#6. Third World country military surplus.

Before everyone jumps on the bad reloading bandwagon, let’s take a walk down memory lane.

In Vietnam we had spooks that would plant over charged rounds in with the enemy’s ammo supply. The failures were to cause morale issues.

fred reloaded his own ammunition at home

Old rule of thumb for Korean 06:  PS headstamp=Pretty Safe.  KA=back away.

I had a Romanian 8mm split like that in my FN49.
Didn't really do much.

Now I had a full case head let go in a PSL that I built.
That one was bad.
Albanian brass, handloads and I tested them first in my Hungarian m44 type carbine.
It spread the receiver sides, blew the top cover into my face scuffing up my beak, broke the hand guards.
I wear safety eye glasses and every bit of oil and grease that was previously in the receiver was on them.
But I was alright.
I guess don't reload ex commie brass cases is the only thought.

I runa  shooting range and ive seen 7 guns explode in the last 8 years in my presence. Ive also had around 10 others that i didnt witness but customers told me about about. Every... Single .... One.... involved handloads. About a third people claimed were not handloads and then in subsequent discussions let it slip that yeah they were handloads.

Fred had a slam fire/ OOB round.

Probably Fred’s fault. We all fuck up sometimes when handloading. We usually catch it.

Been shooting/reloading for darn near 50 years now.

I've had brand new factory ammo cases fail.  Somewhere I've got a Hornady .30-06 case with a hole burned/blown through the side about half way up the case wall.  Also had a Remington .44 magnum case with a hole through the side of it.

That's two.  No damage to either gun.

One time I had a 9MM case blow the rim off the case in a PreB CZ85.  Reload, of course.  First time the case was reloaded.  A slow burning powder that absolutely cannot be double charged and was not overcharged.  Load is almost 10% below the listed max charge.  No damage to the gun.  The CZ75/85 pistols are built like tanks.

Later, while resizing 9MM cases I had the bottom/rim pop out of the case.  Better to have it happen there than when it fired in the pistol.

Yes, sometimes cases are just weak in a spot here or there.

The first two happened in the early 80's (factory ammo) and no pictures.  The other two happened in the last 6 or 8 years and I have pictures of those.

Reloading is bad/dangerous.  Yeah, must be true as people on the internet say it is.

CZ85 barrel with the case wall still stuck in the chamber.  Had to field strip it so I could get a finger tip grip on the case wall and pull it out of the chamber.  Assembled it and went on shooting it.  Tanks.

Attached File



The one that came apart while resizing it.

Attached File

I have separate powder measures for rifle and pistol powders.  It's cheap insurance for events like this.

We had a similar event with a club member using a bolt gun.  Pistol powder in a rifle case was the only realistic explanation.  They were lucky they didn't have eye damage with the powder and brass fragments blowing back from the bolt.  Always wear eye protection!

Eldest Son.  Today we do that w/ .300 Blackout.

There's the urban myth of the tidy wife combining powders to "neaten up" the reloading bench.  Everyone says,"My wife would NEVER do that."  Everyone says,"My wife would never divorce me," too.

But probably just bad brass.

Another Kaboom story - Mossberg 500:  https://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/2719922_500-KaBoom.html

Given Fred's bolt was locked in battery, how could it have initiated the primer out of battery, then magically finished closing the bolt with 50,000 psi of gas going the opposite direction?

Re-loading is the same process as loading, you are responsible for QC.
I have had many factor new round split or fail in some manner, once fired brass has an advantage, to me anyway.

Lots of bad surplus out there and some guns do not tolerate it.
That Paki 7.62 might be OK in a bolt gun but will punish an automatic same for Turk 8mm.


All I fired was my own handloads shooting service rifle for years and never a mishap, kaboom or misfire.

Tell me more about your work on those two calibers.



I knew a guy that blew up his M1A much like the Op. It was assumed to be bad bolts.

High primer? Are you Fred? You tell me what happened.

Edit:

Hell, maybe this could have been a neck tension issue. Bullet sets back upon chambering, huge pressure spike results.

