cva squirrel nipple alignment?

[duke21]

been extremely busy with family matters and work lately. finally had my cva squirrel rifle out the other day again.. she seems to get more accurate everytime i shoot her, but seem to be getting misfire about 4 out of 10 times. what appears to be a problem is that the nipple is not at the proper angle for the hammer to squarely strike the cap. it appears the nipple needs rotated clockwise a few degrees to get good alignment. any suggestions on adjusting this to get better performance. thought about just filing down the nipple to match, but that seems like a half-a.. way of doing this. any ideas would be appreciated.

thanks,

duke21

 

[arquebus]

Put a new nipple in it & see if it sits the same way. If it does you'd be better off adjusting the hammer to hit the nipple properly. One way is to put some easy to see medium, like lipstick, on the nipple & then let the hammer down onto it. This should transfer some of the lipstick into the nose of the hammer. Then using a dremel tool, or similar, grind away the high spots on the hammer nose. Continue doing that until you get the full circle of the the nipple transposed onto the hammer nose.

 

[alaskasmoker]

My CVA squirrel is the same way. I just went out and bought a red hot nipple. No problems now.

I still would like to rotate the drum or whatever to get it to line up.

Grinding on the hammer seems pretty extreme?

 

[Stormrider51]

I can't remember if the Squirrel Rifle has a drum/nipple or a patent breech but if it has a drum you might try carefully tightening it to gain a degree or two of rotation. That would bring the nipple more upright. Otherwise, grinding the hammer is a lot easier than turning back the shoulder on the drum.

Storm

 

[boar]

I have the sams rifle, no problem. But I had a CVA kentucky that acted like yours. It didn't line up straight with the hammer. I took the drum off and cleaned the flash channel, it had some burrs. The drum is a solid peice with a hole in the side, you have to mark the drum so you know were the hole is, so when you screw it back in the hole lines up to barrel, if not you will only have half a hole for cap flash. I made the hole a little larger in the drum. The drum screws into the breachplug. I used a piece of copper pipe cut, so I didn't mark the drum using visegrips. Dilly

 

[kgrohs]

all you need to do is turn the drum clockwise or counter clockwise direction, to line up the drum. kjg

 

[alaskasmoker]

I heard turning or removing the drums in these things was a no-no. It could only be done by the factory. That info coming from the TOW catalog.

 

[rafterob]

Do not attempt to turn the drum. The flash channel/patent breech system is fairly restrictive as it is, you may further restrict the flash channel by changing the allignment of the drum. Look real hard at the allignment of the lock to the drum. Is it centered real well in the lock plate cut out? Sometimes the barrel inlet is not right on and that will cause the nipple to hammer allignment to be off, in which case you can inlet the barrel a little farther back if needed. You can heat and bend the hammer slightly if you are confident in such affairs. To me, grinding the hammer face is one of those things that I could keep "adjusting" until I really screwed it up and would need to buy a new one :grin:

 

[boar]

I had to do like you said about the barrel not being inlet far enought back on another one. But if his is centered in U of lock plate, he might have to turn the drum, a tad. I have also bent the hammers on a few. This is not a patent breech. They say you will void the warranty is you mess with it. CVA don't do sidelocks anymore,in's the word for them. Mine was no good as it was,only hundred dollar gun that wouldn't go off every time, so I fixed it.You do what you have to do if you can. It was no big deal. The drum is like a big screw, with hole for nipple and a hole in side for cap flash,the main thing is to have that hole lined to barrel as you stated. Easy way to loosen the drum is to put a paded set of visegrips on drum, with barrel in hand, smack the grips with rubber hammer. This is how I loosen a chuck on a electric drill. But you may not have to do this,If it isn't ungoldly tight. He might only have to turn it a little. Then run a pipe cleaner in hole to check the channel. Dilly

 

[paulvallandigham]

I had no trouble grinding the face of a hammer on a Spanish made rifle, but I took it very slow, put mor marking dye on the nipple and lowered the hammer often to see how much of the high spots were removed, and what still needed work, and then used my grinding bit some more. It requires frequent testing to get it right, but its certainly a do-it-yourself- project within the capabilities of most shooters.

You can choose to leave the lock in the gun, or take it out to work on the hammer, and just put it back each time to transfer dye from the top of the nipple to the face of the hammer, after you have ground off the dye that was on the hammer the last time, You will see the ring of dye on the face grow as you remove the high spot, until you have a full ring show on the hammer. That is your proof that the hammer is now hitting the top of the nipple all around, or " Square". rather than hitting one edge of it, which beats the nipple down where the hammr strikes, and leads to misfires. My final test is to use a folded piece of paper toweling, ( 2 layers) over the nipple, and release the hammer to fall using the trigger. If a punch-like hole or ring appears in the paper towel, I am done. Because the nipple does not have a cutting edge, and the toweling has long fibers in it, don't expect to see a paper punch hole in the towel like you would if you used a real paper punch. What you should see in both layers is a good impression, 360 degrees, of the tip edge of the nipple.