Well I am sort of a self taught expert on the Buckmark since I have been shooting them competitively in speed events for around 5 years. If we could get together at a range I could likely sort out the issue. What mods have you done? Heggis flip? Silhouette sear spring? Tac Sol barrel? Any magazine mods? OEM over-travel trigger? Firing pin mods? Older or newer model? What ammo have you tried? PM me with a list. I don't know where your town is but I will be all over MD/PA/WV this month.
Actually that is BS from Browning. A lot depends on whether it is an older or newer BM. Older models did not have the firing pin go as far forward as newer ones. Those are plenty safe to dryfire till hell freezes over. My 1994 open class racegun has about 50K rounds thru it and likely as much as 5k-10k dry fires also. No peened breech even after lengthening the FP travel by reeming out the FP retaining pin hole some. However older guns could get a lot of light strikes after a lot of crude builds up on the breech and slide face. So when Browning changed the slide and firing pin assembly in 2001 they lengthen the travel and also said not to disassemble the gun to clean it (go figure). Most of the newer guns come from the factory peened from test firing. Normally it is a non-issue but sometimes a burr of metal from the peened spot will hang down into the chamber causing misfeeds, chambering, and extraction issues. There are different ways to clear any excess metal out, that tool being one of them.
Thanks for the picture. I don't see anything in the way of peening either but I do see something I would correct on it before using it in competition. The transition between the feed ramp and the bottom of the chamber is not smooth and in fact that small flat wall of the breech just above the feedramp needs to be stoned out until it is a smooth transition. I have seen hollowpoint ammo get caught on that small lip there depending on the angle at which the round gets fed from the magazine. The most dangerous tool anyone can use on a firearm is a Dremel tool, but in this case it is the correct one. A small conical medium stone bit can smooth that right out fairly easily. If rounds are hanging up on the top and there is no burr it is likely a case of the mag feeding at the wrong angle. Usually a case of the mag feed lip shape or the mag is going too far into the mag well and the lips are sitting too high. The latter can usually be fixed if you open the top edge of the mag release slot a little to allow the mag to latch slightly lower in the frame. Adjusting the feed lips is a hit or miss proposition. Personally I like to buy a bunch of mags and see which ones work well, then sell off the ones that don't. I have 2 BM raceguns, one iron sighted (1990) and my C-More equipped open gun (1994). There are some mags that will not latch in the 1990 gun that work fine in the 1994. Most of the mags work in both guns. The old style small baseplate ones that came from the Buckmark Challenger II/III models work in everything (original mags in 1990 but not by 1994). Sometimes a gun has a slight tolerance issue that you either live with or fix.
Sorry that is BS. I have seen newly arrived guns in sealed boxes that are peened from the factory. If you check RimfireCentral.com's Buckmark section you will find real info on issues like this not made up opinions or assumptions. Browning in all those cases says when the customer calls in about it that it is a non-issue but all of us serious owners know that it can be. You will find there are people who have had dealers unbox all their newly arrived BMs and all of them are peened from the factory, bar none. Of course if they sit in the display case for awhile they may get worse from customers doing it but that does not mean Browning has not done the same thing when testing the action before boxing a gun up (actually made for Browning by a company in Utah, not made by Browning in a few decades).
Like I asked before what mods were done on it?
Now that a pretty dumb statement if you think about it. A shell casing can only be generated by firing the gun. You don't have unfired cases lying around to use for that. So it can't be peened from that if a case is in the chamber. The spent casing is generated at the factory in US made handguns. Some foreign companies don't do that and then a state certified person has to do it when it gets to the dealer.
