Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Buck Mark experts

Dry fired the pistol and it was very difficult to get the slide back. Found several mentions of this on Rimfire Central. One "fix" recommendation was to replace the operating rod and recoil spring if it was an older gun but no one said this fixed the problem. I've had this one at least thirty years and it's been shot plenty but never had any kind of problem with it till now. The recoil spring doesn't appear kinked and the operating rod fits in place like it's supposed to. If I thought replacing these parts would fix it I do it but don't want to spend the money for the parts and not have it solve the problem. Anyone here had this happen with their Buck Mark and is there a fix?

uhh, don't dryfire it?......

I had a buckmark from my father in law a few years ago. It had a broken recoil spring buffer stop plate. Not sure if this would cause your issue. I ended up designing one in CAD and 3d printed some just to have. Worked well enough

43Shooter: In my gunroom I have a plastic envelope full of 22 L.R. "snap-caps" and maybe 12 - 15 additional 17 HMR "snap-caps" in there as well.
I make it a habit to NEVER "dryfire" my rimfire Rifles or pistols!
Never have, never will.
Rimfire "snap-caps" can be hard to come across at your average sporting goods store - I ordered my 17 HMR snap-caps on line, some time ago, and they work in the 22 Magnum as well.
I have NO idea as to the cause or cure of your BuckMarks affliction but I highly recommend "snap-caps" for your dry firing/trigger assessments/function tests!
One of my close friends stores ALL his rimfire guns with brightly colored "snap-caps" in their chambers.
The "snap-caps" are also great for feeding and extraction/ejection testing.
I have a set of rimfire "snap-caps" in my travel bag that goes with me whenever I am travelling.
Best of luck to you in correcting that BuckMarks ailment.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I can't say that is the cause of this issue but that is definitely a piece of plastic that all buckmark owners need to keep an extra or two of around.

Thanks to all that responded. For starters I'll take hunysman22's advice and not dry fire it again until I get some snap caps. If it's still hard to rack the slide after dry firing with snap caps I'll try a new recoil spring.

People have used the plastic screw anchor inserts to dry fire 22rimfire. See the RFC link.

https://www.rimfirecentral.com/threads/which-size-drywall-anchors-for-dry-firing.1061194/

Thanks, Good idea.

How do they cycle?

Could not guarantee perfect cycling with every firearm but they generally work good to great. They feed well but due to the smaller rim some firearms won't eject them properly. From a post I made in March of last year, they functioned well in a Remington 121 pump rifle, a 10/22, a Tikka T1x and Ruger Mark IV.


Just for the fun of it I ran a #4-6 wall anchor through the tube magazine of a Remington 121 pump rifle. It fed from the mag into the chamber just fine and and after dry firing even extracted okay but only partially ejected. The anchor rim is a wee bit smaller than a .22 so I'm surmising that the extractor hold wasn't strong enough to allow the ejector to throw it clear of the rifle.

Did that a few days ago but just now tried to feed two of them through a 10/22 magazine and a Tikka T1x - that is, I loaded two into each mag.

They both fed from the 10/22 mag, chambered properly and extracted just fine but wouldn't eject, they sort of laid there on top of the mag.

The Tikka was a complete success, both anchors fed into the chamber without a hitch and then extracted properly and ejected quite forcibly.


Be sure to get the #4-6 anchors for a .22, AFAIK they are always yellow but double check the label.

I tried them in a Ruger Mark IV pistol as well. Started with three in the magazine; they all fed and chambered without hanging up and were ejected briskly when working the action.



Added: You do get 100% failure to fire, however....