Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Had a "boom" yesterday

I'm not sure about the logic of the statements in bold above - seems like you're over reacting a bit.

I can't tell from the photo, but what happened to the bolt?

I wouldn't touch brass I didn't know the history of and I wouldn't shoot someone else's reloads, period.

I would have to know the reloader and have solid trust that they knew what they were doing before shooting their reloads, and even then I would probably want to shoot them in their gun, not one of mine.

Range brass? No problem, gimme.

Bolt survived fine, except the extractor is toast.

So it’s range brass reloaded and since there’s no proof of times fired we really can’t lay blame on the manufacturer. But just out of curiosity what did the head stamp read? May be part of a puzzle for someone else.

I doubt it was the brass.

MM

Just wondering
I have seen times when dropping powder that a little would "bridge" or get stuck for what ever reason in the powder dispenser. Wondering if something like that happened and you got a round that may have had a partial charge and this round that got a full charge plus what ever did not "drop" from the other charge?
Just a thought. No matter what happened, sorry it did

Unless it was a range pickup of commercial federal brass, i.e. what you find in American Eagle ammo. That stuff is way to soft, so I could see that being the root cause.

By no means am I the senior hand loader here. But the only brass I’ve had issues with has been Federal; .270 Win and 7mm RM. Some of each, once fired, had primer pockets that wouldn’t hold a primer. On the other hand I’ve loaded Federal 9mm and .40 with no issues. But it’s be hard to get me too go with Federal on rifle ammo again.

"...probably just a little out of battery ..."

How far out of battery does it have to be for an AR not to fire?

I'll stick with hang fire.

Soft brass, such as to allow primer pockets to expand is sure as hell not going to cause a failure like that.

That is high pressure & the brass would have had to have had numerous firings on it to have weakened to that level.

If an AR bolt is even a little out of battery, the FP cannot reach the primer, so I really doubt that the gun fired out of battery either.

Too much powder is far & away the most likely culprit, but as in most post mortems like this, we'll never really know, so pick your theory & stick to it.

MM

Went to the range today and shot 50 rounds through this upper and barrel with only a new bolt, once it was put back together.

Ran fine.

I'm currently of the overgharge theory.

I’m leaning towards a loose neck and bullet setback creating over pressure. Far more damage done to the base than what I can see as just case separation.

But who knows.

Did you miss the part where he bent the charging handle "mortaring" it out? A lot of that damage was post-mortem.

Might be a good idea to bend a paper clip in a short "L"shape to check your brass.

I run the check for separation on all of the brass i use and load for others.

Have you ever seen one mortared that pulled off more than the rim? I haven’t. What took out the pie slice shaped divot was not the extractor. In my mind it took the easiest route and gas escaped through the portion of the rim least supported, the extractor cut.

Mortaring the rifle yielded nothing but a ruined charging handle from me banging it on a table when mortaring didn’t work.

Soaking in Kroil for two days and tapping the back of the BCG with a punch freed up the stuck case.

I wasn’t there when the smith got it apart, but the rim was still partially on the case, he said. He removed that and used a threaded tool (like the one for cases stick in a die?) to get the case out of the barrel.

Sorry the way I read this was you bent the CH mortaring it to get the stuck case out. I didn’t see anything else stating the smith got it out.

So now I’m back to just “I’m glad it worked out”.

What brand brass?