start would be with different ammo as I have had similar failure to fires on other Federal centerfire rifle ammo in the past. Problem I pointed out was how many boxes of different brand ammo does he need to go through before he is confident there won't be an issue.
I told him I would sell/ trade that Savage in on a Tikka.
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Sound advice on the Tikka. If you’re in a bind for time, I would try cleaning out the bolt. I had some grease buildup migrate it’s way up to the firing pin stop and wasn’t letting my firing pin bottom out, and caused some miss fires with light strikes on the primer. Mind you I was shooting in -20 deg celcius that day. No issues since clearing out that grease.
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I'll take a look at the bolt when I get back to camp tomorrow. It was similar temps around here I guess, 10F.
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A good rule of thumb is do the cheapest thing first. You already know it wasn't the AccuTrigger, that wasn't really even a possibility since it did release the striker. Check the bolt for free movement of the firing pin and measure firing pin protrusion. Most likely too much grease or a piece of debris stuck in the firing pin hole. Maybe a broken firing pin tip but that is unlikely. While you have the bolt apart, check the firing pin spring for length and look for a collapsed coil or two in the spring. Next thing to check is headspace, especially if there's a chance he might have accidentally exchanged bolts with another rifle. Don't be too quick to discount that, my sister shot 270Win in her 30-06 for several years without realizing it until she took a shot at a deer outside her usual 40 yard hunting radius.
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Truly doesn't matter if you find the reason for it failing or not... because even if you fix it, it'll just be something else that breaks next time.
Rifle brands don't get a reputation like that unless it's earned.
