The Space Gun rises from the ashes like a funny-looking woodland camo phoenix!

The Walther G22 "space gun" (Bzzow! Bzzow!) has been out of commission for a while.

One day at the range, it just stopped working. The hammer refused to release, and the trigger pulled into nothingness. A "simple" (heh) field strip revealed no obvious malfunction, and I was reluctant to take out the screwdriver and detail strip the G22, because just a basic strip has two springs that are so happy to see you, they jump right out of the gun and fly in a direction determined by the electromagnetic resonance of chocolate pudding divided by the viscosity of grape soda multiplied by the square root of a jelly donut. (I'm hungry.)

So, the Space Gun sat in its case.

Last night I was reviewing and retooling the contents of the BOB in my car, and realized it made sense to have some .22lr ammo in it. After a careful selection process (15 Aguila subsonic, 15 Aguila SSS, 15 CB shorts, and 55 CCI mini mags), I realized the ammo would be of little use without a .22 that lived in the car. Then I recalled the Space Gun, and decided it was worth the hassle.

I took it down to the primary action, and cautiously unscrewed the four screws holding the two pieces of the action together, and ever-so-carefully parted the halves.

The result was surprisingly simple.

Simple like Rube Goldberg, not simple like simple. But hey, it's a bullpup.

I immediately identified the problem. The guide rod the hammer return spring was around was attached to the hammer by a roll pin. The roll pin proved not to be up to the task, and sheered right in the middle, leaving the spring extended, and the hammer unmotivated to move forward.



I did a quick search for a similarly dimensioned object that could substitute, but came up empty. I pushed the left over bits of the roll pin in, and realized there was more there than I thought. So as a stop-gap, I pushed the remainders of the pin inward on the hammer spring guide rod, and it seemed to cooperate. I pushed a pin through the gap just for piece of mind, really, and closed it up.

A few dry fires later, I remembered how much the trigger sucked, and retrieved my "5 cent trigger job" from the closet, and tightened the trigger up. Hey wait, now that I've seen how bad the sear/hammer mating is, and I might be able to give this gun a proper trigger job... More on that later I suppose.

Silly me didn't bother to get measurements for the pin for replacement, so I'll probably have to open it back up again... Maybe I'll give the hammer/sear a bit more attention this time.