This was posted on a local page.
here are my thoughts. I can't help thinking that it involves a sloppy chamber.I've got a Savage 270 bolt action rifle that only fires about 50% of the time. The other 50% it will dent the primer. I've sent the rifle to savage who said they took the bolt apart, adjusted something, then test fired it with success. The rifle still only fires about 50% of the time. Any ideas on what I can do or a gun smith who can take a look at it?
Was it warranty? send it back again, have the extractor checked, have springs and the actual length of the pin checked, and you personally should get a headspace gauge and check for proper headspace.
Your problem would have either been friction in the firing pin channel, or a severely defective spring, drag on the pin by a bad trigger assembly, or, improper headspace or other problem that prevented the pin from giving a solid blow.
Primers are not that darned hard. a rifle pin/spring hits like a hammer. The probability that it is caused by light strikes, to me, seems very unlikely. It seems to me that the headspace isn't right. a 270 case is supposed to butt against the shoulder, not hook up on the back, and if that ammo is not solidly against the chamber shoulder, you won't get a strike. If you take your fired ammunition and very carefuly measure the shoulder to rim dimensions, and try to get accurate overall dimensions of the shell to an unfired shell, you may find that the ones that fired are stretched quite a bit.
My thoughts are that your rifle is really messed up somewhere, and it sure isn't a simple thing that involved just a spring or dirt.