spencerhut Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 At a class this weekend and detonated my wife’s AR. No serious injuries, sore and bruised left hand where she wraps the mag well. The loads were my typical MGB 55g .223's, some left overs from 2008. 24.9g of H335, CCI mil-spec primers & mixed brass. It was a very hot day (109) and we were running some seriously fast and hard drills under pressure from the instructor. Our guns were hot. We noticed a few tumbling and fragmenting bullets from her gun and somewhat less so from my gun. A friend shooting the same ammo experienced no fragmenting at all. We were not sure what to think, no damage to either of our battle comps was noticed and no fragments were being left in the barrel we could see so we kept shooting. We continued to notice sideways and fragmented bullets throughout the day. During a drill I competed before my wife and watched her struggle with failure to return to battery. She extracted the round, reseated the mag and let the bolt fly. I observed her verify the gun was in battery and pull the trigger. BOOM! Her gun experienced a catastrophic failure. Barrel, bolt, upper, destroyed. Later examination showed a bullet with powder granule marks in the compressed lead base stuck right at the gas port. I was able to remove the bullet with little effort. The bolt carrier and upper had to be mechanically separated from each other. Bolt, bolt carrier and receiver extension were utterly destroyed and brass coated. The case is welded into the chamber. My wife and I are both experienced RO's and no one noticed a squib. Not sure, but I don't think you can stuff enough H335 into a .223 to cause this sort of bomb. I think it was squib personally, my wife is adamant it was not a squib. I'm having the barrel water jet cut to see if anything can be learned. Opinions? Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kagemusha Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 Setback? FTE, top round in mag tries to chamber, slams into FTE'd case, causing setback. Mag out, setback round still on top, clear unextracted case, re-seat mag, chamber f'd round... ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkrispies Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 Setback? FTE, top round in mag tries to chamber, slams into FTE'd case, causing setback. Mag out, setback round still on top, clear unextracted case, re-seat mag, chamber f'd round... ? If not a squib, then I think the above sounds reasonable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim/GA Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 (edited) What about the round she ejected? Any chance the bullet ended up being pulled from the case and was still in the chamber? Next round shoves the pulled bullet forward and that in turn seats the other one back in the case? This is the first I have heard of anyone with issues from earlier MGB 223s. I thought that it was limited to end of last year. In fact I got an email back from MGB about some I got in from them last July and they said those should be good to go. You sure about the year on those? Edited July 2, 2013 by Tim/GA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spencerhut Posted July 2, 2013 Author Share Posted July 2, 2013 (edited) What about the round she ejected? Any chance the bullet ended up being pulled from the case and was still in the chamber? Next round shoves the pulled bullet forward and that in turn seats the other one back in the case? This is the first I have heard of anyone with issues from earlier MGB 223s. I thought that it was limited to end of last year. In fact I got an email back from MGB about some I got in from them last July and they said those should be good to go. You sure about the year on those? The round she ejected could not be determined. Mag came apart also, so it got lost in the mess. There were some more current MGB rounds in the mix as well, from the last year or so. We dumped them in with the old stuff (identical load) when we were loading mags the night before, maybe 25% of the total rounds fired at most. No unburnt powder was seen, like from a pulled bullet left in the chamber. My wife knows better and would have stopped. She has had that happen before and knows the drill. Edited July 2, 2013 by spencerhut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spencerhut Posted July 2, 2013 Author Share Posted July 2, 2013 A closer examination of the bullet removed from the barrel shows what looks like lead on the tip. I'm calling this a squib, my first in lifetime of reloading, and it got into my wife's gun. I feel like and a$$. These rounds were loaded back in '08 and my QA and procedures have improved since then. I have quarantined the remaining rounds from that batch and will see if I can find any others. Thanks for the input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DougCarden Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 Spencer, what do you load on? It may have been a primed case and no powder as well. If it put the bullet down the chamber and it took the bolt released to close the chamber then you definitely would have had a bullet in the barrel, and it took the full throw of the bolt to chamber, most likely pushing the live round bullet back in the case, and creating well over 60K of PSI, most likely closer to 100K..... Glad you and she are Ok.....It will make you shake your head if it was on a progressive press....if it was on a 550 then I understand..... DougC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spencerhut Posted July 2, 2013 Author Share Posted July 2, 2013 Spencer, what do you load on? It may have been a primed case and no powder as well. If it put the bullet down the chamber and it took the bolt released to close the chamber then you definitely would have had a bullet in the barrel, and it took the full throw of the bolt to chamber, most likely pushing the live round bullet back in the case, and creating well over 60K of PSI, most likely closer to 100K..... Glad you and she are Ok.....It will make you shake your head if it was on a progressive press....if it was on a 550 then I understand..... DougC The stuff from 2008 was loaded on a auto index RCBS Pro2000. The current stuff was on a 1050. . . . and yeah, I'm shaking my head trying to figure out how it happened. I'm over 197k rounds on the Pro2000 with no issues ever, until now. I'm rebuilding her gun, rechecking my QA routine and moving on, not much else to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DougCarden Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 Unfortunately....that is how we learn and gain experience..... Keep plugging away..... DougC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dillon Posted July 2, 2013 Share Posted July 2, 2013 It sounds like two different issues. I suspect the damage to the firearm was due to a bullet stuck in the throat of the barrel, with another fired right behind it. I have seen one AR destroyed from the use of H-335 in very hot temperatures here in AZ. The ammo was left in the AZ sun in August for several hours before being fired. After quite a few rounds the upper split traumatically. Pressure testing of the load at the same temperature did produce an occasional pressure spike, by no means in all rounds, but in more than one. Unfortunately this was almost 30 years ago, and the test data is long gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boxer1 Posted July 3, 2013 Share Posted July 3, 2013 My first thought was like Tim said when the round was extracted the bullet stuck and was pulled from the case or it was a squib. It can be hard to catch a squib like that with other shooting going on arround you and you are on the clock. Glad to hear no serious injuries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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