1917 eddystone problems

I just bought a sporterized eddystone yesterday for $100. The dude I got it from said he had never shot it, but I didn't see anything wrong with it so I went ahead and paid him.

Today I took it out and shot it. I loaded 3 rounds at first, and all of them fed and shot well. I went to load it again, and the second round wouldn't go in. There was a little piece of metal on the right hand side of the magazine follower sticking out that seems to have been binding up, so I just used it as a single shot for the last ten or so rounds.

I also noticed one of the brass had a split in the neck.



This is the only piece of brass that is like that, and it was some cheap south african stuff (PMP?), so I didn't know if there was something wrong with the gun or the brass. Could that be a headspace problem, or just a bad round?

After I got home, I tried messing with the gun again. The metal piece on the side that was causing problems earlier isn't sticking out anymore, but the follower will stick down too far sometimes, or one end of the follower will stick, and allow the bolt to pass over the bullet instead of chambering.

Is there just a spring or something in there that is messed up or something?

Also, how do you remove the floorplate on one of these things?

Other than that, it seemed to shoot good, and for the cost of a mosin, I have something just as ugly, heavy, and awkward, but at least this one is in a caliber that I already have a lot of ammo for.

Thanks for all the info!





I had to pull the whole trigger guard off to get to everything. I found out that the magazine spring is broke off. The thing that was binding up earlier is called a magazine box on numrich. I pulled that out completely, and put the gun back together with the broken spring. I put six rounds in it, and they all cycled properly. I'll take it out tomorrow and shoot it again and see how it does, but since it's not a gun that my life is depending on to be 100% reliable, I think it'll work good enough.

Something else I noticed, is that the follower has an "R" on it, and some of the other stuff has a "W", even though it's an eddystone, so does this mean the gun was probably rebuilt or something?