I need some ideas on what to look for here. Earlier tonight, I blew up my 4 yr old Bushmaster AR-15. By "blew up", I mean totally destroyed it beyond repair.
Because of the serious nature of what happened, I am going to walk you through exactly what happened including the nitty gritty details. Maybe someone can figure out what exactly went wrong. I apologize if it gets boring, but like I said, detail may mean everything.
My shooting partner and I spent last Sunday reloading our ammo, (.223s) like we usually do in my workshop while the wives were upstairs doing what ever it is wives do when they get together and the kids playing. (My partner and I have been best friends, almost like brothers since we were in grammer school and our families are very close. We have Sunday dinner together every week-end and have done so for many years so, when it comes to reloading me and my friend work like a perfectly tuned and oiled machine). We were using only once fired Remington Brass, which we bought last week (what we do is, one week we will buy ammo at the local gun shop, use it, collect our spent brass and then reload it for the next time we shoot. It saves us alot of money). All of the brass we reloaded , as I said, was only fired once. When we reload, we always faithfully use the same brand powder, same brand primers and same weight leads to keep our shooting results consistant. To us, shooting is a very important sport and is something we have been doing together since we were teen-agers, and we have invested alot of money into our weapons, shooting gear and reloading equipment so we have a proceedure in our reloading that we follow religiously (some say we have boring lives, LOL!) First, we remove the spent primers and as we do this we inspect each and every spent case for any defects such as excessive burn marks, cracks, ect. I check it first, then he does or visa-versa. If we find even one single thing in question, we toss the case into our recycle bucket. After we inspect the brass, we clean the inside of each case with powder solvant and run it through a mechanical tumbler to polish it up. After this is done, we will recheck it, toss any ones we don't like and then get down to business. Next, we use a set of calipers to check the case measurements. We make sure our cases are consistanyly one size. If we find any that need to be trimmed, we will then trim them to size. We then chamfer/ream the necks by hand, ream out the primer pockets by hand and then clean up any burrs. After this is done, we use an air-chuck to blow out any shavings that may be left behind (using low pressure, about 10psi). Next, we reprime the brass using an RCSB auto-primer attachment on my Rock Chucker press. One of us will put the primers in and the other will check each case to make sure they all are uniform in the case. If we find any that aren't uniform, we will pop out the primer and reinstall a fresh one. Then we calibrate the electronic scale we use (we do this every time we reload) and recal the powder dispenser. We will individually weigh each powder load we pull before filling the cases to make sure they are all exactly 24.5 grams on the money. One of us pulls the powder and weighs it, the other will pour the powder into the cases. After all the cases are charged, we will pop in the leads. After all of this is done, we will once again check the bullet length using the electronic calipers to insure uniformity, and then, each completed cartridge will be weighed to again ensure uniformity. After one more quick visial inspection on each one, we will end the session by putting the finished product into plastic cartridge holders and then into our ammo boxes, and the boxes go into a humidity controlled ammo safe. Some may say we are crazy for taking so much time and being so nit-picky in our reloading, but, as I said before, to us, shooting is a very important part of our lives, we take it as serious as some guys take sports like football, and, we have noticed since we became so anal about our reloading technique that our scores have actually improved by a wide margin. Uninterupted, we can usually completely reload a good 400-500 rounds in a good night. During our reloading operation, we do not consume any alcohol and try and keep distractions to an absolute minimum.
After we finish, we will end the night by cleaning our rifles and cleaning up my workshop. (Are ya bored yetLOL!)
