Well this failure has never happened to me before. During a highpower rifle match my pre 64 M70 rifle broke.

This is a NM action, built in the 50's, was not fired much till I got it. Now I am at the end of its first aftermarket barrel. I suspect it has been fired about 4000 rounds and a lot of dryfire practice.

Turns out the cam nose on the firing pin is a weak point in this action. One of the old gray beards was surprised that a "pre 64" cocking piece had broke. He had one post 64 break on him in about 40 years of shooting. One gunsmith I talked to yesterday, he too said "pre 64?!", but he could recall of a couple of people who had cocking pieces break on post 64 actions.

Apparently it is rare, but it happens.

Luckily I have a Wisner's firing pin, that I bought when I made a short action conversion to this rifle. Incidentally that bolt was a new Wisner bolt that I had my gunsmith fit at that time. The old bolt had a huge firing pin hole. The old Mr. Wisner made an excellent bolt, has a lot less tool marks than the old, and is slicker than goose grease. It required fitting. Unfortunately, Wisner's is no longer stocking many pre 64 parts, http://www.wisnersinc.com/ and young Mr. Wisner has made parts policies more restrictive.

I do notice that the Tubb carries M70 cocking pieces, http://www.davidtubb.com/ and I am going to stock up on a couple of these.

Anyway the bolt is off the gunsmith to be fitted with the new Wisner firing pin assembly.

Sorry to hear about the cocking piece breaking on you. It looks like the angle on the sear face has been recut for a Canjar Trigger ? Almost a 90 degree vs the 45 degree face of the M 70 sear. If so then there needed to have a good raduis in the corner to stop any stress from working the edge of the corner.

I no longer have any firing pins for the pre 64 M70, have used all of them up from the last batch made in 2004.

FYI to give you a little history about Wisner's M 70 Parts.

I started making many of those parts in 1985, at one time I had inventory of 72 differnet inventory lines of internal parts for the Pre 64 M70.
In 1997 I sold the off the M 70 parts inventory and tooling to Wisner's Inc, (LeeRoy) At which time LeeRoy set the first resrictions on selling some of the parts.
I continued to subcontract making M70 parts for LeeRoy until 2002, at which time I then went to work full for him. After 9/11 my old busniess (Precise Metalsmithing Ent.) went in the tank due to lack of sales.

I made the last batch of bolts in 2001, (24 units), (I fitted the last one about a year ago.)

In 2003 LeeRoy and Nancy (my Parents) wanted to retire, so they sold the busniess in Jan of 2004, (Wisner's Inc) to myself and my wife.
This was about the time that we started having Gunsmiths abusing the set policy of buying resricted parts.
Plus the inventory of Triggers, Sears. Firing Pins, Bolts was getting low.

So I then changed that policy to where I was the only person fitting those resricted parts.

The last straw came in from a bolt that was sent to a gunsmith, it showed back up in about a week. All he said was I can not get the bolt closed and can not fit it. Well he filed on the handle, he filed on the extraction cam, he filed on the locking lugs. You know what, ONCE I took out the front scope base screww that was about an 1/8" to long, the bolt dropped in place.
And then there was the gunsmith who bought two M70 firing pins from us and filed the form at that time with us that had the two M70's in the same caliber with only 4 numbers apart in the serial numbers.

Someone once said, All good things will come to a end.

James Wisner (the Younger)
Custom Metalsmith.
Owner Wisners's Inc