Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles How to have a range accident....

Well a friend from work wanted to go shooting after not picking up a rifle for several years. I had shown him my safe and the .308 stuck in his head. We hit the range with a tikka .270, Tikka .223 and a Rem M7 in .308.

Mistake #1: All three rifles had pretty similar paint jobs of tiger stiped stocks with black metal work.

Mistake #2: All of the rifles were in the rack at the same time.

Mistake #3: All of the ammo was in the same range bag.

Misfortune: Fusion .270 and Fusion .308 are in the same exact box except for the info on the endflap.

In itself none of these had every been a problem, I rarely buy factory ammo and only had some Fusions in .270 because Im waiting for my dies, all of the other ammo was in MTM boxes and properly labeled. As luck (or lack of luck) would have it he had felt obliged to bring some ammo and grabbed a box of .308 Fusions.

To cut to the chase he fired a .308 funsion through the .270 Tikka. Amazingly I was spotting and the round landed in the group. He tried to work the bolt but the action would not open. I looked at it and the plastic firing pin shroud had broken and fell off. We eventually got it opened and confirmed the case had expanded all the way to the end. It had also ruptured in the bottom 1/2 inch. He said he felt a slight puff of gas on the face but that was it. Looking at it afterwards it appears the ogive of the .308 round was a perfect match for the shoulder of the .270 chamber. I think the luckiest part of the whole deal is that the fusion is a pretty soft core and swaged down. I would hate to see what would have happened if it had been one of the TSX handloads.

All in all we were both lucky and everyone walked away with all their parts and no extra holes. Feel free to pass this on where ever you feel it will do any good.

Wow. Thanks for sharing that.

Glad to hear no one was hurt.

Did a somewhat similar thing one time - fired a .30-30 in my .45-70. Both are Marlins and are vitual twins. My fault.

With plugs and muffs I didn't even hear the powder or primer discharge, just the "clack" of the hammer dropping. Didn't feel any recoil and in fact thought it was a dud.

Also in the second photo that is not a cracked lug, it is something reflecting off of the bolt, but thanks for the PM about it.

I would say we have necked up the .308 case about as much as we can. Now that fireforming is done we are ready to go with a no neck .295 TCTG. Should be able to fit about 60grs of powder.

Holy mackerel!!

Certainly speaks well for the Tikka!

Ted

Your friend is not alone in the old firing a 308 in a 270 trick. Must confess I did that one myself in the mid 90s.

I took two Remington 700s to the range to work on some handloads. Both of these rifles had HS Precision stocks both had the same type and power scope and looked identical in every way except for a 270 Win long action and 308 Win short action.

Fired a group from the 308 and swapped guns to the other Remington 270 while the other one cooled. About than a range buddy stopped by to give me some 338 bullets he did not want anymore talked to him about 10 minutes. Like an idiot, I forgot I switched rifles and never even checked.

I had switched powders in the next batch of 308 rounds to be fired luckily they were a starting load out of a manual. I fired the round and it when low by a few inches. Thought that was odd. Than I noticed hard bolt lift but it extracted anyway.

I was horrified when I looked at the case. It looked just like yours except the case in mine did not rupture or leak gas. But the primer was very flat looking. I packed up and went home talking to myself for being so stupid.

It never even occurred to me a 308 Win will fire in a 270 Win.

I had been handloading since the mid 70s and never had a problem, thought I was real careful handloader LOL. I learned my lesson and don't bring along both calibers to the range or hunting anymore.

Anyway good to hear no one was hurt.

Man, that says a lot about how tough the Tikka rifles are.

The .270 / .308 combination is a very dangerous one. Somewhere I have a chart showing the cartridges that will "cross chamber" and a it had a subsection with the most dangerous conbinations -- and that is where this combo was listed.

Interesting that the .308 bullet was sized down to .277 and still landed on the target! That 165gr slug would have been rather long after being swaged to .277!

I still can't warm up to the Tikka's because I think "real rifles" are made of walnut and blued steel and have no plastic... but they are strong and usually shoot extremely well.