M14 fired brass doesn’t last long. Case head separations show up sooner in these rifles. Could be one was starting to separate (just a slight crack 1/2” up from the case head) and Fred didn’t see it. Case let go. Yes?

My question about the firing pin tail (looks like a flag/flap) is relevant to the Springfield (commercial) made M-1As.  It is possible for the firing pin tail to break and if so, the firing pin could be unrestrained.

Given the bolt was in battery when the gun blew, high primers and broken firing pins do not seem of much concern in this instance.

How could a high primer result in a destroyed rifle with the bolt LOCKED in battery?

I get that this is GD, but some of you are not even bothering to think through the problem.

Lol, you can 20x charge a 308 if you use pistol powder.

LOL we've already gone over this.  Please try to keep up.

Half of GD is on the left side of the Bell Curve.

I, too, have had case head separations in factory ammo.  It's not common, but it happens.  Brass cases are drawn and then annealed to prevent this, but sometimes a bad one slips through.

I have also had them split lengthwise.  If you shoot enough you will find some bad specimens.

I think common sense could come to the conclusion that attributing any specific cause to a “kaboom” based on a 40-year-old witness statement is very optimistic.

When a round fires, cylcles, and the NEXT round goes unexpectedly, the parties involved might not notice two separate reports.

You need a Snickers? 😘

No need to get so worked up about what did or didn’t happen to a stranger’s friend’s rifle. Yes, this is GD.

You’re the genius that stated in your OP that you sold your M1A immediately afterward, blaming the rifle.

Are you sure about that?
For both rifles, the M1 and the M14, they designed a safety so that won't happen

Some people just don't trust themselves.

Are you drunk, genius?  The first round fired.  I saw the bullet strike.  The second round KB'd.

Take a remedial reading course, re-read the OP, and try again.

I sold the rifle.  The KB was one of several reasons.  The gas vent hole in the bolt is completely useless for its intended purpose.  Look for yourself, and compare it to gas vents on, say, any bolt rifle.  It's a poor design.

There are a finite number of possible causes.

Pistol powder in the case is a nope, otherwise the first round fired would have KB'd.  So we rule that out.

We rule out a squib because the first round fired fine, and I saw the bullet strike.  The first round ejected and the second round chambered fully.  The bolt locked up normally, because we could see it in the ruined rifle.  It's right there in the OP.

Nobody has denied the gas vent hole is useless.  Nobody has denied that the metal between the ejector spring tunnel and the bottom of the bolt is literally paper thin.  These things can not be denied because they are true based on observation.

The bolt split precisely along the tunnel.  This means the tunnel was pressurized, and it blew off the bottom of the bolt - a TRW bolt, no less.  So, what caused the tunnel to be pressurized?  Two likely causes: a pierced primer or a case head failure.  Pierced primers and case head failures aren't rare.  I have experienced both myself, on several occasions.

There's nothing wrong with my memory.  I still remember the names of all my elementary school teachers.  

I mentioned that this could also be the result of a case head separation. That can wreck any number of rifles. M1As are especially susceptible to this with reloaded ammo. I’ve seen it. As have you.

Now, when I start a thread on anything, especially if I have a tale to tell about something that might be questioned by the people I pitch the story to, I provide pics as evidence. And if I DON’T, it’s accepted that my story might be challenged a little more than expected.

I don’t know what happened to your buddy’s rifle. I’m glad he’s ok. I like the M14 and M1 rifle design. But you sound like a full blown retard when you blame the rifle design for the failure of your friend’s rifle when you admit that he was shooting handloads. It was probably his fault.

And my very first reply in this thread was to make the point that reloaders, including me, sometimes make mistakes.

Pistol powder did this

Same thing happened to a friend of mine. He was shooting South African surplus ammo. We thought squib at first too but the barrel was fine. We never figured it out.

He had a cut right above his knee but was otherwise unaffected.

There were no pics because I didn't have a camera and it was 20 years before the advent of cell phones.  Perhaps you missed that too.

