The pistol came from the factoy with the 3,5" barrel.
No problems at all shooting the little sucker with jacketed factory ammo at CAS distances up to 15 meters.
POA = POI using the factory front sight.
No issues with cartridges or empties blocking the cylinder.
Long Johns Wolf

So what has caused the percussion cap shortage?

Oh My that is a topic all by itself.

We can start with the first covid global supply bottleneck of , well, everything!
Any ammunition stuff immediately became unobtainium and materials & labor went to govt contracts first.

Add to that,  the supergiant container ship “Evergreen” blocking the Suez Canal for many weeks. That event alone
Caused a blockeage and delay of almost 400 other ships, which dominoed down the supply chain.

Penultimately, percussion caps are not exactly on the priority list for manufacturors, so …..

During primer shortages, I experimented with modifying percussion caps into low pressure small pistol primers.
Now I have to go the other direction LOL. Or get a Tap-o-Cap ….

One only has to look back at the “Rifleman” articles from 1940-1946 to see that such shortages are not that
Uncommon and we just have to adjust accordingly….

Abilene,  Kinda got busy and haven;t been on in a while, but as to the trigger technique, Once I figured it out, I was able to reproduce the failure by concentrationg on the sear release and stopping the pull, which usually resulted in a misfire/light strike....I swapped out for the standard Model P style parts to eliminate it.

My son, Cody has one........with the standard 6 inch barrel, it shot way high......the barrel was shortened to 3.5" and a new post sight installed (factory sight) and it shoots dead on.....wish they could import them with the correct barrel.  That 38 Colt work around answers my question of how hard would it be o convert to the proper cartridge, which isn't hard at all.

Mine is a total turd. I'd hate to know I had to defend myself with it.

Can you elaborate?  I haven't heard too much positive nor negative about them.