Yet another "what caused this" thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Cliff6

Cliff6

Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2020
Messages
159
I had a weird thing happen today at the range. I was firing a 45ACP carbine, not new, I've fired over a thousand rounds through it. I was firing a 230 grain round nose J-Ames bullet at 1.20"col, using 3.7 gr Clays and a Winchester LPP.

I've loaded well over a thousand of these, but this one didn't go BANG. It went kinda "pop" and ejected the empty case....with LOTS of smoke. The case was completely black from soot and the bullet was lodged about 5" down the barrel.

I'm sure this wouldn't have happened if I had just missed a powder charge. I can't imagine the primer making that much soot and even ejecting the case.

Any ideas?

Cliff
 
And more to your point, think about it, if a primer igniting didn’t produce enough energy for the action to cycle, then squibs wouldn’t happen in semi autos but they do.well clearly

Edit: this is a case of wrong information—I will stick to my knitting. I apologize.
 
Last edited:
The powder charge was in the case ... it just didn't fire up and completely burn ...
Lots of soot unburned powder and bullet didn't clear barrel is evidence that powder didn't ignite .
Could be any one of several reasons:
1.) Bad / defective primer
2.) Something blocking the flash hole .. fire only partly gets to powder but not enough for a proper burn .
3.) bullet loose in case neck ... it moves down bore before powder can ignight ... powder needs a firm crimp to get enough pressure to burn .

There could be several other reasons but I would say it's probably a blocked flash hole or the primer was faulty ...
it could have been a loose bullet crimp but you would have noticed it when you loaded the round .

Good On You for catching the odd sound , soot and smoke and stopping to check things out ...
A big ATTABOY for being aware of what's going on ... Well Done !
Gary
 
Glad you caught it, my guess is a low charge somehow, if not, contamination in the case when it was loaded.

Here is a test I did to see how low you could go with W-231 and 200 Gr jacketed bullets and still cycle the slide.

index.php

Walkalong said:
Hornady 200 Gr FMJ-CT and W-231 powder in a 5" all steel 1911.

4.5 Grs gave 665 FPS and cycled the gun.

4.0 Grs gave 601 FPS and cycled the gun.

3.5 Grs gave 520 FPS and cycled the gun.

3.0 Grs gave 417 FPS. The brass stayed in the gun and the hammer was down.

2.5 Grs gave 276 FPS. The brass stayed in the gun and the hammer was caught on the safety notch/1/4 cock/whatever.

2.0 Grs sounded like phsssssth, droppped around 10" at 5 yards and bounced off the top of the chrono. The reading was 1960 something. (Don't think so). The brass stayed in the gun and the hammer was down.

At 4.5 Grs the brass was fairly clean with no visable powder residue. As it got lower, it left powder residue, and sooted the case up more and more, until at 1.5 Grs the case was scorched and filthy with a fair amount of unburned powder..

I learned a couple of things.

1.) With an auto with no cylinder gap, you can get pretty dang slow and still exit the barrel, even with jacketed bullets. Quite a bit slower than possible with the revolvers I have shot with loads that gave very low velocities.

2.) Long before the low charge weight sticks a bullet in the barrel, a 1911 will stop cycling. To fire another round after a squib would take manually ejecting the empty brass/loading another round and firing it again.

Someone want to test this on a Glock, XD, Sig, etc, etc?

Now I need to clean a filthy barrel.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***I just noticed that somehow or another I left off the 1.5 Gr Load.. :confused:

1.5 Grs had barely any sound & stuck the bullet in the barrel with the base about 3/4" from the chamber.

I had brought an extra sized, primed, & belled case with me, plus 5.0 Grs of W-231. I used that to shoot out the stuck bullet. ;)
Click to expand...
 
I recently was shooting some .45acp with 200gr SWC over light charges of GreenDot. I had several do the same thing.
There just wasn’t sufficient pressure to give complete combustion.
The exact same load with 230gr bullets gave clean consistent shots.
Green Dot isn’t the most consistent throwing powder due to large flake size.
 
We’ll never having experienced this I s
Walkalong said:
Glad you caught it, my guess is a low charge somehow, if not, contamination in the case when it was loaded.

Here is a test I did to see how low you could go with W-231 and 200 Gr jacketed bullets and still cycle the slide.

index.php
Click to expand...
Great stuff. I re-learned an important lesson. I should not give info when I don’t know what I’m talking about (mea culpa). Sorry OP.

Now, I had assumed incorrectly a squib I had in a 9mm Beretta 92FS with the pistol cycling was result of NO powder charge (first wrong assumption) and the resulting cycling was primer induced (second wrong assumption) and would also apply to other semi-autos (third wrong assumption).

Now on to your test—the results show one cannot have a squib and then fire another round and blow up the gun? (A 1911 anyway) And in any semiauto, if the brass doesn’t eject the next round can’t advance. What in the world am I missing?

What are you saying about the 1.5gr test???
 
Last edited:
The other part of this would be if you did have powder bridging and not a full charge where did that other propellant go? Into another brass with a regular charge? This could be a problem as well. Looking at the level of propellant in each case before placing a bullet will often show up, keeping both problems from happening. Didn't say if you were using a SS or progressive press. Each has a way to monitor load levels in your brass.
 
Frogo207- That is a good point and one that I had thought about. I load on a single stage press and I find that Clays doesn't measure consistently for me. Because of that, I weight each charge prior to loading the case. Takes time, but I load on crappy winter evenings and don't mind. I find that I can get pretty accurate dipping powder after a while. Because of that, there shouldn't be any worry about the "extra" powder being dumped into the next case.

