Rossi Rifleman

Wow , that loading gate on the Rio Grande 45-70 ripped my fingernail and finger half off! Good grief slow motion loading only! What the heck is up with the razor sharp edge on the loading gate? Looks like it was ground in someones garage!

LOL, yep. It's a VERY common problem with these things Steve. If you do a search, you will find a lot of info on how to tune the actions, loading gate include to fix it.

And there is, if I remember right, even a youtube video someone put out about it that you should be able to find with a simple search. It really doesn't take any special tools. Just some time and patients. You basically just deburr the gate and bend the spring a touch to lessen the tension and it's fixed from what I remember.

Maybe someone will speak up and post a link to the resource for ya. I just don't remember where I saw it. But you can find a description of the process on the WWW or here with a search.

stevo,
If anyone owes a debt of gratitude for figuring out what procedures need to take place to repair or fix an allegded problem through this forum, is myself. Paramount though is what JDB has just wrote and that is patients and time. I would crash the server and put a few to sleep if i wrote it all down. Focusing just on the feeding gate, i would have these at my disposal: a fine tapered rat tail file, a dowel, 600grit sand paper and masking tape.
Remove the loading gate, apply one or two layers of masking tape on the receiver to protect it, with the file, maintaining the angle of bullet insertion, smoothout the surface of the receiver as needed. Wrap the end of the dowel with the sand paper for a fininshed smooth finish, you can repeat the sanding up to 1200 but that gets into overkill, but this is your project so have at it. Ive also learned that there is a technique to loading. After the the sharp edges are smoothed on the gate opening, majority of scratched brass will go away. When loading, i have learned, is not to insert the round fully but to let each round help the next one be inserted. Then not relying on the round itself to hold the gate open for the next round but to push down on the gates remaining space to open, repeating this until the last round. In this way, its only the last round that needs to be pushed in all the way and thats where you get bit but then again, with the sharp edges gone even that is no longer a problem.

Might want to check this out as well:

http://www.rossi-rifleman.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2460

Don't forget to look at the entire web page of every topic. Scroll you browser's page to the bottom. There usually a wealth of referenced sources in the similar topics of every page, including this one.