Taming the Jimenez JA-380: Bolt-Face

The bolt-face on this handgun had become damaged by a few cartridges that had become jammed against it, before I worked the gun over. There was a damaged area in the side of the recess.

Looking at the arrows in the picture above, you can see where I did my work. The edge was smashed down, and this caused a small amount of metal to mushroom out onto the bolt-face. This prevented the cartridge from properly seating into the recessed area. I used my pocket-knife to carefully trim this mushroomed metal away (red arrow). As you can see by the yellow arrow, there is still some visible damage to the rim. This is because I only removed what was necessary to restore proper seating. It is important to keep this recess to normal size, because excess clearance will interfere with spent-case extraction (the extractor will not be able to get a full grip on the case rim).

I was careful to test fit with an un-fired cartridge as I worked. In this way, I was able to adjust for proper side clearance. I simply slipped the rim up under the extractor. Notice how nice and flat it sits against the bolt face. There has been no additional damage to the bolt-face since.

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