I'll try to make a long story short but was at the range the other day with the new Bersa Thunder 380. It shot really nice and sighted in quickly. I was shooting the 95gr WW box and it was doing well. I passed it to my son to give it a try and he grabbed the cheap Russian ammo I had bought as a backup in case the Winchester didn't work well (was ball instead of flat point).
Well he got a squib on round 4 and didn't notice (argh!
), had a funny shot, looked the gun over, thought it was ok, and shot round 5 at which point the slide stuck back. Talking with him after he said lots of smoke came out the breach but thought it was the dirty Russian ammo.
Looking it over after we got home I was able to figure out what happened. The barrel has a funny area inside and I am sure it is bulged. New barrel is no big deal but does anyone know how they deal with this? I can't get the slide back over the bulge in the barrel (even though it looks slight) so I can't remove the slide to replace the barrel. Do you try to force it past the bulge or do you have to cut the slide off? Barrel is $28, no big deal. Slide is $50, not the end of the world but if I have to destroy the slide then the total bill hits $100 with shipping. Ouch!
I'm hoping someone has been here before, I hear this is not that uncommon.