After a field-strip of the BERSA Thunder 380, it's sometimes observed how reinstalling the slide can hit snags, particularly when the barrel fails to go through the slide's muzzle-port. A wiggling action is often resorted to, until the barrel goes through, and then the slide can be pulled back fully and then properly seated so that the rails of  both frame and slide engage.

What causes this snag is too often, the barrel's muzzle impacting the inner lip of the slide's muzzle-port. The angle at which the barrel and the slide are oriented during reassembly tends to promote this sort of contact:

Certainly, perfect alignment of barrel and slide during reassembly will avoid this snag, but human error, particularly working against the pressure of the spring, has to be accounted for. There is a simple trick that helps.

By simply positioning the recoil spring so that its forward wire-end is at the topmost position relative to the barrel, (that is to say, it will be closest to the front sight,) the wire-end fills up the space around the inner lip of the slide's muzzle-port: there is thus no space left for the muzzle to wedge into. The spring-wire thus situated helps guide the muzzle through and out the slide's muzzle-port

Proper manual alignment of the frame and the slide remains, of course, vital for speedy reassembly, but the simple practice described above; of keeping the recoil spring-wire's forward end at the topmost position, helps make up for a fair bit  of any human error.

Give it a try!      :-)

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