I've been working on a late 60's project gun. It's got an aftermarket 257 Roberts Ackley barrel on it. I think the headspace is long because 3 out of a box of factory 257 Roberts failed to fire. The primers had light strikes, and on several of the ones that did fire (about a third), the primers were backed out noticeably (about 10 thousandths). I never really shoot factory, so I can work with that.

I worked some tricks at the reloading bench and got the 257 Rob brass fireformed nicely such that the fired cases have flush primers and their shoulders are consistent in length as measured with a comparator--so the case headspace is good. FL sized them per the instructions Forster provided which resulted in the shoulders being set back 2 thousandths at most (maybe the headspace is fine?). This morning to test some loads. I had one misfire out of around 30 rounds. The shoulder on this one measures essentially the same as all the others. Nice primer strike. Popped the primer out and it contained all the normal stuff. I've fired approximately 4k of these primers, all out of a single sleeve with never an issue (Remington 9 1/2's).

More back-story. Earlier this week, I noticed the telltale signs of ancient WD40 on the receiver and the body of the bolt. I took the bolt apart, hosed the body and firing pin down thoroughly with brake cleaner. Lubed the firing pin like it was a semi-auto pistol, and reassembled. I have since realized that I used too much oil on the firing pin.

Coming back from the range today, I did some googling, pull the bolt apart again, wiped off all the excess oil, and cleaned sticky stuff off the other parts of the bolt that I neglected last time around. Other than the excess oil I put on, I don't think anything else I cleaned off would have contributed to firing pin drag.

The cocking washer looks ugly. It looks like someone did some heavy-handed grinding on it to bring the lobes close to flush with the sleeve that fits over it. I'm wondering it that would cause drag, and I'm tempted to clean it up--it looks like there's some material to work with such that I can file more flush, and then polish it.

What exactly is the function of the cocking wash, and specifically, does it interact with the sear (i.e. is it part of the trigger pull equation)?

Also, it has the factory trigger (pre-accutrigger). It's very light. Very similar in feel to my Win 52D target 22.