Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire In Your Opinion... What Happened? Ammo Detonation

eggzactly. I see a firing pin strike as well as primer flow, as in pronounced loss of radius. That did not happen inside a box on a counter.

But the image is severely out of focus. A good focus might yield very different conclusions.

At this point, I would guess the cartidge was held against the face of a bolt by an extractor in a vastly oversize chamber, then the stryker was dropped.

The story about detonation in the box on the counter is cover by a kid who was doing something he knew better than to do.

If you had a picture of the plastic tray that held all the ammo inside the box, might also get a more clear picture of what did or didn't happen. Agree with your assessment, that primer has been struck. I'm not so sure it was even in the box when it happened.

OK, the bullet clearly has an impact so let me explain this scenario that happened to my buddy. Here's the gun.



We went to the range and he had a cartridge not fully chamber so he honked on the lever jamming it in the chamber really tight. It wouldn't completely close so he took it home and dropped a cleaning rod down the bore, with the action open, and tapped the cleaning rod to knock the stuck cartridge out. It detonated and blew the stock apart. Only thing we can figure is he detonated it from the bullet end by pushing the bullet into the case, compressing the powder against the primer anvil and setting it off with the tapping motion.

We discovered a small percentage of the ammo would not chamber although trimmed to the right length. Case diameter just above the rim is a little too large. He's going to need small base dies for that rifle.

Could this pistol ammo have detonated by dropping it on the bullet end, compressing the powder charge against the primer anvil? The cartridge would have likely been in the corner of the box to take the hit.

Just a thought.

Oh, and here's my buddies rifle after repair. All's well that ends well.






*No lawyers were notified in the aftermath of the explosion.

This made me think. Is there ANY chance a badly loaded, removed\discarded, or second primer was somehow left in that box at the time of manufacturing?

Might the weight of the box contents have crushed said loose primer when the box was lifted - thereby causing the loaded primer "strike" - confirming what was reported by the person everyone assumes to be lying?

Flame away- I am not qualified in any way....just supposing from what was disclosed.

Obviously covid related

totally.

#ammolivesmatter

I just remembered bringing home a box of 1000 reloads the other day, reaching up to turn on the basement light and dropping the box, which banged and rolled down the full flight of stairs.

Box dented, cartridges fell out of their 50 round plastic sleeves, but nothing went off.

I worked for 9 years at one of the busiest commercial ranges in the country. In that time we had 2 occasions where a case of ammo was dropped and a round detonated. One employee received a superficial penetrating wound. It had to be reported as a GSW to the hospital and police.


mike r

I don't know what happened to the pistol cartridge, but have been thinking about your buddy's adventure. Many reloading manuals list compressed charges. If what happened to your buddy were to take place in a seating die, I imagine it would be quite a lively event. Now I'm not saying your theory is wrong. I cannot disprove it at all. I'm just thinking out loud here.

Oh yeah...you did a helluva job repairing that stock!

It was Trump's fault

Thank you Greg.

Elkslayer91 Failure Analysis Report


SCOPE: Determine cause of cartridge premature ignition.

Upon initial examination of the cartridge, it was evident there was an unnatural indention to the primer. Firing pins leave a small and fairly deep strike into the top surface of the primer, leaving the remainder of the surrounding surface at original height.

This particular primer had the majority of the top surface below the original plane of the top surface of the primer. The substantial outer ring around the outer edge of the primer corroborates this fact.

This damage would have located the anvil in the primer closer to the point it strikes to cause ignition of the primer, thus reducing the needed travel distance.

We investigated the brand of machinery used to load the cartridge at the factory, in order to find the dimension of the tooling used to seat the primer into the brass. The dimension of the tooling matched the diameter of the recessed area exactly.

We took notice to the damage on the end of the bullet that was in the cartridge.

Having gathered all of the above facts, we were comfortable with constructing a hypothesis we feel is strongly viable.

Hypothesis / Conclusion:

The cartridge was abruptly stopped while in motion, and was traveling on the same parallel as the firing pin travels. With the anvil travel distance greatly shortened from the damage to the surface of the primer, and locating it closer to the surface required to complete ignition of the primer, the inertia of the cartridge moving forward was carried forward from the weight of the primer surface and contacted the anvil to complete ignition.

We conclude the cartridge was damaged while being manufactured, and the premature ignition resulted from this.


Invoice: BR549
Total: $5,000.00