Chamber ruined in 1911??

B

BoogieMan

New member
A while back I shot some old aluminum cased ammo that got wet. I know it was dumb. Anyway several cases came apart and I trashed the remainder of the cartridges. I have since noticed a ring where my cartridges seat on my slide and I did a chamber inspection and found the below pics. Its a little hard to see in the pics but there is material missing up to about .007" deep all around the entrance area of the chamber. I am waiting on a new barrel now. But did the bad ammo do this? Could it have been a bad chamber from the get go? It doesnt look like reamer runout to me.
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When you say came apart, did they burst while firing them? If they did, it looks as if they burnt the metal enough to erode it, or something else. Is the slide all right, on the breech face? You'll definitely need the barrel.
 
I have seen it.

I had some Blazer 9mm that split, some badly, after being water damaged in my house fire. They LOOKED ok, but about 1/3 split on firing. My chamber has an eroded patch but just one area, not as bad as yours. My gunsmith polished it; just enough to smooth the edges, not trying to eliminate it, and the gun shoots fine. I pulled the bullets on the rest.
 
Wet ?? So you plated the chamber with aluminum and wet it ! Now you have things just like a ship - steel hull and sacrificial anode of aluminum ,BUT the aluminum is supposed to be sacrificial and corrode away. Except here the steel corroded away ???

Forgot something ! copper [bullet ? ] and aluminum case with moisture will definitely corrode very quickly !!
 
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Are you sure that is not a separated aluminum case in the chamber?

I have never seen chamber erosion that bad, in anything, that had leaky cases. Not saying it can't happen, but if split cases created enough of a gas leak to erode that much metal, EEK!
 
My first step would be to order a couple of bronze chamber brushes from Brownell's and scrub the chamber.
You can help things along by soaking the chamber with Kroil.
This will penetrate under whatever it is and help loosen it.

Chamber brushes are made with a much stiffer bristle then bore brushes, so use these ONLY in the chamber, NOT down the bore.
These work much better then using over-caliber bore brushes.

http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleani...ze-rifle-pistol-chamber-brushes-prod1287.aspx
DON'T use stainless steel brushes.
 
It's hard to say just by looking at the pictures whether it's gas cutting or aluminum case material, however I had a Blazer aluminum case rupture gas cutting both the chamber of the barrel and the breech face of the slide, ruining both.
 
I can't tell for sure by the photo, either. I can see how it looks like a piece of case, but the end of the case portion of the chamber looks like a normal shoulder, so I think that appearance is just undercutting from the way the cracks let the gas go. If there's part of a case in there, a fresh round won't chamber.

On another board one of these appear after the owner resized and fired steel cases, which fatigued and cracked at the pressure ring, creating small gas jets through the cracks. But his looked more exactly like the gas cutting pit ring you see form up around the firing pin on a rifle bolt. Right at that same location, though.
 
That looks like a case separation with the front part left in the chamber. I suspect the aluminum cases got wet enough that there was moisture in the case. That combined with residue from powder that was not properly washed, making an acid that ate away at the inside of the case. That resulted in the case separation described, and left part of the case in the chamber.

Now, how to get it out? A .45 cleaning brush might work, but probably not. What I did in those cases was to find a tap the right size to cut into the case but NOT touch the chamber. Thread the tap by hand carefully into the case, and then knock the tap and the headless case out with a cleaning rod inserted through the muzzle. An alternative would be to find an old .45-70 headless shell extractor, but those are right scarce these days since the army went to that new-fangled Norwegian gun.

Jim
 
Anyway several cases came apart and I trashed the remainder of the cartridges.
Click to expand...

I would suggest chambering a sized case or loaded round, if the case and or loaded round failed to chamber I would believe the chamber diameter has been reduced. Many years ago there was a cape chisel, a chisel requiring care around chambers.

F. Guffey
 
If indeed case material as shown by the suggested sized case test above, would a flared case and light tapping be sufficient to remove the remains yet prevent harm to the chamber?
 
It does look like a left over case, but its not. I should have given a little more information. The Alum ammo was fired hundreds of rounds ago. The gun has been cleaned multiple times since then. I noticed the chamber was a little rough at the opening but assumed that it was due to the thousands of rounds of ammo. I noticed a ring on my breech face had appeared and some of my cases were sooted. I am now doing some re-design on this gun and noticed how bad this issue is. Ring in breech face is .002 or less and I will stone that before fitting the new barrel.
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The best method I've found to remove the front portion of a case that's left in the chamber from case separation is to use an oversized bronze or brass brush on a cleaning rod, the brush must fit tight in the case.
Pull the brush fully into the section of the case then push the rod and brush out the opposite direction.

In my situation the case that ruptured was not damaged because of moisture as the ammo was stored in a climate controlled building.
When the case ruptured the openings in the case acted like a plasma cutter cutting the exact pattern of the case in my barrel chamber and on my breech face.
 
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Ordered a new barrel from Wilson, finding a 9mm wil/now ramped 5" barrel aint easy. Its a match grad so I have to do some fitting. I assume that Wilson makes/uses a decent barrel.
 
The erosion marks in the breach face you say they are about .002" deep and you are going to stone it to rectify that.
I am not sure that is a good course of action because you may have to go a few thousandths deeper to get it flat smooth and also the way it is probably does not affect functionality.
 
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