A Blast From The Past

[Sunday]

Ok, so I took the Crackshot to the range last night. Something is not right! The hammer isn't dropping with enough power to reliably ignite the primers. If you dry fire and manually let the hammer drop, you can definitely feel it has less push than it did before I did the disassembly and cleaning. I have a theory why. I noticed when I was cleaning the parts with spray brake cleaner (non-chlorinated, to be sure) , that the parts were really, really cold afterwards. I guess that is from the solvents in the brake cleaner evaporating on the metal. I suspect that the temperature difference may have caused the metal in the springs to lose their spring. Anyone have experience of this? Is this like a classic greenhorn screw-up?

Fortunately, Wisner's has the spring available for $4.00, but they have minimum $10 order and $6.50 shipping, making it $16.50 total. Anyone know a way to make the spring springier again? Heat it up?

Alternatively, anyone know if a more common spring will work for this, like one from a Bic pen?

Heat anneals the springs. Buy a new spring and what ever it takes to hit the extreme amount of $10 dollars. Why do I live in Kalifornia.