Just acquired a model 18-4 22LR, 4" Bbl that looks like it is ine OUTSTANDING Condition and it shoots like a dream, but, when I go to empty the 6 fired rounds, the ejector rod will not come down to drop them out of the Cylinder.

If I bang on it with the Palm of my hand (ouch) several times it will finally come down and eject the shell cases they way it should.

I examined the rod etc. ... there are no scratches, burrs etc. visible to me and it works PERFECTLY with NO Rounds in the cylinder or with 6 Fresh Un-fired Rounds in the Cylinder .
It has all been lubricated properly with a very thin dressing of top quality oil.

I fired 50 Rounds of Federal "Gold Match" ammo today and it hung up, as described, after every 6 rounds.
Will try CCI and whatever else i can find in the Safe when I go out to the Range tomorrow.

Anyone have any ideas what is causing the problem and what to do about it?
Thanks,
Ken

This is common with 22 revolvers and you have to try different ammo to find what works best. You can also polish the chambers and that will help. Dry is better than oil in the chambers. Take a piece of wood or rubber/plastic hammer to the range for tapping the rod until you have the problem corrected.

This is a common problem with S&W 22 caliber revolvers as they have tight chambers and my K22 is like that. There are two choice and that is to find an ammo that the revolver likes or hone the cylinders a little to eliminate the problem. I'd recommend the first rather then the latter because there has to be an ammo that it likes.

Secondly you have to throughly with a brush and solvent clean the chambers to have them as clean as new.

Nice score on the M18 I just put 550 rounds of bulk Winchester ammo through a new M63 last night, and it would get pretty sticky at times...when it required a little too much force, I'd take a Q-tip and swab out the chambers with CLP. I only had to do that 3 times over the course of an entire brick of ammo, so it wasn't too bad. I accept it as one of the little quirks of owning a sweet S&W rimfire revolver. As others have said, I'd clean/polish it thoroughly and try other ammo before I started making any permanent changes to the gun. Good luck and congrats on the Model 18.... -Rob

Pretty common on 17's and 617's too. A .22 LR cylinder finishing reamer "fixes" it. I've reamed a bunch of them. The rounds eject (and chamber) much more easily and the guns lose no accuracy. They become easy to live with instead of a PITA to shoot.

Thanks Guys ... I have now scrubbed the cylinders with Hoppes and a Brush, then Bore Snaked them thoroughly many times, then run patches on a Jag through to be sure the cylinders are both clean and dry .... then run a new one of those fleece like swabs through each cylinder several times to be sure they are dry.
Will try 2-3 kinds of ammo tomorrow and report back.
Thanks for your advise.
Ken

i have had luck w/cutting a cleaning rod off so it will chuck into a drill and using polishing paste (toothpaste works) to lap the holes a bit w/a bore brush.
i would try this before removing any metal w/a reamer.
you can't put that metal back in!!

My Grandfathers K-22 was just as you describe. Got a .22 cleaning brush and wrapped a bit of 0000steel wool on it.
Ran it through the chambers a bit with a drill and now sure works a LOT better.

I have had that problem with at least three S&W .22 revolvers. I still have two of them. One, the one that is gone now, had the chambers polished and it didn't help a bit. What DID help was changing ammo. Not one of the guns that had the problem had it with CCI Blazer, or even Stinger. CB Longs worked fine, too, even from Federal. On the two big-problem guns, the Kit Guns, I believe that I finally figured out the case mouth was getting belled on firing, and was causing the problem. I think the brass may be better or thicker on the CCI, and the pressure lower on the CB. I don't know about the Stinger (higher pressure?), but I guess the brass is still good, and maybe the nickel-plated case helps.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Good luck!

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Formerly Model520Fan

My new to me M18 has had the same problem. 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper wrapped around a cleaning rod has helped polish the chambers. My new 617 doesn't have the problem at all.

Some don't because the chambers were finished with fresh tooling. Depends when it was made in the production run.

As promised, here is the report of my results after a couple of hours of scouring each chamber in the Cylinder with Brass/Bronze Brush, and Hoppes ... over and over again.
Took it to the Range with each chamber in the Cylinder spotless clean, and dry ... unfortunately, the results were not good.

Fired the following:
50 Rnds CCI Standard Velocity ... ejected with a hard hand slap on the ejector rod ... would not eject by just using your fingers to push down the rod

50 rnds of Federal Gold Match ... similar to the CCI above but would occasionally "Freeze" the Trigger/Hammer/Cylinder turn

50 Rnds of Blazer, which "FREEZE" the action every time after just a few shots

FREEZE means that I could not pull the Trigger, nor pull back the Hammer, and the Cylinder would not turn. I'd have to Open it and bang on the rod until it ejected the rounds then reload and start over.

Frustrating .... I'm either taking it to my Gunsmith for a Professional Solution, or send it back to the Seller .... I'm not going to try any further to resolve the problem myself.

I've just traded into a Smith 18 4" in .22 LR. It's 99%, except for one problem: Someone has managed to drop the hammer with the cylinder out of time, and has peened over the recess for the cartridge rims on three of the charge holes. I know this doesn't sound possible, but I've duplicated the source of the problem by physically rotating the cylinder while cocking the hammer until it's "intentionally" out of time. When the hammer is dropped, the firing pin will dent the cylinder wherever it's aligned. (Don't worry--I didn't fully drop the hammer). When cocked manually, or fired double-action, the timing is just fine and there's nothing wrong with the revolver outside of this little issue.

So--cartridges don't completely chamber in three of the charge holes. I believe I need a chamber reamer that will true-up the recesses for the cartridge rims in the cylinder. Here's my question: What reamer should I purchase? It must cut for the cartridge rim.

