Tweet
I've been reloading for about a year, and I got my first squib today. Much fun.
A little background on the load first of all. This is a 357 magnum load I have used previously with great success in my S&W 686. Since I bought my equipment, powder has been rather scarce, so when I found some Alliant 300-MP in stock on powder valley a few months back, I bought an 8lbs jug of it, and 200 the only 357 bullets I could find at the time, 125gr Hornady XTPs. My Hornady load book had no info for this powder, and the Alliant page only listed a max load for Speer Gold Dot 125gr of 22.3gr. I backed that off to about 20gr, and loaded 50 rounds total in several steps up to 22gr with the XTPs, and did not see any signs of pressure. I then loaded up 50 at 22gr and shot all of these without any issues. All 50 had very similar recoil and noise.
Most recently, I bought myself a tumbler and a case trimmer. Before I bought these, I just reused the cases dirty after measuring each with my calipers to be sure that they were under the max case length of 1.290. This time they all got tumbled after resizing for about 3 hours with corncob media and a small amount of the Frankford Arsenal quick-n-ez brass polish that came with the tumbler. I also trimmed all the cases down to 1.280 then chamfered and debured after tumbling them.
At the range today, I fired about 15 rounds. Of those, maybe 2 felt full power like the ones I had loaded previously. Most felt a little milder. The fifth round fired felt like a 38 wadcutter, very very light. I stopped firing, unload and checked the barrel with a section of cleaning rod. That round was definitely light, but the bullet had exited the barrel. A few shots latter I had another very week recoil with very little noise, and again I checked the barrel, this time there was a bullet stuck almost exactly half way down the barrel. This happened to be in the last 20 minutes of the day that the range was open, and I had been there shooting my rifles for a couple hours already, so the day wasn't wasted, but this was still not very cool, ha.
When I got home, I took a closer look at the revolver. This is what I saw in the forcing cone:
And the cylinder:
I then got a hammer and a section of cleaning rod and started tapping the squib out. When the bullet was almost out, this fell out of the barrel:
One end:
Other end:
My question in all this, what can cause this? I'm assuming this is some kind of contamination of the powder or something.
Next step to try to pull apart the 90 or so that are still loaded. This is gunna be FUN!
A little background on the load first of all. This is a 357 magnum load I have used previously with great success in my S&W 686. Since I bought my equipment, powder has been rather scarce, so when I found some Alliant 300-MP in stock on powder valley a few months back, I bought an 8lbs jug of it, and 200 the only 357 bullets I could find at the time, 125gr Hornady XTPs. My Hornady load book had no info for this powder, and the Alliant page only listed a max load for Speer Gold Dot 125gr of 22.3gr. I backed that off to about 20gr, and loaded 50 rounds total in several steps up to 22gr with the XTPs, and did not see any signs of pressure. I then loaded up 50 at 22gr and shot all of these without any issues. All 50 had very similar recoil and noise.
Most recently, I bought myself a tumbler and a case trimmer. Before I bought these, I just reused the cases dirty after measuring each with my calipers to be sure that they were under the max case length of 1.290. This time they all got tumbled after resizing for about 3 hours with corncob media and a small amount of the Frankford Arsenal quick-n-ez brass polish that came with the tumbler. I also trimmed all the cases down to 1.280 then chamfered and debured after tumbling them.
At the range today, I fired about 15 rounds. Of those, maybe 2 felt full power like the ones I had loaded previously. Most felt a little milder. The fifth round fired felt like a 38 wadcutter, very very light. I stopped firing, unload and checked the barrel with a section of cleaning rod. That round was definitely light, but the bullet had exited the barrel. A few shots latter I had another very week recoil with very little noise, and again I checked the barrel, this time there was a bullet stuck almost exactly half way down the barrel. This happened to be in the last 20 minutes of the day that the range was open, and I had been there shooting my rifles for a couple hours already, so the day wasn't wasted, but this was still not very cool, ha.
When I got home, I took a closer look at the revolver. This is what I saw in the forcing cone:
And the cylinder:
I then got a hammer and a section of cleaning rod and started tapping the squib out. When the bullet was almost out, this fell out of the barrel:
One end:
Other end:
My question in all this, what can cause this? I'm assuming this is some kind of contamination of the powder or something.
Next step to try to pull apart the 90 or so that are still loaded. This is gunna be FUN!
Comment