[LDBennett]

A friend at work years ago had his recently deceased Dad's Model 99 that had surface rust on all it internals. Nothing short of a complete tear down and rust removal with steel wool would fix it. With the help of a Assembly/Disassemble book I tore it down to the last screw and pin. It was not hard and the toughest part was getting the rotary magazine spring tensioned but the book covered that. The task was a complete success. I ended up buying the gun off the friend.

As I reload, I started developing loads for it with a Chronograph. I was after duplicating the velocity specs of commercial ammo, so my concentration was on the chronograph, not the results on the target. My expectations for accuracy were not very high as I have found that most lever guns pale by comparison to good bolt guns. So I just aimed at a target and collected velocity data for various load levels. To my surprise the targets came back with great groupings. These Model 99's are accurate. It makes sense as the lockup is very different from most lever guns and the gun is much stronger by design in the receiver area. The rotary magazine was the inspiration for Bill Ruger when he designed the rotary magazine for use in the 10/22 (he loved the Model 99 and his first major gun modification was to turn one into a semi-auto for sale to the US military during WWII, long before the Ruger company of the late 1940's... he got a job instead of selling his semi-auto concept).

I too suspect the rotary magazine spring has lost some of its tension and a simple indexing of the spring may solve the feeding problem. I also suspect that a complete tear down and super cleaning and lubing may also help. Once you have done one of these super cleaning jobs you will be amazed at how much junk collects inside an old gun.

LDBennett