Somebody had a Really, Really Bad Day...

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luzyfuerza

luzyfuerza

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...and doesn't appear to have known it.

After doing a little shooting at my local range, I took the time to clean the place up a little bit. Call it what you will, I picked up brass/did "reloader's yoga"/exercised my inner "range maggot". Out in the middle of the bay, I found a bunch of brass that looked like this:

P5300683.JPG P5300682.JPG P5300681.JPG P5300680.JPG

What's amazing to me is that there were probably 25 cases that looked just like this within a couple of yards of each other. Whoever shot this stuff off was oblivious to the bulged cases, pierced primers, and to the incredible amounts of gas that must have escaped the rear of the chamber of the gun with every shot.

I assume that the shooter survived, because I didn't find a body or any body parts in the middle of the pile of nasty brass.

What do you suppose caused this?

Oh, and before you ask, I was shooting .223!
 
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Holy crap...someone is really loading them hot... the black stripe on the bottom looks like someone marked them to find and pickup, if they did they missed a bunch. I hope they catch this.
 
Somebody figured that since there was still space inside the case after putting the powder in, they'd just fill it up the rest of the way with powder and see how it worked. Way overcharged.......

And he marked his brass so he wouldn't lose it, too....

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
It could be marking to separate charges, I do that with loads, color code the primers to a reload record. If that was the case, I would expectr to see Brass with different markings as well. Must of just been an idiot (id 10 t)...
 
Open bolt carbine in poor condition would be my guess.

Toss them. Brass is still pretty cheap, unlike primers, powder, etc..

I would not resize and/or shoot that on a bet.
 
No way it was a serious overload as that much unsupported brass would burst for sure. I'm voting for blowback gun in poor condition firing in various degrees of not fully into battery. Maybe the loads were too long and would fail a plunk test, but firing out of battery is fundamentally a gun problem no matter the cause of the failure to go fully into battery. I agree the shooter had to be pretty oblivious.
 
Definitely overloaded, and the nature of the bulges makes me think it's a blowback gun opening too soon. I have seen similar (though not nearly as bad) with my 9mm carbine before I increased the buffet weight.
 
Big7 said:
Open bolt carbine in poor condition would be my guess.

Toss them. Brass is still pretty cheap, unlike primers, powder, etc..

I would not resize and/or shoot that on a bet.
Click to expand...
To bad. I was just about to bet you a million dollars you won't resize reload those with wax bullets fired by just a primer. Man...you missed out.

That is some scary stuff though. The shooter is really lucky. Hopefully, he finds the error of his ways before his gun becomes a grenade.
 
The way the case on the right is expanded, even at the case head, indicates to me that they were fired out of a .40 S&W pistol with a 9mm conversion barrel in it.
 
Englishmn said:
No flattened primers no marks on case head looks like out of battery firing, or someone feeding a .380 9mm and it firing.
Click to expand...
1. How do you consider the primers not flattened? I can see where the primers had flat area around the pin, but then blown out.

2. I guess you could get a 9x19 in the mag if the OAL was short. Under 1" would fit, but how do you get all the damage with a regular load?
 
I'd guess a subgun of some sort with advanced primer ignition. Sometimes the 'advanced' is moreso than others which might account for the really distorted case on the right. The others don't look all that terrible to me...little bulged where the unsupported feed ramp was located but otherwise nothing special.
 
That is not what 9MM brass fired in a .40 looks like.

It takes a lot of pressure to bulge a case like the last one, which by the way, blew the primer as well.

All are over pressure, one very badly.
 
while scrounging range brass the other day after a pistol match a buddy asks me if i ever seen this before and hands me 2 cases that look like 357 sig but much smaller and upon looking at both the case was split form the mouth to almost the rim on one. when i scrounge the 5 gal buckets at my club i find all kinds of brass and steel/alum cases that look crazy and it reminds me to take my time when reloading.
 
Doesn't look as bad as 9mm fired in a 40 S&W. I would like to say I have only come across them a few times but that would be a lie.

I guess it like people putting gas in a diesel tank, just not paying any attention.

The one on the right is a keeper, pretty impressive that it didn't blowout. I would be interested in a cross section view of that case.
 
My first thought was 9mm fired in a .40 barrel. I have some .380's fired from a Mak Barrel and they look about the same.

The .40 S&W is only about .028 larger (or .014 on a side) than a 9MM Thus the G23 being able to use a G19 barrel and the extractor being able to extract it. However if you didn't think you actually needed the G19 barrel in your G23 and thought that 9 and 40 could be shot interchangeably,,, then this is kind of what it would look like.

Randy
 
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