TargetTalk

I am sure this has been asked before, but I have a mint M104 slant grip pistol that needs a GOOD gunsmith. Any one you know who qualifies as a High Standard guy ?

Visit the high standard section of rimfire central.

I don't know if you go to Perry for the Nationals, but they have a hut and work on pistols there. One of their gunsmiths is a former employee of the original High Standard. I took my 'Buck Rogers' pistol to them last year, and they replaced all the springs, replaced an aftermarket firing pin, and fitted spare magazines for me.

What is your issue with the pistol?

The pistol fails to eject empties completely with stove pipe type failures. Cases getting caught between bolt face and breech face. I have tried two different barrels, various types of ammo. It almost looks like short-stroking but I think it could be the ejector.
This gun belonged to my brother. He didn't shoot it hardly at all and I don't really know if it ever functioned right. Here is a picture. What do you all think ?

Dr.

Have you tried it with different magazines? Make sure your chamber is REALLY clean. Try dropping a round into the chamber vertically. If it doesn't drop in all the way, use a bronze brush to clean out any fossilized crud in there.

If that provides no clues, there are two possibilities:

1) The most likely cause is the extractor. If it doesn't have a good grip on the case, it won't bounce off the ejector properly. A quick test is to take off the slide, hold it horizontally, and see if you can clip a loaded round under the extractor and have it held horizontally. If it falls out, there's your problem.

As a start, I would lubricate the extractor with a light oil, and wiggle it back & forth a dozen times to loosen up any rust or crud. If that helps at all, you've found your culprit. You may need to replace it. Sometimes you can sharpen the hook a little to help it bite into the brass. Just don't remove any metal from the back side, only the side of the nose.

The worse case would be that you need to have a custom one made & fitted to the pistol. This is pretty rare, but I've seen Bob Chow (famous pistolsmith & shooter) do it long ago.

2) The ejector on the 104 is very forgiving, because it can toss the cases almost anywhere & they will get out of the way. Victors or ones with ribs installed are fussier. The ejector is knurled, and is a press fit at an angle into the frame. Ideally, you want it as high as possible without interfering with the slide. Adjusting this is a bit tricky, but I doubt that is your problem.

Most likely your extractor , also you will get problems if your main spring is stuffed /weak, replace both with new.
Also give your chamber a good clean shells may be sticking
cheers .S

it is a while since I played with a slant grip hi-standard, but isn't the ejector meant to be in line with the bore - in the pic the ejector appears angled slightly to the right.

Yes, the ejector is bent. Someone in the past probably tried to fix a problem by bending it.
It needs to be replaced.

the ejector was a 'tap in' interference fit.

Interesting reading comments about the extractor. In my experience, most older .22 semi-automatics cycle 100% with the extractor removed: it only came into play when manually extracting a case/round from the chamber

A lot of .22's will work "extractorless", but some won't. I know from personal experience that Pardini SP's & Benelli MP90/95's will trap brass if the extractor doesn't have a good grip on the case. Bob Chow said the same goes for High Standards. He was an extraordinary pistol smith, so I never questioned it.

I've kept a pair of HS Victors running for decades, and the problem there is the rib. The original ejector design tossed the cases up at an angle, and they would bounce off the underside of the rib. They re-designed the nose of the ejector to flip the cases more horizontally, but it was a bit marginal until they also milled out the "ejection port" area on the bottom of the rib.