Ok, after work today, I went home and picked up my 4 yr old Bushmaster AR-15 and the ammo we reloaded, and met my friend at our gun club. The weather here has absolutely sucked for the last week, heavy rain and temps in the upper 30s to mid 40s. We set up and started shooting at 200 yards without scopes. We make it a point that after each 100 rounds fired, we give the weapons a quick but thorough field cleaning. Anyway, somewhere around 120 or so rounds each into our shooting, (we slow shoot, manually loading one cartridge at a time) I put a round in, took aim (I was shooting in the kneeling position) and squeezed off the round. The round just blew right in the rifle. It went off so hard that it actually blew a small piece of the lower reciever off (if you took a dime and cut it into 4ths, that is how big the piece was). It sounded and felt like someone lit off a cherry bomb in front of me. The blast caused me to reflexively drop the rifle, but because of the way I was using the sling, it didn't hit the ground, except for the buttstock. Luckly, I didn't get hurt, just scared ****less. After I regained my senses and telling my buddy and the other 4 people who were shooting that I was ok, did I look at my AR. It was wasted. Aside from the little piece missing from the lower reciever, the the immediate other damage I noticed was the fire select was pushed out, the front pivot pin appeared bent, the takedown pin was gone and the trigger was completely jammed.
Being as pissed as I was, we packed it in and went straight to my house to strip the rifle down to see what else was damaged. With some difficulty due to the bent pivot pin, we managed to open it up and found the following:
trigger assembly broken and scorched, firing pin in two pieces, firing pin retainer broken, gas rings scorched and broke, forward assist shaft slightly bent and pieces of the broken brass casing jammed up in everything. The lead slug was stuck in the barrel about 10 inches down (my AR has (uh, had)a 20 inch barrel). Also, every part in the recievers was scorched from the powder in one way or another.
There you go. The details. Can anyone take a wild guess on what could have gone wrong? My first thought was maybe we accidently double charged one of the cartridges, but as I said, we weigh each one AFTER we complete the reloading procedure. My friend seems to think maybe it was caused by some type of blockage in the barrel, but I dunno with that much damage. Any ideas will be appriciated. I am going to have a qualified gunsmith look at it and see if he can figure out what happened and if it is salvageable, hopefully most of it will be, but I know the lower is gone along with the trigger and a few other pins and parts. For now, I guess I will be taking a break from shooting until I replace the AR or have it repaired.
As I said, any ideas will be appriciated, and as soon as I can figure out how to do it, I will post the pictures we took of the rifle before we disassembled it and after, showing the damaged inners.
Because of the serious nature of what happened, I am going to walk you through exactly what happened including the nitty gritty details. Maybe someone can figure out what exactly went wrong. I apologize if it gets boring, but like I said, detail may mean everything.
My shooting partner and I spent last Sunday reloading our ammo, (.223s) like we usually do in my workshop while the wives were upstairs doing what ever it is wives do when they get together and the kids playing. (My partner and I have been best friends, almost like brothers since we were in grammer school and our families are very close. We have Sunday dinner together every week-end and have done so for many years so, when it comes to reloading me and my friend work like a perfectly tuned and oiled machine). We were using only once fired Remington Brass, which we bought last week (what we do is, one week we will buy ammo at the local gun shop, use it, collect our spent brass and then reload it for the next time we shoot. It saves us alot of money). All of the brass we reloaded , as I said, was only fired once. When we reload, we always faithfully use the same brand powder, same brand primers and same weight leads to keep our shooting results consistant. To us, shooting is a very important sport and is something we have been doing together since we were teen-agers, and we have invested alot of money into our weapons, shooting gear and reloading equipment so we have a proceedure in our reloading that we follow religiously (some say we have boring lives, LOL!) First, we remove the spent primers and as we do this we inspect each and every spent case for any defects such as excessive burn marks, cracks, ect. I check it first, then he does or visa-versa. If we find even one single thing in question, we toss the case into our recycle bucket. After we inspect the brass, we clean the inside of each case with powder solvant and run it through a mechanical tumbler to polish it up. After this is done, we will recheck it, toss any ones we don't like and then get down to business. Next, we use a set of calipers to check the case measurements. We make