I think I may have broken my firing pin.

[perch161]

I was told by a friend that i could use a procedure called clikcking in to help break in my action before i got everything up and running to shoot it. Clicking in according to him is done by snipers to get a precise feel for thier triggers. The cycle the bolt and close it then bring the bolt handle part way up before dry firing. This, according to my friend, isn't supposed to hurt the firing pin. I did this for the last couple of weeks while I was waiting to get my scope and rings. Well I got everything all set up last week and made a plan to head out to the range for Fathers Day. When I got there, I chambered a round, squeezed trigger and got nothing but, "click". I tried three time just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. I thought that maybe I had a bad round. I checked the primer and it had a soft hit on the three rounds that I tried. Did I break the firing pin? How would I go about fixing it? I have a Savage model 25.

[Dirk]

Dry firing won't hurt your rifle. No need to do it the way your "sniper wannabe" friend suggests. Your trigger is probably set too light. Read the instructions on adjusting the Accu-trigger, and add some pull weight.

[GaCop]

Also check your firing pin protrusion. Remove your bolt, decock the firing pin and measure the protrusion. You should have around .050" IIRC to work properly. The technical section can help you immensly but you have to be a paid member to access the information ($12/yr).

[Nor Cal Mikie]

Sounds like you might need a new friend. Someone that doesn't know everything? ::)
What ammo are you using? Reloads? Factory? Might be that the cases are too short for the chamber and being pushed forward to the shoulder of the chamber by the firing pin? That way the firing pin can't hit the primer hard enough.

[82boy]

Dry firing won't hurt your rifle. No need to do it the way your "sniper wannabe" friend suggests. Your trigger is probably set too light. Read the instructions on adjusting the Accu-trigger, and add some pull weight.


+1

[drybean]

+2

[perch161]

Thanks for the input guys. I searched firing pin and came up with a ton of helpful info. So I took the bolt apart as per instructions and a pic. I cleaned it out with a little help from a different friend we found a very small amount of grit and burrs. We put it back together and set the protrusion to .055. We took a live round and it went boom seems like the problem is solved. Thanks to this site I saved a trip to the gunsmith and probably a quite a bit of green.