To Whom This May Concern,
I am writing this letter in request of Tommy Thacker per our conversation on this date at 7:38PM Pacific Standard Time, requesting “nothing but the facts” of the incident that happened on April 12, 2008, while I was out target shooting my FNH FiveseveN IOM pistol.
On Saturday, April 12, 2008, at 1528HRS I was out target shooting and testing some ammunition that I had reloaded.
I had loaded 200 rounds of the following:
Bullet: Hornady 55grain FMJ BT
Case: Once (a couple might have been twice) fired 5.7x28mm brass
Primer: Winchester Small Rifle
Powder: Ramshot TrueBlue 5.0grains
Case Length: 1.128in + or - .002in
OAL: 1.580in + or - .003in
I load every single round by hand using a Lee hand press, RCBS 5-0-5 Scale, RCBS calipers, RCBS seating die, etc... Each round is placed in front of me with plenty of lighting while I am measuring powder, then after all powder is measured and placed in the cases I inspect the case for powder, as even 1.0grains more or less is quite easy to see, then placed in the hand press, topped off with a bullet, and then the bullet is seated. If the powder was double charged it would fill up into the base of the case's neck. Like I said, cases are inspected for overcharges.
Back to the accident. I had fired 66 rounds all reloads of various bullets (Hornady 40grain VMAX, pulled 28grain HP from SS195LF, Hornady 55grain FMJ). My 2nd 20round magazine I fired 5 rounds of 40VMAX I had some failure-to-eject (these were loaded with HS-6, I've had problems with that powder causing FTE), then tossed the magazine so I could pull those bullets and reload them with Ramshot TrueBlue. After that I fired 20 rounds off the 28grain bullets, all of which functioned flawlessly with Ramshot TrueBlue powder. The next magazine of 20 rounds was the 55grain FMJ with the load data above. The first magazine fired flawlessly, I even noted in my reloading book that it I might want to try loading to 5.1grains and see how they functioned. The 2nd magazine is when I ran into the malfunction, the first round fired like the previous 20, the it happened.
On the 2nd round I realigned my sights, slowly pulled the trigger and the gun literally exploded in my hands. I saw bits and pieces of the top of the slide cover blow. My first reaction was, "Oh crap what just happened." My second reaction was, how are my hands, I released my grip with my left hand (off-hand) and blood was trailing down my palm dripping off my hand. I could see 2 sources of the blood flow, one on my thumb and the other the web of my hand. I tossed down my FiveseveN into the grass in front of me and inspected my right hand. My right hand faired much better than my left, a small spot on the tip of my thumb.
I immediately pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and called my wife who had just arrived at my father's residence where I was at, I was ~1/2mi from the house. I told her to tell my dad to get out here, my gun just exploded, he quickly arrived and assessed my injuries. We went back to the house, cleaned my hand up a bit, bandaged it up, and went to the hospital ~40minutes away with my wife and mother-in-law.
Spent about 2 hours at the hospital getting 1 stitch in the web of my hand and 2 xrays. The xrays revealed a chunk of brass in the middle of my hand between my index and middle finger, and two very small peices between my index finger knuckle and the web of my hand. I have gone to a surgeon to see about getting the large piece of brass removed from my hand but he cautioned against it as it would cause more damage taking it out than leaving it in, as it is embedded into the muscle in my hand a probably isn't going to go anywhere so there isn't any worry about it moving around and slicing tendons and such.
I initially lost feeling in over 50% of my index finger and my thumb felt like it had been hit by a hammer and had numbness for about a week. I have gained some feeling back in my finger and am at ~35% complete numbness now.
My FN FiveseveN IOM is a complete loss, the magazine is still inside the grip, the remaining 18 rounds were forced out of the bottom of the magazine.
After looking over my FiveseveN I came to the conclusion that it had fired out-of-battery. There is 0 damage to the chamber and barrel that I can see. From what I can figure the round fired (out-of-battery) and the case was able to hold the pressure enough to allow the bullet to clear the barrel and the case wall gave way in the rear because it wasn't being supported by the chamber. The expanding case broke off at the neck while being extracted and as you can see from the photos above the whole back end of the case gave way. One chunk of brass is embedded into the right side of the grip, I almost had a matching chunk of brass in my right hand, but the grip stopped it.
After talking with a few friends and showing them my new paper weight they came to the same conclusion. Ryan from Elite Ammunition (
www.eliteammunition.com, Custom 5.7x28mm Ammunition, both reloaded and virgin brass loads) also concluded that the cause was from it firing out-of-battery. He also stated that he has observed that with the FiveseveN the hammer will drop at up to 1/4inch out-of-battery.
I contacted Robert Ailes the Customer Support Manager at FN, 703-288-3500 ext 122,
[email protected], on the 14th of April and told him my situation. He told me that he would talk to his boss about it and contact me the next day. Also told me that since I was shooting reloads that the warranty on my gun is void.
Next day, no phone call, so I called after hours and left a message for him to please return my call and gave him my cellphone number. So around noon on the 16th he called me and told me that "someone" would be contacting me soon. I asked when they might be contacting me and he said he did not know, but they would be in touch. I also asked how much it would be to just get it fixed/replaced and he said he didn't know, I would have to talk to the person who will contact me. I was expecting a call from FN's legal team...
April 28th... I called and left a message for him, asking him what the situatino was and when/if someone was going to contact me. At this point I pretty much felt as if they were just waiting for me to go away so they wouldn't have to deal with the situation.
April 29th... Rober Ailes returned my call and said the best they could do for me was send me a pre-paid packing slip that would be here by Thursday (May 1st) to ship the gun to them so it could be looked at, held for 30 days, then destroyed. I asked if I could get it back after they looked at it, and he said no and that it would be destoryed. He also offered me a "deep discount" on a new gun, but gave no details as to how much it would be.
I've been in contact with Tommy Thacker over the past few days via fivesevenforum.net, voicemail, and our conversation tonight. I never once wanted to blame FN for my problem, however after reviewing my original post, what I posted and what I really meant didn't not come out to be the same, for that I apologize profusely for. When I talked to Tommy I told him 2 or 3 times what my intent was with my post and he told me that that is what he got from my post. My post was out of frustration in the abundance of broken promises that I had received. I wanted to see if someone else could get more information than I could from FNH, because from the half dozen telephone calls that were made and received I had been told numerous things and they never happened. I never asked for anything from FNH, I just wanted to know if someone would want to take a look at what happen to help me understand further what caused this problem.
I will post this response to FNH on fivesevenforum and other places I posted. I will also do my best to contact any other places that my incident has been posted to.
I thank you for your time and sorry for any inconveniences that I have caused Robert Ailes, Tommy Thacker, and anyone else at FNH. I tried making clear in my post that all I posted was my observation and nothing more. It seems that this was blown out of proportion and beyond the control of the forum, myself, and FNH.
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End of Letter
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I talked with Tommy tonight, he said FNH wanted to take care of the problem, send me a new gun w/no questions asked. All they asked is that I send them a letter of nothing but the "facts" and they will send me a pre-paid slip to return the gun and they will inspect it and replace by gun for me at no cost.
I want to publicly thank everyone here, and everyone at FNH for their time and effort that was put into this. A lot has happened in the past few days and this has blown way out of proportion.
If anyone got from my original post that I was putting the blame on FN, my intentions were not such. Tommy even acknowledged that he did not feel that from my original post.
They are investigating and doing their own testing to see if an OOB fire is possible given all the variables of the situation.
I will try and update everyone as things happen.
Again, thank you all,
-Jake
