Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots .35 Remington Contender Problem???

I always wanted a .35 Remington Contender rifle and I bought one at a gun show about a year ago. Nice blue 21" (I think) barrel and nice frame. Has a thumbhole walnut stock that never had a finish applied so I took care of that. Got it pretty cheap. Turned out real nice and just what I wanted but...

You got it! It won't shoot. Firing pin is there and it makes a very, very slight ding in the primer but not enough to set it off. I tried it with handloads and two types of factory loads and none of them will fire. I looked at Mr. Bellm's page and read all he had to say about fixing a problem like this and the problems in general with Contenders and I still don't know what to do. I could take some brass and neck it up and put a false shoulder on it and fire form some cases and go on but I would rather fix it. I have been intending to put another barrel on it to make sure it will work but haven't done it yet. I know that a .35 Remington does not have much of a shoulder and the barrel I have is not headspaced properly. Or at least the way it fits on this frame the headspace is excessive. Does anyone have a simple approach to fixing this problem? This may be an age old problem but it is new to me. No wonder I bought it cheap.

Thanks!

Did you measure headspace or barrel/frame gap?

https://youtu.be/wRWW43Tflgw

I had a .35 rem Contender that would misfire now and then, had to close it sharply.
That reportedly an interrupter spring deal (or something like that).

If it is a headspace deal....

https://www.bellmtcs.com/tc-contenderg2-headspace-shims-cg2-shims

Mine only misfired on the range, but it was a once in 20 shots deal, even when it was closed sharply each time.
That was my Super 16.

Had a Super 14 (diff frame) that never messed up.
And another frame/bbl that was shot briefly, that never messed up.

Alas, I had to sell the last one due to making my wrist hurt/buzz.
.35 rem in a Contender is freakin super cool (handgun).

In rifle..........it puts a hurtin on the deer too.

Hope you get it figured out

If it won't fire anything, I'd knock apart at least one round of your reloads, neck it up and back down with a false shoulder as you proposed or seat a bullet out to the lands so the case is held back against the frame/firing pin and fire-form with a start load.

With a false shoulder you could at least, pop a primer and have that one case tell you what's going on.

If the chamber is cut deeper than factory and the cases fall in too far for the firing pin to strike, setting the shoulder forward is the only fix I know.

My Contenders were 7x30 Waters, 375JDJ, 30-30 and a 223. Only the 223 headspaced on the shoulder...

Good luck!

Will it pass a pencil test? (point it straight up and see if the firing pin with hit it)

It could be a lockup / bolt issue and not a headspace issue.

This is unfortunately a fairly common problem with 35 rem contenders. The factory cut the chamber too deep. Try seating bullets long into the rifling. Fireform the shoulder forward and be careful not to set the neck back when resizing. The other option is to have a rim cut in the chamber. It's called a 35 Remington rimmed. Use 303 or 30-40 brass, resize in your 35 rem die and trim to length.

Thanks for the replies. I will watch the video and see if I am smart enough to figure out the headspace / barrel frame gap. I think that was Mike was trying to get to on his website. If I see a video, I might understand a little better. I have never heard of the pencil test but I do know a dirty joke involving women and pencils! I will try that too. Not the joke, the gun test. I would be willing to bet that the chamber is too deep. I have plenty of brass, so I will see if I can just make some that fits the gun. I have a farm up in East Texas with plenty of deer and a 40 year supply of hogs and this would be an ideal rifle to whomp them. You can't shoot over a hundred yards there if you tried and the old .35 hits hard.

358JDJ solves the problem. That's what my 35 ended up as, and I didn't even have a problem.

Have you considered that it may be a broken hammer spring. The typical Contender hammer spring has two legs and if one breaks, the energy delivered to the firing pin is often too low for ignition. I had that problem in an early Contender that I got cheap from a pawn shop. Fortunately my local gun guy had extra springs in his Contender parts kit. I think he charged less than $10 for parts and labor to install a new spring. Problem solved.

" makes a very, very slight ding in the primer but not enough to set it off." I had a Contender frame doing that with a .22 Hornet, light strikes on the primer, was the hammer spring. I think that's what I'd look at first.

I'ma thinkin that one can have a rim recess machined in and then use eithr (or both) 30-40 and/or 303 British brassto make a rimmed 35 Remington

Pencil test, like you'd do with any pistol. Stick a pencil down the barrel, eraser first, pull the trigger and see if the firing pin hits it. With most pistols it will come flying out. Probably won't do that on a rifle, but you should be able to tell if it's moving.