I'm glad that such a strong rifle with good gas control was the one involved and not something like a pre-64 Win model 70. Now before the howling starts from the "M70 is the best crowd", they are lovely rifles and I'd hunt with one anytime. However,your friend would likely be minus his right eye (i.e. the one that lines up with the left bolt raceway) with a genuine pre-64 Model 70.

John
PS: I've actually consulted this "dangerous cartridge combination" chart when choosing a new calibre in order to avoid this sort of accident. I always take at least 3 rifles to the shooting range at once to allow a hot barrel to cool while shooting another -- I don't want to tempt fate!

Wow! Good safety reminder! Thanks for sharing the photos & story.

Thanks for the post. I'm heading to the range in a few minutes, with three rifles and this post will have me thinking a little "extra" about safety.

This could easily happen to anybody. I've gotten to where I keep my ammo (MTM boxes) on the ground next to my bench and only keep one box on the bench at a time. Same thing goes for powder canisters on my load bench. Too easy to get distracted....

Had my .223 and .204 both at the bench at the same time, and an MTM ammo box for each. Went to close the bolt, and thank gooddness it wouldn't close. Wrong ammo in the wrong gun! Only one gun and one box of ammo on the bench now! I'm 55 years old, and this was the first time, but a very good lesson!
Virgil B.

seeing as I only shoot/reload for a few different chamberings right now, I also take an "extra measure" in that each chambering I have has a different colored ammo box, and each one has the chambering written on it with a big fat sharpee marker ...

it scares the hell out of me to think about accidentally trying to fire the wrong ammo in a rifle ...

varmintsinc ... you and your buddy are lucky ...

Plastic bolt shroud ??? Dosen't sound tough to me.

Do you mean that the Tikka survived unscathed? That is certainly a testimony to the quality of said rifle...

After trying to chamber a 9.3x62 cartridge in an '06 once, I make it my personal policy to place all guns and rifles in a place other than the shooting bench. Then when I switch rifles, the ammo is returned to the ammo box and ONLY appropriate ammo is placed on the bench with the corresponding rifle. As I don't need any additional holes in my cranium, and I prefer to retain all my favored appendages... My policy is strictly enforced and adhered to by not only myself, but all shooting buddies present at any given time.

Grasshopper

Fair enough. I meant tough as somebody on this board once put it, "catastrophic microsecond self-disassembly" and regarding protecting the shooter.

I presume the plastic shroud is only for appearance, but, yes, presumably if they made the shroud out of steel there would have been even less damage. Still, protecting the shooter so well with such a mis-match is fairly impressive.

For aesthetic reasons, I will stick to steel and walnut (though I do have some synthetic stocked rifles).

John

"Plastic" can be made stronger than most people think...

Note that some cartridge mis-matches are not dangerous. Many simply won't chamber, so these are a non-issue. I don't worry about chambering one of my .375 H&H loads in my 7mm Rem Mag for example...

Also, as long as the bore size is smaller, many of the belted magnums will interchange without any risk of fireworks because they headspace on their belt <insert Homer Simpson "doh" here>.

Somewhere I have the case from a friend's 7mm Rem Mag factory load fired in a .458 Win Mag rifle. Didn't develop enough pressure to blow the case out very well, but supposedly the bullet did leave the rifle in the general direction of the target. I bet it was tumbling, rather than spinning on its axis though.

John

I walked into a shop just after a guy fired a 30-06 thru a 257 STW. What saved him was the 30-06 was loaded with 125 B-tips. That thin jacketed bullet got a little longer when he pulled the trigger. The rifle was a Rem 700 and the extractor was the that had to be replaced. These new actions are tougher than we think. thank god!

One rifle, one box of ammo sounds about right to me. I occasionally find some odd looking pieces of brass at our range, so it might happen more than some suspect?

Closest thing I know of personally, was the time a buddy rolled a 7mm ball down a .308 barrel at a woodchuck two or three times, got all red-arsed about the large "groups" in the hayfield and worked hisself into a major frazzle over it. Eventually his son asked him if he had carried that 300 Weatherby down there into the field, with some 7mmx300Wby. cartridges in another pocket.

Bingo, another mystery solved with no harm done.