UpTheIrons
Member
They say it happens to us all eventually. Friday was my turn.
I was brushing up for my renewal class with the poodle-poppin' 9mm, and wanted to cleanse my palette with my way-too-fun-to-shoot 1911. So, I loaded up and started shooting.
Rounds 1-7 fired as normal. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Round 8 simply went *CLICK*. I looked down to see that the hammer had fallen. I thought that was odd, as I had never had a light primer strike before.
The slide was still fully forward, in battery, so I recocked the hammer and pressed again. *CLICK*. I truly heard nothing more that the click of the hammer falling both times, but I usually wear muffs and puffs, so that might have covered the sound of the primer popping on the first trigger press. Plus, it was a bit breezy Friday with the wind blowing sound away from me.
I dropped the magazine and tried to rack the slide. No go. I tried again, and still no go. On the third try I did the old "push with both hands in opposite directions close to your body" trick and out popped the case. I think the nick in the lip came when the slide jumped forward again, since my hand was covering the ejection port and the case was still in the port when I let the slide go.
Apparently, it was a primer-only load, as the bullet didn't even clear the case. The case wasn't 'clean' like they usually are after firing, but coated inside with a thick gray soot, which you can see in the case on the right.
Here's what the case looks like in the barrel with the case pressed in to where it touches the base of the bullet. The primer backed out a bit, too.
The bullet was still in the case, I think up to the brighter band here. The bullet engaged the rifling into that brighter band, but no farther.
So what happened? Much of this batch was loaded single-stage, so I could learn the process. The last 500 or so were "progressively" loaded on my Lee Turret. This one had to have been one of those rounds, as I use a loading block for any single-stage rounds I load, and check them carefully before moving to the next stage.
Once I (finally) get another batch of bullets, I'm going to move upscale to the Hornady LNL A.P. Loader I got with Christmas money, and I'm going to install some of the LED lighting made for presses to make sure I can see what's going on at all times.
Any hints on how to make sure it doesn't happen again, or is this just a fact of life - that one in every 3000 or so rounds might have an issue?
I was brushing up for my renewal class with the poodle-poppin' 9mm, and wanted to cleanse my palette with my way-too-fun-to-shoot 1911. So, I loaded up and started shooting.
Rounds 1-7 fired as normal. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Round 8 simply went *CLICK*. I looked down to see that the hammer had fallen. I thought that was odd, as I had never had a light primer strike before.
The slide was still fully forward, in battery, so I recocked the hammer and pressed again. *CLICK*. I truly heard nothing more that the click of the hammer falling both times, but I usually wear muffs and puffs, so that might have covered the sound of the primer popping on the first trigger press. Plus, it was a bit breezy Friday with the wind blowing sound away from me.
I dropped the magazine and tried to rack the slide. No go. I tried again, and still no go. On the third try I did the old "push with both hands in opposite directions close to your body" trick and out popped the case. I think the nick in the lip came when the slide jumped forward again, since my hand was covering the ejection port and the case was still in the port when I let the slide go.
Apparently, it was a primer-only load, as the bullet didn't even clear the case. The case wasn't 'clean' like they usually are after firing, but coated inside with a thick gray soot, which you can see in the case on the right.
Here's what the case looks like in the barrel with the case pressed in to where it touches the base of the bullet. The primer backed out a bit, too.
The bullet was still in the case, I think up to the brighter band here. The bullet engaged the rifling into that brighter band, but no farther.
So what happened? Much of this batch was loaded single-stage, so I could learn the process. The last 500 or so were "progressively" loaded on my Lee Turret. This one had to have been one of those rounds, as I use a loading block for any single-stage rounds I load, and check them carefully before moving to the next stage.
Once I (finally) get another batch of bullets, I'm going to move upscale to the Hornady LNL A.P. Loader I got with Christmas money, and I'm going to install some of the LED lighting made for presses to make sure I can see what's going on at all times.
Any hints on how to make sure it doesn't happen again, or is this just a fact of life - that one in every 3000 or so rounds might have an issue?