Thanks for the insight everyone. I to have read/seen videos/heard stories that show/illustrate an indication of something aloof while shooting where the squib was detected. Usually (like the picture above) the powder pushes the bullet down the barrel further then my occurrence which was just enough to have another round fit in the chamber. I suspect that there is going to be more activated powder to push a load to the edge of the barrel. I can see how the “Pffft” sound could be made and therefore a suspicion of a issue arise. In situations where there is no powder and only a primer charge present could that be heard as easily? I DO NOT reload at all. I may have failed to mention. If you train to draw and fire and clear malfunctions as you should if your a CCW “my bottom line” which I believe is the only may to increase your ability to preform in a situation where your life is at stake. You are at greater risk to this mishap. I only practice that way with my CCW pistol. No need to do so with my duck hunting 12g or “range guns”. To the individual that said they don’t train that hard my suggestion is you should and that it’s not at all hard. The hardest thing for me would be having a mindset that carrying a firearm with casual controlled environment practice is all I need or have to rely on. (Not intended to ruffle feathers). Now I’m not out there rolling in the mud and being tactical. I’m simply trying to increase my ability to draw/fire/clear malfunctions. I dress for the weather, sometimes I wear sandals while I shoot outdoors and at the range. I’ve been asked why am I wearing sandals. My answer is because this is something I’d be wearing during an encounter. Plus you need to know how you would react to hot brass being lodged between your toes lol.
Bulged barrel
- Thread starter K13
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stagpanther
New member
bingo!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P1MHKRBPPAY
Here is an example. He slows the video down afterwards to emphasize the pfffft but it is almost impossible to catch the first time you watch full speed.
Here is an example. He slows the video down afterwards to emphasize the pfffft but it is almost impossible to catch the first time you watch full speed.
"...Luckily it did not explode..." That'd rarely happen. Isn't an explosion anyway.
Usually happens with incorrectly loaded ammo. Like not putting powder in and not checking before seating bullets(it was a cast .45 for me, long ago.). It's really annoying and costly to fix, but not particularly dangerous. Assuming the pistol is safe to shoot in the first place.
Gunparts(E-Bay funds the people who want to take your firearms away from you) lists BNIB factory barrels at $225.45. It'll need fitting by a smithy too.
Usually happens with incorrectly loaded ammo. Like not putting powder in and not checking before seating bullets(it was a cast .45 for me, long ago.). It's really annoying and costly to fix, but not particularly dangerous. Assuming the pistol is safe to shoot in the first place.
Gunparts(E-Bay funds the people who want to take your firearms away from you) lists BNIB factory barrels at $225.45. It'll need fitting by a smithy too.
What isn’t an explosion?
stagpanther
New member
Tim is known for his "alternative" viewpoints.
stagpanther
New member
I like you already.
Jim Watson
New member
I didn't see where you gave the brand of ammunition.
Low end factory loads and commercial reloads ("remanufactured") are second quality. Range and gun show reloads are third quality. But even name brands have failed one way or another.
I have read of more stuck bullets and other failures since the First Obama Panic, and quality control may not have resumed under Trump.
Most stuck bullets are from powderless cartridges. If the primer flash is enough to drive the bullet past the chamber throat, that was your experience.
Many do not, another round will not chamber and you are in a major malfunction but with no damage to the gun.
A partial powder charge squib is very uncommon. One grain of powder will drive a 9mm or .38 bullet clear of the barrel; I saw that while trying to use small charges of large flake shotgun powder for target pistol loads.
A contaminated powder charge is not unknown, of my two stuck bullets, one was from trying to get some use out of heavily wetted premium ammo. I would not expect a single rain exposure to do it, but maybe so.
You will have to decide what to do going on.
Continue your gunfighting technique and rack out any sort of misfire or malfunction to stay in action. This puts your barrel at continuing risk.
Or apply range protocol and stop to investigate any misfire or malfunction.
You might try to develop the habit of looking to see what comes out when you hastily eject a misfire. Whole round, chamber the next and shoot, empty case when no shot was fired, STOP.
Low end factory loads and commercial reloads ("remanufactured") are second quality. Range and gun show reloads are third quality. But even name brands have failed one way or another.
I have read of more stuck bullets and other failures since the First Obama Panic, and quality control may not have resumed under Trump.
Most stuck bullets are from powderless cartridges. If the primer flash is enough to drive the bullet past the chamber throat, that was your experience.
Many do not, another round will not chamber and you are in a major malfunction but with no damage to the gun.
A partial powder charge squib is very uncommon. One grain of powder will drive a 9mm or .38 bullet clear of the barrel; I saw that while trying to use small charges of large flake shotgun powder for target pistol loads.
