Posted by Dan on December 6, 2017, 12:19 am, in reply to "Cocking rods"
It's kind of a Rube Goldberg contraption. The little lever that throws the cracker to the parrot is kind of a weak point, other than that they're probably more reliable than intuition might initially suggest. The rattle is normal. The rod is only under torsion when the gun is being cocked, the rest of the time it's free to rattle around a bit in the little opening where it lives.