Shooting my ASTRA 600 in 9mm para

[1911crazy]

Well we went to the range yesterday with a bunch of handguns to teach my son how to shoot handguns.  We had some fun overall the kid hit the target pretty well.  But with my Astra 600 in 9mm parabellum I noticed a very bad trigger its the worst between all my surplups rifles too.  This gun needs help for sure.  You actually have to jerk the gun to make it fire its that bad.  My question is am I alone with this Astra being this bad or are they all like this??                                               BigBill

I'm sure that polishing the sear and adding moly will make a big difference.  Also I let my son shoot my ruger redhawk 7 1/2" bbl 44mag with loaded down "lead" bullets first and by the end of the shoot as he got better with shooting and handling the handguns I put normal 44 magnum loads in the 44 and he shot those very well too.  He was very impressed with the 12"+ flame that comes out the barrel too.

[Mikey]

BigBill Ol Buddy:  sometimes the triggers on those old Astras can get pretty stiff.  You will prolly have to take that beast apart and make certain you don't have any burrs or galling on the trigger bars or sear/sear pin.  Also, be careful when you take the slide off, those oldies are under a lot of spring pressure and you can hurt yourself a bit if you're not careful taking them apart.  What is it, direct blowback is what the action is - only spring pressure handles the recoil, no unlocking of the barrel or anything like that, just direct recoil.

Had an old 400 years ago, shot 38 supers through the darn thing until the extractor broke, traded it at a gun show for another one that had a trigger like yours, almost lost the main spring through a open 5th floor window when I took it apart, shot the snot out of it using more 38 supers and then finally sold it for a Star 9mm Largo/38 Super and shot the snot outta that one, too.  

The Astra is an OK pistol.  It is a heavy, solid, reliable chunk of steel that just keeps on tickin'.  Smoothing up that trigger shouldn't  be difficult, and it should handle any 9mm round on the market.  HTH.  Mikey.