Locked up action...No fire. Grrrrrrrr!

[Freedom in theSkies]

I was at the range with my son today, and I was shooting my Beretta Mod. 92 FS. Everything was working great until I squeezed the trigger on round # 8 and nothing... It was like the safety was on. I could feel a slight "bump' as the trigger went over the point where it would normally break.
So I grab the slide ande it is jammed solid. Tried cycling the safety/decocker and nothing.
So I tried to remove the slide and it would not budge. THen after me looking foolishly at the gun and just before I WAS GONNA HEAVE IT INTO THE BUSH, the slide comes off in my hand.
THen I tried to dissassemble said slide. No luck at all! I could undo the locking block, but the barrel would not move.
So, I put the slide back on and cock the hammer. I pulld the trigger and everything went off just fine. Fired another 50 or so rounds and no trouble. Actually it was the first failure to fire I have experienced with the gun in several thousand rounds.
Any ideas what caused it?
I very confused!
:banghead:

 

[SoCalShooter]

extractor maybe? that is what pops in my mind first.

 

[berettaman]

Ammo problem.Perhaps a round had a bad OAL? Dammaged or bent caseing not letting the gun go into battery,thus the trigger couldn't reset.

 

[JohnKSa]

Sounds like an oversized round that didn't quite chamber.

The force of the slide jamming it into the chamber wedged everything together but the oversized round didn't let the slide close enough for the DA trigger mechanism to work. Then you cocked the hammer and fired SA. The force of the hammer falling was enough to bump everything into position and fire the round. The recoil extracted the oversized cartridge case and everything was back to normal.

You gonna tell us what kind of ammo you were using?

 

[Freedom in theSkies]

" You gonna tell us what kind of ammo you were using?"


Sure...
I was using handloaded 124gr. ball.
The thing is,... I have not had any trouble with the ammo before. I suppose though, that if I short stroked the press, it could have loaded a long round. My Bad!
I don't know why the gun locked up in battery though. Would'nt want it to do that when the chips were down and the gun was expected to work...

THanks very much for shedding light on the subject

 

[10-Ring]

My first thought was an ammo issue. Not being there to see what happened in further detail tho would make it tough to truely diagnose.

 

[JohnKSa]

I don't know why the gun locked up in battery though.

It wasn't all the way into battery, but the reason it locked up was because the oversized round was jammed in the chamber. The slide hammered it into place and it stuck there. The slide wouldn't open because the extractor was holding onto the rim. If you could have applied enough force you could have pulled the oversized round out of the chamber manually but that's not easy to do.

Check the rest of the rounds by removing the barrel and dropping them into the chamber one at a time. If they don't go all the way in easily, or if they stick, there's a problem.

 

[SouthpawShootr]

Had this happen to me once with an XD9. I was using commercially reloaded ammuniton (NOT Georgia Arms ammo, BTW). I had used thousands of rounds of this stuff through various 9mm Glocks, S&Ws, and even a Browning HP with no problems. First magazine with the XD, the slide failed to go into battery. A little encouragement from the heel of my palm allowed it to fire. Happened twice more, then the gun locked up completely with a live round in the chamber. At first glance, the gun appeared to be fully in battery, but it was just enough out to prevent firing. No amount of force (or cursing) could get the action open. So I took it to a local guy I know who knocked the bullet out with a wooden dowel from the muzzle. I bought a set of case gauges and, of the 300 rounds I had left, a little over 200 were out of spec enough to stick in the gauge. All of these were eventually fired and cycled normally in my S&W 5906, BTW. The XD must have had an unually tight chamber. I tried a few with the barrel removed from the gun and more than once I had to knock the cartridge back out from the muzzle with a dowel. Factory ammo was fine in it, but it had some troubles with reloaded. Turns out resizing (or lack thereof) was the issue with this ammo not the overall length.