A few days ago, I mentioned that I would try my 317 while clearing the cylinder chambers with a q-tip each time to get powder residue out. I tried that today, and it didn't make much difference. I used Winchester 36 gr hp, CCI 40 gr, and Federal 40 gr. All about the same, except that the Winchesters might have loaded and extracted sightly better when the gun was hot.

But the good news is that my 317 functioned much better today than it had before, whether I cleaned the cylinder or not. (It is new, this is only the 3rd time I have used it) The first time I used it, before I fired 100 rounds, it had bound up so tightly that I had to stop. The second time I used it, that problem happened by about 50 rounds. However, today, I went well past 100 rounds without being forced to stop. A few times, it bound up slightly, but I could still shoot.

This makes me wonder if my 317 simply needs a break in period. Maybe some key parts are too tight, and bind up when hot; but will get looser with more use.

The fact that the frame, barrel, cylinder, etc are mostly aluminum might mean that binding up when hot is more problematic than with a steel gun. If you check the thermal expansion factors for various metals at Engineering ToolBox, you can see that aluminum alloys all expand more when hot than the steel alloys do. Titanium expands significantly less, but the 317 seems to be aluminum alloy only, no scandium or titanium.

I will try it a few more times to see if it continues to get better. Maybe I won't try to return it after all.