Took my K 31 to the range yesterday. Fired 10 rounds of Swiss manufactured ammo without a hitch. Fired two five round groups with 37grs of 4064 under a 165 Rem PSP in a Norma case. The fifth round of each group failed to ignite. Barely a dent on the primer.

In the first instance, opened the bolt and with the bullet stuck in the barrel from loading, the case was pulled away from the bullet. Had to knock the bulletout with a cleaning rod. However, on the second fail to fire, I re-cocked the rifle by pulling back on the stiker, and and two more goes at it. Still only the barest imprint of the firing pin.

Anybody have any idea about what is happening? I am perplexed. Ku-dude

PS: My sense of the recoil of the Remington handload is that it was noticeable milder than the Swiss loads. What is the weight of the Swiss projectile? K-d

Have you disassmebled the bolt before, it is pretty easy to do. There is a site that shows how to disassemble it, but you can prolly figure it out on your own. does your gun set off the gp11 rounds alright? maybe you have some hard primers, nice guns, they are my favorite mislurp right now, how many milsurps have a 3# or less sweet trigger, better than my worked over ruger factory trigger, and are MOA capable as is. can't say this about many factory guns, all for less that $100

Ku-dude, If the Swiss rounds fired, it's not your bolt or firing pin, but the failure of the bolt to go into battery. What this means is that the bolt isn't all the way forward because your reloads are too long. You need to pull your bullets, FL-resize your brass (The sizing die must be screwed down so that it not only touches the shell holder, but the press "cams over" as well.) and seat your bullets deeper. Moreover, there's a chance your dies aren't meant for the K-31's chamber, but for its predecessor. If so, they won't size the brass enough. Lastly, you'll know when the bolt IS in battery if the serial numbers on it are in the 12 o'clock position when viewed from above. Make up a dummy round after doing the above to be certain. ...Maven

Paul has you on the right track. Your die is probably fine. There are minor chamber differences in the Schmidt-Rubin actions from 1889 to 1931 and a custom die can be made to resize the 31's shoulder a little less but it is not necessary. See if a resized brass chambers and goes into battery with the bolt serial numbers in the '12 o'clock' position. After assuring yourself that the reformed brass is okay then seat a bullet and try the chambering and full battery process again. The first check tells you when the brass is reformed enough and the second check will let you know if you are into the rifles lands and need to seat a little shorter. Most data for OAL's are for the 1911 series and way too long for the k-31's. YMMV, but try an OAL between 2.8 to 2.9" The Swiss mil round uses a nominal 174 grain projectile. The closest commercially available bullet would be a Berger 175gr. Best-o-Luck

Forgot, Yes it is a very mild load but probably should be quite accurate. Another accurate load reported by Sierra(Sierra's most accurate) and others is at 43.9gr IMR 4064. Don't forget to work up! This will be much closer to GP-11's recoil. Swiss ball in the k-31 should be in the area of 2550fps.

Thank you for your kind advice and assistance. The brass is new Norma, but since the rounds disasembled on extraction, they were too long. I will seat deeper. Again, thank you. Ku-dude

I had the problem, when I first reloaded for my K-31, that the bullet would separate from the brass when ejecting a loaded shell from the chamber. It turned out that the OAL called out in the load data I used was too long for the short throated K-31. The Hornady loading manual called for an OAL of 2.875" which solved my problem. I managed a 5 shot 2" group at 100 yds with the iron sights. I have since mounted one of the clamp on scout scopes mounts on my K-31 and will be out to the range soon to see how it does with a 2X7 pistol scope. I really like my K-31.

I had the same problem with ok ammo.
I was just used to dry firing it, and with ANY ammo it takes a little more to get it into battery.