Here's one for the record books

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Scorch

New member
Okay! Customer comes in, says he has a squib or two stuck in the barrel, asks can we get it out? Sure. Start checking, and find at least 10 ring bulges in the barrel, after measuring from the breach end and the muzzle end we determined there was an obstruction at least 10" long in the bore and sell the customer on rebarreling the rifle. OK, done. Curiosity got the best of us, though, so we decided to section the barrel and find out how many bullets are stuck in the barrel.
open

And the magic number?? 17!

And I don't know why I cant post the image, but whatever.
 
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F

FrankenMauser

New member
That's a beauty.


What was the chambering?



"Hey, La-a, watch the dirt and tell me if there's bullets comin' out o' here."

"Nope. Shoot some more. Maybe it's just gummed up...." :confused:




(La-a = La-dash-a = Ladasha)
 
H

hooligan1

New member
That's the "Luck of the Irish", if it would've been anyone of us some meaty blood pics would be forthright..
Scorch How the hell can that happen?
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
How can it happen? Easy.

Click. Durned shell dint go off; I'll britch it agin.
Click. Dint go off agin.
Click. Durn it, them shells aint no good.
Click. Etc.

Jim
 
4

444

New member
I did that in a pistol.

Here is how it happened to me. There are a few lessons to be learned.

I bought a beautiful used S&W Model 27 in a gun store I went to all the time, so the owner was a friend and I shot with him on occasion. I lived in the desert and you could shoot pretty much anywhere (within reason), so I mentioned to him that I would like to stop on the way home and shoot it. But, I didn't want to buy a box of over-priced ammo just to fire a few rounds along the road.

So he offered me a handful of his mouse fart "cowboy" loads. (LESSON 1, don't shoot other people's handloads even if you know them and have shot with them before) (LESSON 2, be very careful when shooting very light loads)

So, on the way home, I get to a safe place and I see a beer can or something lying in a tumbleweed. Keep in mind, I never fired this gun before and only owned it for 10 minutes.
So I got out and fired six shots at the can. I wasn't hitting it and with the can lying in brush I couldn't see the bullets impacting. The only thought at the time was that the sights must be way off. When I went to reload, I couldn't open the cylinder. Closer examination revealed that there was a bullet in-between the cylinder and the barrel. Even closer examination revealed that all six bullets were in the barrel.

The biggest lesson of all is that I have shot since I was a child. I owned a bunch of guns and was an avid reloader. I shot 3-4 times a week and fired 10s of thousands of rounds per year. I had taken numerous classes at renowned firearms schools. I had served in the military. I had competed for years with rifles and handguns and was pretty successful at the local level. OK, so what is the lesson ?
Don't be arrogant enough to think you are above doing something like this. Don't think stuff like this can't happen to you. Don't take anything for granted.

When I read threads like this there are always a number of people who post comments that imply that they are above something like this. I thought so too.
 
S

Scorch

New member
Well, here's what we figured happened:
* Shooter shoots first round, gets past the gas port, cycles the action, but the bullet is lodged in the bore.
* Shooter shoots next round, and next, and next (and so on) until the next to the last round, all of which cycled the action since they made it past the gas port.
* The last round did not make it past the gas port, so it did not cycle the action, and that is when the shooter realizes there's "sumpin roung wi' this heeyar raffle" and takes it back to his brother, whom he borrowed it from, and tells him there might be a couple of bullets stuck in the barrel.

By the way, that barrel is off of a Ruger 44 Magnum Carbine. Which has a 4-round magazine. Which means the shooter had to reload at least 4 times while this whole drama was developing, and never noticed he was not hitting anything. And he still has all of his fingers!
 
S

Scorch

New member
We put it between centers on a mill, cut about 40% of the diameter of the bore away. The bullets will not move, they are held firmly in place.
 
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C

Clark

New member
I have seen such a display of a revolver barrel cross sectioned.

I think the shooter and the gunsmith have been dead for decades.
 
T

tobnpr

New member
Wow...
I could maybe see this with a .22LR.

I guess that's a testament to the overdesign of the barrel in handling the pressures...

But a .44 Mag? Looked this one up since it hasn't been made in 30 years...

If the gases didn't blow out the side of the action where they'd be obvious, dissipate into the mag? Gas port shouldn't be able to vent that volume :confused:

Aside from the fact that it obviously couldn't have sounded "right", wondering if this really would have been unnoticeable-aside from no bullets impacting- or if the shooter wasn't "all there".
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
Interesting that in Mehavey's picture the barrel doesn't seem to show a bulge.

Since it is the heat dump when a moving bullet is stopped that softens the barrel and allows it to bulge, I can only conclude that the loads must have been very light and the bullets barely moving. Even if the subsequent bullets were cushioned by trapped air and gas, the second bullet should have caused a bulge or split.

Jim
 
S

Scorch

New member
The exterior of the barrel had numeous ring bulges. I counted 10 before taking the barrel off. If you look closely in the photo, you can see the cut looks a little wavy at the exterior of the barrel. As for how powerful the loads were, I don't know that information.
 
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