A Funny Thing Happened At The Range Today...
I went to the range today, and quite naturally I had my Model 39 with me.
I was happily bouncing a golf ball down the range , and when I pulled the trigger I got a LOUD POP from the rifle and I felt something hit my face.
O.K., that's weird. I looked down at the rifle, and there was smoke curling out around the bolt and firing pin.
So, I carefully ejected the fired case into my hand and there was exactly what I thought I would find... A ruptured case.
It was covered in black soot when I pulled it out of the rifle, but after riding around in my pocket for several hours that's all gone.
My first thought was to check the barrel and make sure that bullet made it out the end. (I don't know if I hit the golf ball or not, I got distracted and didn't look to see)
I broke the rifle down, and there was nothing to see. It was slightly dirty and normal in every way. The bore looked just fine.
I put the rifle back together, and spent a minute thinking about what happened.
The ammo was Winchester hollow points. They come in a red plastic box that looks exactly like the CCI box, except it has a clear red tint to the bottom.
These are a little on the "Hot" side, at 1400 FPS. I have had a good source for these and they are priced less than what I pay for CCI when I can find it. They seem to work just fine in all my rifles and accuracy is OK but not as good as CCI. I shoot them because they are available.
I noticed that the rupture seems to have happened at the spot where the firing pin dented the rim. It's the exact size and shape of the firing pin strike, and no marks are visible any where else on the case.
Yes, my rifle leaves a nice, deep firing pin strike, but I don't think it's excessive. It's not any bigger than my other .22s.
This rifle uses the rebounding hammer, so the hammer lifts quickly after the shot and the spot where the firing pin hits is no longer supported when that happens. I don't know if that's actually a factor because the bullet leaves the barrel and the pressure drops faster than that spring can push the hammer back up.
So my final answer was to load the rifle back up with more of those same bullets and keep shooting. And nothing happened. It kept right on chugging along and nothing else weird happened all afternoon.
This rifle is a big, burly example of forged steel, and it's plenty strong enough to handle the little bit of powder found in a .22LR cartridge- ruptured case or not.
I'm not scared. I feel like it was probably a case that wasn't hardened just right, and it cracked under the pressure.
The small amount of "Stuff" that hit my face was most likely carbon that got launched out of the firing pin slot, and didn't really even hurt. It was a long shot from drawing blood.
This is the first time I have ever seen a .22 blowout a case. I'm glad it was in a stout model 39 when it happened.