I was able to go to the range today to see if the technical support Sparks gave me was the issue:
They wanted to:
- verify there was not a serious carbon ring in the chamber
- test fire the weapon without the suppressor
Suppressor:
The suppressor is a 30 YHM phantom stainless (not the new ones, but the older models from about 5 years ago).
Prior to firing the weapon I soaked the bore with BoreTech by plugging the chamber and soaking it for 24 hours.
I then rescrubbed it with a plastic brush, and then ran patches until no blue showed up.
I then took some CLR and a bronze brush with a drill, and cleaned the chamber / throat to remove and carbon buildup.
Test firing:
I was able to test fire the weapon with several different types of ammunition:
- S&B 140 BTHP (shoots sub MOA)
- Prime 130gr
- Hornady 147gr ELD M
- Sparks 135 Berger
- Sparks 121 Lehigh
The boxes indicate that the 2 Sparks ammo types should be moving at 2850 and 3100 FPS respectively.
While they are definitely hot, they are definitely not moving quite that fast.
What I found was that with a thorough chamber cleaning and shooting the firearm without a suppressor the bolt still sticks with the 121gr Lehigh load.
Conversely, the bolt was not as obviously sticking with the 135 grain Bergers.
It did not appear to matter whether or not I used a suppressor.
So that means the Teaka doesn’t like really hot sparks ammo...
121s:
View attachment 7599633 The 135s:
View attachment 7599634 The shocker... Serb ammo (S&B):
View attachment 7599635