This might be old news, but I haven't seen anything posted about it so here goes. I apologize in advance if it's redundant. I been shooting my Hoyt relined Erma for about four years with excellent results.I know the have a reputation for poor ignition. In the last two or three shooting sessions I started to get an increasing number of misfires. The last one was a total bust. Although I had always been serious about cleaning it, I assumed it was a flash channel issue. I stripped the carbine down, gave it a heavy duty cleaning, soaked the receiver in straight Ballistol, then gave it a bath in acetone. I put a cotton ball in the chamber and fired off a cap. Black residue. Loaded up a blank with 10 grains of 3F powder and a wad, no bang. I drilled out the touch hole on one case and loaded another blank. Now I could see powder at the hole. Boom. But it occurred to me, why all of a sudden would I have to drill out the cases? Long story short, the cases, at least mine, have a concave powder chamber at the base. Cleaning them with a flat faced brush like I do for BPCR wasn't reaching the crud, at the bottom even though they were soaked first. The crud built up in the little chamber and even though the touch hole was clear, the powder charge was much further away from the hole. The crud was baked on and it it took a lot of time to see brass at the bottom of the chambers. I didn't try a blank yet, but I'm pretty sure I found the problem. From now on the fired cases go into a jug of water after firing instead of dealing with them a couple of hours later.
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