Finally got my Witness!
Great shooter, but with a bit of a problem. My searches for a solution on the forums were not as fruitful as I would have liked.
I get nose dives in the first few rounds.
First day at the range, after a cleaning, I put a bunch of ball through her of all kinds including steel and aluminum. Cycled and fired hundreds without a hitch... sort of.
Several times I tested the slide release. Some of those times I would get nose dives with the round only just touching the bottom of the breach and mostly still in the mag. This never happened when I racked to chamber and again... she never failed to cycle on her own.
The next day I took some 147 gr Train and Defend. (Walmart guy let me plunk the 147s in the barrel first. Good service!)
Same thing happened. Only this time... about 30 shots in with the Train... a nose dive after 2 successful fires. And later again after 1 successful fire.
I felt the mag spring was tight and wondered if this could be the culprit. That or the mag lips. The last few rounds definitely require some force and especially the 16th in the 16 rd mag. Also, there appears to be zero taper in the mag lips, front to back. Should there be?
Last night I did some testing with the flat nosed "Trains." Slide release only.
16 rounds (full mag) - 7 nose dives out of 8
15 - 3/8
14 - 1/10
13 - 0/10
Then I dropped the mag on its top. Not proud of that. Now just a little bit of roughness on top of one of the lips. I couldn't seem to duplicate the failures after that... or, at least... to that extent. I was only able to get 1 to nose dive with a full mag out of 10 more attempts.
I feel like there should be more taper, front to back, in the mag lips. When manually pushing the cartridge forward, the round has a tendency to dip down at a certain point, i.e. when there is less metal underneath it.
I understand that it's a good idea to have several mags, but I think the stock one should work also. I've modified mags in the past... based on research from guys who've owned the same gun.
Any thoughts?
***EDIT***
I added 3 photos to the bottom of the O.P. 2 shots of the opened up mag and 1 of WWB ball stuck also. The ball will cycle with successful fires for obvious reasons. The flat noses sometimes wont.
(Unable to resize photos. Scroll bar is on the bottom, if necessary)
And I loaded the mag full of 115 gr WWB round noses and did the slide release test. First one was a failure. I felt no need to continue...
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