TNW ASR: More Problems

Following on the hills of the initial issues I had, my problems with the TNW ASR are continuing.  Here is the previous post on this subject:

http://opticsthoughts.com/?p=1696

I finally managed to get a couple of hundred rounds through it and since it is still about as reliable as a politician’s promise, I sent TNW’s tech support an e-mail.

Here is the text of the e-mail in its entirety:

I recently purchased an ASR from you chambered in 10mm.

I fired of a couple of hundred rounds as a break-in of sorts, but the situation is not improving, so I figured I should contact you and see if you have any suggestions.

• The rifle is not very good in getting a round into the chamber.  On an initial round, where I manually cycle the bolt (I pull it all the way back and let it go), the round does not go into the chamber.  It looks like the nose of the bullet hits the fed ramp and bounces up, Instead of going into the chamber, the round is stuck pointing upwards.  Once I get a round chambered (by manually inserting it into the chamber and closing the bolt on top), the rifle fires and the next round is successfully chambered about eighty percent of the time.  The rest of the time, there is the same failure to feed and I have to start over with the manual chambering.
• About fifty rounds ago, the rifle stopped firing altogether.  When I took the bolt out of the receiver, I noticed that the firing pin is frozen in place.  I carefully tapped it out and discovered that the back of the bolt is all chewed up from the impact of the hammer.  It is apparently so soft that it deformed into the firing pin channel and prevented it from moving.  I gently removed the deformation and chamfered the back opening of the firing pin channel. That got the firing pin working again, but I am a little concerned that if I continue using the rifle, it will get deformed again.  Honestly, it sounds like the heat treat on the bolt is not quite right.  I would not expect it to be that soft.

Any suggestions?

I’ll let you know if they come up with anything good.

So far, I am more than a little disappointed.  ASR stands for “Aero Survivial Rifle”.  In principle, it would be a good survival rifle, since it can be taken down and transported in a very compact bag.  I like survival guns and have reasonable familiarity with several of them.  They are often crude, but decently reliable.  To trust a gun to be a survival tool, you have to have faith in it.  At this stage in the game, I have about as much faith in the ASR as I do in the ethics of news reporters’.

At this stage, if I can get the reliability issue worked out, it will take a fair amount of reliable operation to restore my faith.  Until then, this is a rather expensive project gun that I have to tinker with.  In principle, I suspect that polishing the feed ramp with some JB paste might do the trick, but I will wait for TNW’s response prior to doing that.