You sound like a full blown retard for not grokking the OP and subsequent posts.  I write very clearly.  And I answered all subsequent questions.

Yes, reloaders make mistakes.  But I explained it couldn't have been the wrong powder BECAUSE the first round fired fine.  It is impossible to overcharge a .308 case using normal rifle powders for the .308.

The M1-A bolt is a piss poor design from a gas venting perspective.  We notice you have completely avoided that issue, which is the most likely cause which I have enumerated several times ITT.

Why not post pics of the gas vent hole on your M1-A bolt?

Easy now, OP was there when the ammo was loaded.

This is the fault of a poor design that has more millions of rounds through it without incident than almost any design on the planet. WWII and Korea (and Nam) are full of unexplained KBs due to shitty engineering.

lol no

The GD Bell Curve strikes again!

Because I don’t disassemble the rifle unless absolutely necessary. Accuracy (repeatable accuracy) depends on this with these rifles. People like your buddy know this.

Edit, that is a poor design on these rifles, but not a safety issue.

Only a retard would say something like that.

Remove magazine.  Close bolt.  Take pic of bottom of bolt thru the mag well. Post pic.

You really have no idea about M1-As, do you?  

Well yeah, fair point. You retard.

Here’s an M1A pic, from one retard to another. 1982 SA, all USGI less the receiver. Dummy kit for the shaft lock.
Attached File

I expect, based on OP’s previous posts that this happened out in the desert in California.

Back then there were two kinds of people out in the desert there: people in Jeeps and off-road vehicles, and people doing hallucinogenic drugs. Sometimes both.

This incident could just as easily have been caused by CJ-7 issues or shrooms as by pistol powder.

That was bat country out there, after all.

I still don't think you can rule out pistol powder or pistol powder contamination, particularly if you have no evidence as to rounds torn down later, if your friend loaded pistol powders, & what his decontamination procedures were.

It most likely was weak brass, but we're troubleshoting from 40 years later, no pics of the rifle, no specification as to the load, etc.  We can rule out certain things like OOB, caused by broken firing pins or high primers.  Based on your recollection, we can rule out squib.  Based on rifle powders & the .308 case, we can rule out overcharging with rifle powder.

That still leaves:

1) undercharging
2) weak brass
3) punctured primer
4) pistol powder contamination
5) straight up pistol powder, with the 1st round being loaded in a different loading session, the 2nd being a complete fuckup
6) accidental load of an extremely heavy bullet instead of the correct mass

1, 4, 5, & 6 are all possible failures on the part of the reloader, and 2 can be caused by repeatedly using brass and ignoring visible issues, which would also be the fault of the reloader.

Despite the M1A bolt design not handling gas particularly well (albeit well enough to protect the shooter, as does the AR-15), the failure of the rifle occurred following the failure of the brass case.  What caused that case to fail is unknown, but there is a short number of possibilities.

I mostly agree and stated so in the OP and subsequent posts.

Pistol powder substitution is a no-go, or the first round would have KBd the gun.  It was the second round.

Case head failure is possible on brand new factory brass/ammo.  Ask me how I know.

Bullet substitution is a no-go.  He didn't reach into the cupboard above the bench and grab another bullet, different from the rest.  This makes no sense.

We agree, every time a piece of brass is loaded it causes some add'l. weakness.  This is indisputable.

Brass failure or primer failure is the cause IMO, and primer failure cannot be predicted.  Ask me how I know.  As a poor lad, I reloaded .22-250 brass at least 10 times.  I had several case head separations, each time it was safely contained with no damage whatsoever to the Rem 700 I was shooting.  I also had some primer failures, and remember well that the primer pockets got large enough they would no longer hold the primers.  That's how I knew it was time to toss them.   The gas went somewhere safely, and there was zero damage to me or the gun.  I put thousands of rounds thru that gun, case and primer failures and all.

