Bolt

As I was preparing for my "Guns! Guns! Guns!" presentation at TeslaCon, my Tanaka Single Action Army airsoft jammed. Again. This has been an ongoing problem because the bolt, the lever in the trigger mechanism that locks the cylinder in place or moves out if the way to let it rotate, is two pieces. There is an aluminum piece and a flat steel piece. These were initially held together with friction and pins but use has made that connection too loose to hold. I have tried various epoxies. At the con I dismantled the gun and held it temporarily with Super Glue.



It was good enough.

But on returning home I finally decided that I had had enough and I was going to invest in a replacement piece. Now, I could have tried to go back to Tanaka in Japan and get a replacement but the SAA model has been discontinued, shipping would be exhorbitant, and it was crap in the first place. Previous work had taught me that the airsoft is a 1:1 scale model of the actual gun and real gun parts will probably work so I went online.

My initial search found some expensive parts, upwards of $100 which was a third the cost of the entire gun. I think those were original Colt parts, though. I ended up ordering the bolt  from VTI for $28.45 plus shipping (which was surprisingly high for such a tiny thing).



Having been installed, the model gun even sounds better. The sound of steel parts rather than aluminum and sheet metal. No more convention failures.