A contaminated powder charge is not unknown, of my two stuck bullets, one was from trying to get some use out of heavily wetted premium ammo. I would not expect a single rain exposure to do it, but maybe so.
You will have to decide what to do going on.
Continue your gunfighting technique and rack out any sort of misfire or malfunction to stay in action. This puts your barrel at continuing risk.
Or apply range protocol and stop to investigate any misfire or malfunction.
You might try to develop the habit of looking to see what comes out when you hastily eject a misfire. Whole round, chamber the next and shoot, empty case when no shot was fired, STOP.
stagpanther
New member
Saw a vid on UT somewhere when a well known tester kaboomed his AR by not noticing a bullet-less cartridge when he cleared his gun and reloaded.
S&B, Winchester and Remington 115gr fmj. I think it is semi-unreasonable to expect a person training for defense scenarios to also be 100 percent vigilante in regards to squibs. Thus lies the dilemma of being either affective in defense or range etiquette. Surely human error is to happen even in a person 99.9999% proficient in both. My ultimate takeaway from this is... Is to have a plan for when it happens, because it will. Every other expectation is basically useless concidering human error is 100% guaranteed.
Jim Watson
New member
Three brands mixed so you don't know which to avoid?
With your mindset, the only plan to deal with a stuck bullet I can think of is to carry a spare gun.
The plan to deal with a stuck bullet in heavy practice is to have a spare barrel.
With your mindset, the only plan to deal with a stuck bullet I can think of is to carry a spare gun.
The plan to deal with a stuck bullet in heavy practice is to have a spare barrel.
Jim Watson
New member
OK, don't buy any more WWB. It has a poor Internet Reputation these days anyhow.
I never had any trouble out of S&B except that it is not waterproof; the red stuff on case mouth and primer pocket is not an effective sealant.
Anecdote Alert: I had the first Glock 19 in town. It was not a fine performer. I sent it in and got it back with a new extractor and ejector. And a note saying "Don't shoot cheap foreign ammo, shoot WWB like we use to test guns here." Apparently Winchester standards have changed.
I never had any trouble out of S&B except that it is not waterproof; the red stuff on case mouth and primer pocket is not an effective sealant.
Anecdote Alert: I had the first Glock 19 in town. It was not a fine performer. I sent it in and got it back with a new extractor and ejector. And a note saying "Don't shoot cheap foreign ammo, shoot WWB like we use to test guns here." Apparently Winchester standards have changed.
I think some manufacturer's semi-autos run on-the-light-side springs that make the action easier to cycle, at the expense of beating up the pistol a little bit.
These would be the ones most likely to chamber a fresh round after a squib.
My semi-autos take some effort to cycle (those in .45 ACP), so I don't think any of them would cycle after a squib round.
I've been reloading (handgun cartridges) for about seven years and was with my son at the club range with my 686 revolver and experienced a squib with one of my handloads. It was a .357 Magnum round with a 125 grain fmj.
The sound was off (not the sharp bark of a 1309 fps-tested round) as was the recoil. The round stuck about an inch into the barrel. When I got home, I tapped it (firmly) back out the chamber side. Bullet was in good shape.
In a strange way, I was glad it happened...and that it didn't happen while my son was shooting. He is a pretty sharp young man, and probably would have stopped shooting (he was watching me shoot when it happened). When I stopped and looked at the gun, he said he noticed the sound as well and said he didn't see a round hit the target (not uncommon with me, lol).
I explained to him what I thought it was and then confirmed it, so the experience was a confirmation of my training and a learning experience for my son.
I have shot approximately 6000 of my own handloads over the years and this is the first squib. The rounds are loaded on a Lee turret press, which is pretty much foolproof, so I guess I was distracted while loading and cycled over the load stroke, so the round fired with only the force of the primer.
Also it is important to note that it seems semi-autos squibs may be a little less likely to blow-up and fragment, injuring the shooter or onlookers. A .357 Magnum has considerably more pressure than any semi-auto round (with maybe the exception of 10mm), and I think a cylinder or forcing cone would be destroyed, while a semi auto may just bulge the barrel and/or blast the magazine out of the pistol.
I almost never rapid-shoot my revolvers in double-action, and this has made me question that practice even more. I don't know if I would have not fired the next round if I was doing a cylinder dump.
Lesson with all of this is that our avocation is not risk-free; powerful forces are at work and even if the four safety rules are followed, stuff can still happen.
Be careful out there.
Blue
These would be the ones most likely to chamber a fresh round after a squib.
My semi-autos take some effort to cycle (those in .45 ACP), so I don't think any of them would cycle after a squib round.
I've been reloading (handgun cartridges) for about seven years and was with my son at the club range with my 686 revolver and experienced a squib with one of my handloads. It was a .357 Magnum round with a 125 grain fmj.