WAB, it's entirely possible. Probably the gun got dirty and the cylinder stop didn't come up and loack the cylinder in place. You could also try getting a small round abrasive stone and slowly polishing the dents made by the firing pin. Just do one chamber and then see if it works.

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S&WCA 1729

Brownell's part # 513-051-220. The diameter of the rim cutting area is .290" which will give your rims clearance but may not be as big in diameter as the factory cut. You could just use a small round file on the edges that are "squished" over causing a problem but reaming the chambers is usually a good thing as most are undersize. Some nay-sayers on here seem to think reaming the chambers is sinfull and recommend all sorts of mickey mouse fixes for tight chambers that will not leave you with nice straight walled correctly sized chambers. If you ream them you are not "hogging them out" you're just cutting them to SAAMI spec.

I bought a new 18-4 and had the same problem. So I loaded and shot five leaving one chamber empty. The cases still ejected hard. Then I loaded five again and left a different chamber empty and they still ejected hard. When I did that the third time, the cases almost fell out. So I marked the chamber I left empty that time and didn't use it again. After checking all six chambers the cases all fell out. I saved the case from the sticking chamber. When I got home I used my 10X glasses and examined that case and the offending chamber.

There was a tiny dimple in the case right near the rim. When I examined the chamber, sure enough there was a burr from cutting the rim recess folded over into the chamber and blued over so I couldn't see it w/o the 10X glasses. I sliced it off with an exacto knife. Next time at the range the problem was solved! I was surprised that just one sticking chamber could make it so hard to eject.

If you still have the gun and haven't found the problem yet, you may want to try that process of elimination before you take it somewhere and see if it's only one or two chambers causing the problem.

Good luck and all the best,

__________________
Jim
S&WCA #819

Another thing you run into is chambers that aren't really clean. .22's are bad about leaving a coating of very hard burnt on carbon on the chamber walls. The usual "push the brush thru" cleaning can just polish the carbon. The chambers will look clean but aren't. A short piece of cleaning rod chucked in a variable speed drill with a .243 rifle bore brush and your favorite powder solvent WILL get the chambers clean.

Thanks--I'll give a try with the exacto-knife and tiny stone options in the rim areas. Think I'll also chuck-up a .243 brush with some solvent and give each chamber a treatment, too. Great advice!

I posted this a couple of days ago re: extraction issues with a mod. 19-3, it is essentially the same as what hondo44 referred to but (using an exacto knife):

It may be a lot simpler than honing the chambers. Of course honing the chambers will indirectly fix the problem but it is more than is necessary. The polish in the chambers of Smith & Wessons is not an issue, in my opinion, if you've ever looked in the chambers of a Ruger, you'll know what I mean (it looks like they have traction grooves). I have owned numerous revolvers that exhibited identical problems. All of them had or developed a burr in the chambers near the case head/extractor. I removed the cylinder, took out the extractor and cleaned just the edge of the chambers and where the extractor contacts the chamber only slightly with a "pointed hard arkansas stone" (I suspect that a small round swiss file would work also). It required so little that I didn't even need to touch up the blue in the chambers. I did this on at least two 29-2's a 57 and a couple of .22's, none have ever had an extraction issue since.

I hope this helps,
Steve

Report: Followed the advice, now it's better.

Wow--the cylinder steel is much harder than I would have imagined; tried the exacto knife but it was very hard to control and I couldn't get enough leverage to remove the stubborn peened-over material. Went to a small, very sharp wood chisel and was able to do a masterful job of carving out the problematic rim areas.

Ran two cylinders full of .22 LR through it and it worked fine--except I now have the same problem that most everyone else here has--very, very hard to eject. I'll follow the rest of the advice in the thread and hopefully can isolate and fix the new problem.

Thanks again.

What also does work is 2-stroke oil.
I rubbed each bullet with a cloth with 2-stroke oil, and now the residue is kept so soft it´s no problem seating or ejecting the rounds.
It also helps cleaning the chambers.

WOW !!!

I'm against honing cylinders or removing material. As said earlier... if you've ever looked at a Ruger cylinder... you'll know why. I'm sure that any of the methods requiring honing, polishing or reaming will result in a lowered value (if you have any plans to use them as collectable). I think that to a great extent it's due to the bullet lube used. Sticky stuff that builds up. I'd use nothing more abrasive than a bronze brush chucked up in an electric drill. The whole toothpaste or grinding compound scares me to death... This kind of billybob backwoods gunsmithing will kill the value of your treasure... Now if you don't care... proceed... All I can say is that if I were going to buy one, and saw any signs of modification in any way other than what would be done by the factory... I'd put it down and walk.

One reporters opinion ! And no offense meant if your name is BillyBob

Check your headspace. I'll bet it's too large. Try a couple endshake bearings to move the cylinder back at bit. That doesn't give the brass room to back out of the cylinder upon firing, expanding, and making extraction difficut.

Yes, this will open up the barrel to cylinder gap. You just have to play around with the number and thickness of the shims to find a happy medium that works.

If it doesn't work you can just rmove the shims, no harm no foul.

Good luck...

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Go NRA

Interesting!
I have the exact same problem,a cylinder that "locks". I found that in my case, if i strip everything, and I mean everything off, and put yoke and drum back in, then it will revolve nicely on one side, fine fefore and after those chambers, and on 1-2 chambers it is "sticky".

I suspect that the yoke/drum is misaligned somehow, causing that resistance. Usually 12 rounds go fine, and it's downhill from there, which is fine for precision, but sucks for competing in "field" or shooting DA at all.

I'll definetely measure headspace, if I can fix it cheaply, I will, if i can't I'm tempted to sell and buy a 617 instead :-(

Ejection is a problem for me too, but CCI works well, and if I run a boresnake though it every 50/100 rounds it's not a problem.