Right now, it looks like somehow I DID load a light charge or there was some contamination. With the tremendous amount of soot, I think there must have been powder though. A primer couldn't have made all that soot:thumbdown:....could it?

Cliff
 
Primers can make a lot of soot. How much as compared to what you experienced? Dunno. Much soot is also created by incomplete burning of a low charge. It all adds up, and makes sense in your case.
 
For those stuck bullets ... bring a range rod for unsticking .
Shooting them out could get you in trouble if you don't know exactly what / how to do it ... the range rod is really a safe way to push them out .
Gary
 
Everytime I hear a story like this, it reminds me of two things. The first, being in the Military and learning about the "pop and no kick" scenario while shooting.

The second was while out shooting with my dad and some friends. I'm loading up some mags, I hear my dad laughing and a couple other friends. I hear him say "the bullets probably 10ft in front of me".

Before he could pull the trigger again I asked what happened. He said the gun popped but nothing happened. I took the gun, dropped the mag and locked the slide. Yep, bullet an inch down the barrel!

Cause I later found out, my friend didn't wait for me and started loading ammo. Ran out of powder on a "couple" rounds. Dumped them in the box and never said anything about them!:cuss:
 
Mk-211 said:
Everytime I hear a story like this, it reminds me of two things. The first, being in the Military and learning about the "pop and no kick" scenario while shooting.

The second was while out shooting with my dad and some friends. I'm loading up some mags, I hear my dad laughing and a couple other friends. I hear him say "the bullets probably 10ft in front of me".

Before he could pull the trigger again I asked what happened. He said the gun popped but nothing happened. I took the gun, dropped the mag and locked the slide. Yep, bullet an inch down the barrel!

Cause I later found out, my friend didn't wait for me and started loading ammo. Ran out of powder on a "couple" rounds. Dumped them in the box and never said anything about them!:cuss:
Click to expand...
Dodged a bullet (pun intended)

So the brass did eject? What type of pistol?
 
Cliff6 said:
Frogo207- That is a good point and one that I had thought about. I load on a single stage press and I find that Clays doesn't measure consistently for me. Because of that, I weight each charge prior to loading the case. Takes time, but I load on crappy winter evenings and don't mind. I find that I can get pretty accurate dipping powder after a while. Because of that, there shouldn't be any worry about the "extra" powder being dumped into the next case.

Right now, it looks like somehow I DID load a light charge or there was some contamination. With the tremendous amount of soot, I think there must have been powder though. A primer couldn't have made all that soot:thumbdown:....could it?

Cliff
Click to expand...
I do about the same thing but dump the charge into a funnel set over the brass. It has bridged a time or two when using 700X before but checking and rattling the funnel get the log jam to go in. Definately a mystery you have there. Might have been a powder foward and low brissance primer. If it never happens again you will always wonder.
 
I left a weighed charge on the scale once. Primer sent the bullet about 3.5” in a 4.5” barrel.

I immediately knew why I had that extra powder charge on the scale when I went to weigh the next 10th bullets charge.

Sometimes being extra careful causes it’s own problems.
 
CQB45ACP said:
How do you shoot out a bullet safely? I never even thought about it.
Click to expand...
A post , which has since been edited ... spoke of sticking a bullet with a low charge ... he said he had brought a primed case with a powder charge with which to shoot the bullet out ... sounded sorta dangerous to me ...
He must have thought about it and deleted that part of his post ... I can't find it now .
You should never try and shoot out anything that is stuck in a barrel .
I have never heard of using a charged - primed case to shoot out a stuck bullet but maybe he knows more than I do ... I'm not going to try it and I wouldn't advise anyone to go that route either .
Too many things can go wrong ... but what do I know.
Gary
 
gwpercle said:
A post , which has since been edited ... spoke of sticking a bullet with a low charge ... he said he had brought a primed case with a powder charge with which to shoot the bullet out ... sounded sorta dangerous to me ...
He must have thought about it and deleted that part of his post ... I can't find it now .
You should never try and shoot out anything that is stuck in a barrel .
I have never heard of using a charged - primed case to shoot out a stuck bullet but maybe he knows more than I do ... I'm not going to try it and I wouldn't advise anyone to go that route either .
Too many things can go wrong ... but what do I know.
Gary
Click to expand...

It's in Walkalong's quoted post above: "I had brought an extra sized, primed, & belled case with me, plus 5.0 Grs of W-231. I used that to shoot out the stuck bullet. "

I keep a brass rod in my pistol box for this instead :D

@Walkalong do you stuff the rest of the case with paper to keep the powder in position? Then slip the case under the extractor?
 
gwpercle said:
A post , which has since been edited ... spoke of sticking a bullet with a low charge ... he said he had brought a primed case with a powder charge with which to shoot the bullet out ... sounded sorta dangerous to me ...
He must have thought about it and deleted that part of his post ... I can't find it now .
You should never try and shoot out anything that is stuck in a barrel .
I have never heard of using a charged - primed case to shoot out a stuck bullet but maybe he knows more than I do ... I'm not going to try it and I wouldn't advise anyone to go that route either .
Too many things can go wrong ... but what do I know.
Gary
Click to expand...
Not me either
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

S
  • Locked
Bullet stuck in barrel.
Replies
15
Views
928
Otto
Otto
W
  • Locked
My first squib
Replies
12
Views
658
ImjinScout
I
F
  • Locked
Help diagnose this squib...
Replies
6
Views
587
FJC
F
Gadawg88
  • Locked
First time 45 acp problem
Replies
9
Views
766
Gadawg88
Gadawg88
N
  • Locked
Ruger 97dc& p90 problems
Replies
1
Views
591
Blue68f100
Blue68f100
Back
Top