Ruger Mk II Dry Firing

I shot a Ruger Mk I and and then a Ruger Mk II for all my years of bullseye competition. I dry fired the heck out of both of them, mainly the Mk I as it had a cleaner break on the trigger.
What I used was a small plastic tab to just keep the bolt open enough so the firepin would not slam, but still be able to activate the trigger. Had to keep it in place or put it back in every time I racked the bolt to reset the trigger. I mean like thousands of times.
I made it from the cap of a 5 gallon water bottle. Much easier to use than plastic screw anchors.
 
There is a lot of information in this thread- both good and bad.
Removing a chamber burr with a chainsaw file is bad- very bad. The burr can usually be moved back into place with a chamber iron. Never remove the burr! Damaged chambers can now be laser welded back up. If you have a hole in your chamber where the pin hits a cartridge rim, the cartridge will not fire-at least reliably.

Any time you hit a piece of metal with another piece of metal, some deformation occurs-usually on the smaller part. Even if you won't damage your chamber dry firing, you can damage your firing pin. Drywall anchors won't help this, as the firing pin simply pierces them, providing little or no cushion to the firing pin.
 
TexasRusty said:
I have a 22/45 and I dry fire it quite a bit. It says in the manual to not dry fire it without the firing pin stop pin (or whatever it is they call it). I read this as, it is Ok to dry fire it as long as that pin is in place. The pin cannot be removed except when the gun is field stripped. And then it can only be removed by pounding it out.

I have dry fired mine at several thousand times with no ill effect.
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I have a 22/45 standard 4 3/4" and can tell you the firing pin stop (pin) can fall out on it's own without any effort besides gravity if you are not careful. There may be different dimensional tolerances in some pistols that can cause this.

I always dry fire that pistol to de-compress although it might not be necessary. Years ago, after field stripping, the pin slipped out, unnoticed, and when I dry fired the weapon without the stop in place the firing pin put a notch in the breech face.

This made chambering a round impossible until I did some research and carved the notch even with the breech face with a sharp knife.

I found the escaped pin on my cleaning mat. There is still a vestige of that notch visible although not as deep and doesn't effect functioning But still bothers me.
 
Just Say No To Dry Firing ... without a snap cap / drywall anchor or some sort of protection ... just don't take a chance .
Gary
 
I won't dry fire my MKII whether it is ok or not. I tend to use snap caps for just about all or my guns. One thing Ruger told after a repair is to NEVER use the slide lock as a bolt release
 
Bought a Mark II with the 10 inch barrel for $200 around 2000.

Breech was peened due to no firing pin stop.

Five minutes with a fine file and a couple "plunk" tests, it was good to go.

No failures to feed, fire, or extract.

No catastrophic failures.

YMMV
 
Five minutes with a fine file ...
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It's your gun, but you really don't want to fix it that way. Use a chamber iron/swage (see my earlier post) to push the metal back in place rather than remove the metal with a file.
 
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