Ok, so long story short, I bought a Star A a couple weeks ago at auction, it is a Spanish Air Force marked gun made in 1946.  It should be chambered in 9mm Largo.  Upon disassembly of the gun after I bought it, the barrel had been replaced by a new made 9mm luger barrel  The pistol runs fine with the Luger barrel, but I am a Star pistol collector, and would like to put this back into 9mm largo, as it should be.  I have a good friend who sent me a Star A largo barrel he had extra (these things are impossible to find BTW) all i needed to do was swap out the links, and I should be GTG.....  Well not exactly.

I swapped the links, and reassembled the pistol, and have run into a problem, the barrel appears to go into battery in the slide, but the slide is not going all the way home, as you can see in my pics, the slide is about 1/16" from going home...  I have a Star B pistol, which is physically the same gun, just chambered in 9mm luger originally.  I tried swapping barrels over to that gun to see if it was the Largo barrel itself, but it will fit just fine in my Model B, as will the new manufacture 9x19 barrel, so the issue is just the Largo barrel in my Model A pistol...

So ARFCOM closet gunsmiths halp

Comparisons of the two barrels.  Everything looks identical, and all measures the same with most cases only a couple thousandth difference.







Pics of the gun with largo barrel installed, showing the problem...

Damn mikey your everywhere....

Ok, so here's some measurements....  The 9x19 barrel hood is .293 wide.  The Largo barrel hood is .308 wide.  The hood slot in frame is .323.  I don't think that is my issue??  I measured the hood slot in slide from top with calipers....

I can see daylight up both sides of the hood when I put the largo barrel in, not alot of room, but not dragging for sure.  All looks fully in battery....

Here's some pics with the barrels in the slide, nothing installed but the bushing....

9x19 barrel:





Largo barrel:

Double tap

No more ideas?  Guess it boggles everyone else mind too

Does it have the correct barrel link?
Would the Luger link be different than the Largo?

Ive used the link on the replacement 9mm barrel, and the link in my star model B same issue.  So not the links....

Good question, and I don't think that shelf is the problem, as I put the largo barrel in my Star B, and it works fine.....

I could have the luger barrel reamed, but the cost would probably be 1/3 of what the gun is worth, and still not be a correct barrel for the gun.