sure our cases are consistanyly one size. If we find any that need to be trimmed, we will then trim them to size. We then chamfer/ream the necks by hand, ream out the primer pockets by hand and then clean up any burrs. After this is done, we use an air-chuck to blow out any shavings that may be left behind (using low pressure, about 10psi). Next, we reprime the brass using an RCSB auto-primer attachment on my Rock Chucker press. One of us will put the primers in and the other will check each case to make sure they all are uniform in the case. If we find any that aren't uniform, we will pop out the primer and reinstall a fresh one. Then we calibrate the electronic scale we use (we do this every time we reload) and recal the powder dispenser. We will individually weigh each powder load we pull before filling the cases to make sure they are all exactly 24.5 grams on the money. One of us pulls the powder and weighs it, the other will pour the powder into the cases. After all the cases are charged, we will pop in the leads. After all of this is done, we will once again check the bullet length using the electronic calipers to insure uniformity, and then, each completed cartridge will be weighed to again ensure uniformity. After one more quick visial inspection on each one, we will end the session by putting the finished product into plastic cartridge holders and then into our ammo boxes, and the boxes go into a humidity controlled ammo safe. Some may say we are crazy for taking so much time and being so nit-picky in our reloading, but, as I said before, to us, shooting is a very important part of our lives, we take it as serious as some guys take sports like football, and, we have noticed since we became so anal about our reloading technique that our scores have actually improved by a wide margin. Uninterupted, we can usually completely reload a good 400-500 rounds in a good night. During our reloading operation, we do not consume any alcohol and try and keep distractions to an absolute minimum.
After we finish, we will end the night by cleaning our rifles and cleaning up my workshop. (Are ya bored yetLOL!)
Ok, after work today, I went home and picked up my 4 yr old Bushmaster AR-15 and the ammo we reloaded, and met my friend at our gun club. The weather here has absolutely sucked for the last week, heavy rain and temps in the upper 30s to mid 40s. We set up and started shooting at 200 yards without scopes. We make it a point that after each 100 rounds fired, we give the weapons a quick but thorough field cleaning. Anyway, somewhere around 120 or so rounds each into our shooting, (we slow shoot, manually loading one cartridge at a time) I put a round in, took aim (I was shooting in the kneeling position) and squeezed off the round. The round just blew right in the rifle. It went off so hard that it actually blew a small piece of the lower reciever off (if you took a dime and cut it into 4ths, that is how big the piece was). It sounded and felt like someone lit off a cherry bomb in front of me. The blast caused me to reflexively drop the rifle, but because of the way I was using the sling, it didn't hit the ground, except for the buttstock. Luckly, I didn't get hurt, just scared ****less. After I regained my senses and telling my buddy and the other 4 people who were shooting that I was ok, did I look at my AR. It was wasted. Aside from the little piece missing from the lower reciever, the the immediate other damage I noticed was the fire select was pushed out, the front pivot pin appeared bent, the takedown pin was gone and the trigger was completely jammed.
Being as pissed as I was, we packed it in and went straight to my house to strip the rifle down to see what else was damaged. With some difficulty due to the bent pivot pin, we managed to open it up and found the following:
trigger assembly broken and scorched, firing pin in two pieces, firing pin retainer broken, gas rings scorched and broke, forward assist shaft slightly bent and pieces of the broken brass casing jammed up in everything. The lead slug was stuck in the barrel about 10 inches down (my AR has (uh, had)a 20 inch barrel). Also, every part in the recievers was scorched from the powder in one way or another.
There you go. The details. Can anyone take a wild guess on what could have gone wrong? My first thought was maybe we accidently double charged one of the cartridges, but as I said, we weigh each one AFTER we complete the reloading procedure. My friend seems to think maybe it was caused by some type of blockage in the barrel, but I dunno with that much damage. Any ideas will be appriciated. I am going to have a qualified gunsmith look at it and see if he can figure out what happened and if it is salvageable, hopefully most of it will be, but I know the lower is gone along with the trigger and a few other pins and parts. For now, I guess I will be taking a break from shooting until I replace the AR or have it repaired.
As I said, any ideas will be appriciated, and as soon as I can figure out how to do it, I will post the pictures we took of the rifle before we disassembled it and after, showing the damaged inners.
