Ithaca 72 Carbine
I had a customer bring in an Ithaca 72 to the shop the other day. He described a feeding malfunction where the gun would not even pick up a round out of the magazine tube. This gun is a 22lr that has magazine tube with an inner tube providing the spring pressure for feeding.
There were immediately problems with this gun. No reference book I had even cataloged it. I was able to find it in the Blue Book, but that wasn’t helpful. I finally decided to take it apart “blind” and see if I could discover the problem. The other problem was that no one lists parts for this gun, so if something was broken there was no hope.
Luckily the culprit ended up being a deformed round in the tube that was stuck. Just a reminder; if you ever face this, DO NOT hit the round from the back end. It could ignite and blow up your tube. With a little coaxing it finally came out, but the tube had a burr inside it from the round that also had to be removed.
After thought: the owner noted that this gun looked a lot like a Henry rifle. Upon further investigation he was right. The takedown procedure was the same. The lesson is to be careful when repairing or collecting. Sometimes things are not always as they appear. Check, double check and ask someone who knows. You may just save yourself a good headache.