Empire Sniper question/suggestion
1. Is there any way to make the sniper's hammer cocking point and bolt clearing the breech point the same? Right now the hammer cocks before the bolt clears the breech. It is very easy to short stroke.
It seems like I need to either shorten the bolt, make the hammer slot longer or both. Does that seem correct?
2. The other issue I had was trying to figure out why the gun likes to out of the valve area.
There are two cause of these:
a. The main reason is because if you tightened the valve retaining screw(even a little bit), it will cause the gun to leak down the barrel.
or
b. The blue loctite that comes from the factory does not do a good enough job of securing the screw to the body. I have seen 2 guns where that screw backed out and the gun leaked out of the frame.
Currently the only way to deal with this is to tighten the screw down and back it out at least 1/2 a turn and use loctite on that screw to make sure it is held in place.
I wish the design was in such a way that the frame will hold that valve screw in place. This way you don't have to guess what is the correct tension for the valve screw. Also in the manual's troubleshooting guide, you can say: "Don't over tighten the valve screw as it will cause leaks down the barrel."