Never seen this malfunction before. Sunday I was in the pits pulling for a friend on the firing line. Temperatures in the shade were a measured 98F to 100 F on my cheap Chinese Walmart thermometer. My friend was shooting his AR15 space gun, there was a long period where he did not fire, and after the match I found out why. He thought his firing pin broke off, because of the hunk of metal hanging out through the primer. I took pictures of the case and the firing pin, he sent me a chain of emails which I have cut and pasted below:
“I had three failures to extract. The last failure resulted in the case you observed. I was in 600 prone, saw the thing sticking from the primer and assumed it to be a broken pin. I was on the clock, tore down the rifle, replaced the pin, and finished.
I returned home and tore the bolt down and cleaned the extractor. It had some gunk under it and it may have been the reason for the failures. The cases that failed to extract had portions of their rim removed from the extractor.
Both new and old firing pin appear functional with same amount protruding from face of bolt. Neither appear broken.
It was the primer anvil, no doubt. I tried to pull-out what I thought was the firing pin and it would not come out of that primer. That, in itself, did not make any sense. When I pushed on it, it pushed straight through the primer and fell out. It was part of the anvil.
I went through all of my cases from the match. I found one other that had the anvil coming through too. I had three others that had part of the rim torn off. I think these were the cases that stuck in the chamber. All of the problems were due to excessive pressure - or so I think. I load those 600 yard (75 grain) AMAX with 25 grain Varget. That would be right at the top of the chart.”
Never seen an avil blow through the firing pin hole before, and I have been shooting highpower for over 20 years.
