I took it to the range today with mixed results. OK, I was disappointed - but I'd still buy it again in an instant - even with the semi-accidental discharge. Read on.
I don't have stripper clips for it yet so I started off firing single rounds. The ejector is on the top of the bolt and the cases eject straight up. They were coming down on my head, arm, nose, etc. Kind of a pain in the butt.
After a while, I held the bolt back and loaded a whole magazine (10 rounds). Upon firing, the pistol failed to return fully to battery a few times. I attribute this to a weak recoil spring - I have new springs on order from Wolff as we speak.
With the rear sight set at it's lowest position, it fired about a foot high at 25 yards. I use paper plates as targets so I wasn't even hitting the target. I could tell they were hitting high because I could see it on the berm. I stapled one plate about a foot higher than the target plate and carefully aimed at the lower one to see where the rounds would group on the high plate. I was getting 3-4" groups at 25 yards - they were just 12" above point of aim. I have no idea what I'm going to do about this.
Now onto the AD...
I'm a lefty and I have big hands. The safety for the C96 is a small lever, just above the grip on the left. I found that the web of my hand kept moving the safety just out of the "fire" position. When I pulled the trigger, nothing would happen. This happened a few times. The last time it happened, I pulled the trigger and nothing happened, so I took my finger out of the trigger guard, flipped the safety back down to the "Fire" position, AND THE GUN WENT OFF!
Now, I've been doing my research on the C96, and I read an account (I think on this very forum) about this little idiosyncrasy, so I was half expecting this. I had a good grip on the gun, pointed downrange, when I flipped off the safety, so no harm was done. It still scared the crap out of me. I'd done the same thing a half dozen times and the gun did not go off. It did that last time though. Afterward, I did some experimentation and found that if I moved the safety to just the right position, I could get this to repeat. I'd rather have the safety disabled than have to deal with this mysterious "second trigger". I've got to think about what I have to do about this.
I'm going to replace the springs to improve the reliability.
I would greatly appreciate it if anyone out there has any suggestions for what I can do to get this thing to fire to point of aim (short of moving back 100 yards).
All in all, I was a little disappointed that it didn't put all ten shots into a single hole at point of aim with 100% reliability, but I still wouldn't trade it for anything.