It is my recollection that I had several weak rounds before the one that stuck the bullet in the throat.
I was using a lower end load of AA#9, which is a ball powder, and the weather was cold. I think in the 40's. When I installed a new mainspring in this M586, and came back a week later, the temperatures were 50 ish, but positive ignition all around. This is a pistol I purchased from a Bud who said he shot 40,000 rounds in PPC. He used 2.7 grs Bullseye and a 148 LWC and Federal primers. Fed primers are the most sensitive around.
It was either this round, or another, but I remember pulling ignited powder out of the case which had a consistency of gray cotton candy.
I am going to claim that the shooting community thinks it knows all about primers, but really, the shooting community are actually
Confident Idiots when it comes to primers and their composition, and their actual performance. It is worth reading the link to see, the more ignorant the idiot, the more confident the idiot. As David Dunning writes:
An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.
As the humorist Josh Billing once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, its what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
In many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”
So much of the information about primers is withheld from the public. We don't know the flame temperatures, mass ejected, dwell, or total energy content of primers. We don't know the sensitivity of each primer lot. It is hard to find the all fire and none fire limits of primers. The shooting community has been kept deliberately ignorant on the topic, because industry likes
ill informed consumers who make irrational choices.
This is also worth reading:
IT DON’T GO BANG: FIRES, HANGFIRES, MISFIRES AND SHORT ORDER COOKS IN JERSEY
By Mark Humphreville
by
@Hummer70
Now why did the bullet lodge in the throat?: I am going to claim that full and complete ignition of the primer compound is necessary for a full and complete ignition of powder. And that some powders, particularly ball powders, require more energy to fully ignite than others. Partial ignition of the primer, partial ignition of the powder, cold soaked ammunition, and I received a squib. That is as far as I am going into the causes. Perhaps some particle physicist can explain the issue down to the sub atomic level and show that weak ignition produces too many strange quarks, and not enough charm quarks.
Tell you what, shoot enough 22lr rimfire ammunition in handguns, in cold weather, such as I have done in Bullseye Competition, and you will see and experience malfunctions due to incomplete powder ignition. These include failures to extract, stove pipes, and if you are lucky, weak ejection. A malfunction leads to alibi's, alibi's reduce scores. It is better to have the pistol function and have the bullet hit the target, than to have a stove pipe or failure to extract.
There are posters here who have sectioned 22lr cases and shown incomplete distribution of priming compound in the rims.
) there can be a slight gap at the breech face. Or, the breech face isn’t entirely square. Feeler gage to check that out. Also, compare a fired case with one with a light strike. Are the shoulders at exactly the same place? The Handi really loves a “crush fit”.