The sound was off (not the sharp bark of a 1309 fps-tested round) as was the recoil. The round stuck about an inch into the barrel. When I got home, I tapped it (firmly) back out the chamber side. Bullet was in good shape.
In a strange way, I was glad it happened...and that it didn't happen while my son was shooting. He is a pretty sharp young man, and probably would have stopped shooting (he was watching me shoot when it happened). When I stopped and looked at the gun, he said he noticed the sound as well and said he didn't see a round hit the target (not uncommon with me, lol).
I explained to him what I thought it was and then confirmed it, so the experience was a confirmation of my training and a learning experience for my son.
I have shot approximately 6000 of my own handloads over the years and this is the first squib. The rounds are loaded on a Lee turret press, which is pretty much foolproof, so I guess I was distracted while loading and cycled over the load stroke, so the round fired with only the force of the primer.
Also it is important to note that it seems semi-autos squibs may be a little less likely to blow-up and fragment, injuring the shooter or onlookers. A .357 Magnum has considerably more pressure than any semi-auto round (with maybe the exception of 10mm), and I think a cylinder or forcing cone would be destroyed, while a semi auto may just bulge the barrel and/or blast the magazine out of the pistol.
I almost never rapid-shoot my revolvers in double-action, and this has made me question that practice even more. I don't know if I would have not fired the next round if I was doing a cylinder dump.
Lesson with all of this is that our avocation is not risk-free; powerful forces are at work and even if the four safety rules are followed, stuff can still happen.
Be careful out there.
Blue
It might be semi-unreasonable, but there is also such a thing as being TOO focused in training. Sure, there are several things to focus on in as stressful a situation as can exist (gunfight), but not having a part of you aware of what your gun is, and especially isn't doing can negate the essential focus on the rest of things at the worst possible time.
One of the "classic" failures to be aware of what the gun is telling you is someone shooting to slide lock (gun EMPTY) and doing the tap, rack, bang drill, (and there have been cases of people doing it 3 times!) before realizing the gun wasn't jammed, it wasn't a bad round, it was out of ammo!
There is always a line between safety and "training as real as it gets", and a risk to be run. Firearm safety training teaches that any time your gun doesn't act exactly the same as it did the round before, you STOP and figure out why. Combat/defense training focuses on keeping going (able to shoot) with as little delay as possible, and with good reason. It teaches a fast "automatic" response that will clear most stoppages and get your gun back in action in the minimum amount of time.
However, when that failure drill is the wrong response, and doesn't fix the problem, the next round fired might result in an inoperable firearm. And then, if its not training, as the old joke goes, "you'll have the rest of your life to decide" if your decision was the right one.
As far as I'm concerned, its a good thing to train in stoppage clearance, but these should be planned events, and when a serious unplanned malfunction happens, training is OVER, right then.
A bulged barrel in training costs money. In a real fight it could cost a lot more than just money.
44 AMP.
Good thinking. And a prime example of overtraining/unaware of your firearm is that individual with the empty firearm continually “clearing” the issue. Funny actually. Not sure if you read everything but this thread IMO went from me asking about replacement barrel options after my incident, to trying to validate why I “allowed” or was unable to detect it in the first place. I fully understand everyone’s point of view. My mistake is clear. I treated a squib as light primer strike or unloaded/failed to feed or otherwise. I’m simply trying to establish that it wasn’t an obvious issue in my case and at the time it accured I was training in a way that would be even harder to detect than if I was just shooting. I have gotten a few suggestions, but for the most part it has been a mild patronizing session. Classic forum etiquette really. My attempt to justify will be washed into the previous posts I have made. Once my KKM barrel shows up I’ll report back it’s reliability. Already have nearly 1,000 rounds through the new OEM barrel I got shortly after creating this post. Again thanks for everyone’s input.
Good thinking. And a prime example of overtraining/unaware of your firearm is that individual with the empty firearm continually “clearing” the issue. Funny actually. Not sure if you read everything but this thread IMO went from me asking about replacement barrel options after my incident, to trying to validate why I “allowed” or was unable to detect it in the first place. I fully understand everyone’s point of view. My mistake is clear. I treated a squib as light primer strike or unloaded/failed to feed or otherwise. I’m simply trying to establish that it wasn’t an obvious issue in my case and at the time it accured I was training in a way that would be even harder to detect than if I was just shooting. I have gotten a few suggestions, but for the most part it has been a mild patronizing session. Classic forum etiquette really. My attempt to justify will be washed into the previous posts I have made. Once my KKM barrel shows up I’ll report back it’s reliability. Already have nearly 1,000 rounds through the new OEM barrel I got shortly after creating this post. Again thanks for everyone’s input.