[Unclenick]

The deteriorating powder theory would fit nicely, then. You get a higher peak pressure, but a bit less gas due to the breakdown having taken out some of the nitrocellulose, leaving you with a lower muzzle pressure. But the average pressure during bullet travel could have been about the same, giving you similar velocity and recoil. I would definitely toss the powder.

My thinking had been that if the pin had bent then the ejector would partly obscure the hole and that's why driving a straight pin in could drive the ejector forward. Given the visible brass, my own inclination would be to give it a day with a chelating copper solvent likt the Bore Tech product I mentioned or KG-12. If you don't have one of these water-base super copper grabbers, just go straight to the penetrating oil. Kroil is good. PB Blaster is good. Apply a little every day, both through the pin hole and from the front, and repeat for two or three days, then try using a drift punch to tap the nose of the ejector to see if you can knock it loose, but don't tap it too hard, as you don't want to jam it further. You could also take a brass rod and hammer and hit the bolt face to see if inertia can bring the ejector forward.

Wear eye protection doing this, btw, as we don't know where a high-speed ejector might go. There is a spring loaded plunger in the mechanism of the Ruger Redhawk that kept taking off on me when I disassembled and reassembled doing trigger work, leading to an hour of searching to relocate it each time it got away. I finally just cut a couple of hand holes into a cardboard box and laid a sheet of window Plexiglass on it so it looked like a poor man's gloveless sandblast cabinet, and then I disassembled the gun in there. It captured the little detent plunger every time.