In any event, the M1-A bolt is a piss poor design for handling gas escape regardless of the cause.  I have challenged above posters to post pics of the bottom of a M1-A bolt showing the gas vent hole, and they are afraid to do so because that would verify my assertion and they are too cowardly to do that.  That says a lot about them.  I cannot fix cowardice.  The gas vent hole is literally 1 mm in diam. and it is 87% blocked by the ejector spring.  The thickness of the metal between the ejector tunnel and the bolt exterior at that point is also about 1 mm.  You cannot contain 50k psi with 1 mm of steel, I don't care what kind of steel it is.  Piss.  Poor.  Design.  Period.  But don't trust my word, look for yourselves.  "Not handling gas particularly well" is a gross understatement.

It is not a coincidence that the bolt peeled PRECISELY along the spring tunnel.  It is a certainty that the spring tunnel was pressurized.  The cause of the pressurization will never be known.  A failed case head or pierced primer happens often enough even in new ammo (ask me how I know) that it should not result in catastrophic failure of the gun and endangerment of the shooter.  By the grace of God he wasn't badly injured.

The facts are what they are.  Facts are stubborn things.

The whole point of this thread is you loudly declaiming that the M1A bolt is a poor design b/c it self destructed and destroyed the rifle.

You are aware that ARs, when they fail catastrophically, banana peel the upper, resulting in utter destruction of the rifle, yet very little damage to the operator?

When looked at the M1A bolt in that light, that might be an ideal engineered failure point in a semi-auto rifle.

We have an M1A in the safe - I am not going to pull it out & take pics of the bolt when you can simply go onto any search engine & post pics of the M14/M1A bolt yourself.

In my mind, 4 & 5 remain a possibility, as it is unlikely rounds 1 & 2 were hand loaded sequentially, and you present no evidence that such a fuck up did not occur, other than "your buddy was a careful reloader & couldn't have do so."  That's no evidence at'all.

Same w/ #6.  Without recovering the bullet 40 years ago, you don't know what bullet weight was fired, only the bullets left loaded in his cartridge box - and you weren't present at the tear down, nor do you profess to know what bullets he had in stock when he loaded this particular lot of bullets - or lots.

I can't wait to see what controversies you stir up w/ your FAL kaboom story, and what important information in that story is not available.

This thread.... man.  Sometimes I worry I came across as a combative jerk at times.  I feel better now.  

As to pierced primer?  I've pierced more primers than I can shake a stick at.  A pierced primer isn't detonating a rifle and sending wood pieces flying past someone's face.  There's just not enough opening for enough gas flow to do that kind of a kaboom.

Here's the infamous video of an M1Garand that Kaboomed, just like OP's, shooting Wolf Steel I believe (or something like that.)


Observe how she manipulated the gun, and eased the bolt home, rather than letting it slam.  Looks to me like that was probably "insufficient battery", where the bolt partially closed.  A completely no-lug engagement OOB will (I think at least) have unsupported brass and/or push back the bolt and "explode", but that explosion happens fairly quickly while pressure is still building and not at full pressure yet - and vents while still "low".  With a Kaboom, that isn't that dramatic, and can even just be cleared and continued.   Those happen at Camp Perry and result in damaged recievers from the heal getting smacked at times, but often no "explosion" like that video.  

However, A bolt that's barely closed "insufficient battery", I'll call it, allows the casing to build up to near full-pressure, before the lug engagement just isn't enough and it slips.  The round was fully "chambered", allowing the pressure to build.  now the 58,000 PSI full-pressure round pops the bolt and lugs open which aren't engaged enough to hold that - and that full-pressure is released all at once.  And worse, from a larger gas reservoir, since the bullet has started moving some by now, meaning more gas, than just the volume of the casing itself.  This ends up in a spectacular kaboom sending pieces of wood past the husband and cameraman - just like OP described.

This is one of the flaws of the M1A / M1 Garand system - they can do this.  An AR basically cannot, because an AR bolt has to be fully closed and rotated locked before the firing pin can reach the primer.  I've done this way more times than I'm proud to admit with AR's.  The bolt will fullly bottom out and start to rotate, so it's in there, but it doesn't have enough ass to fully rotate and stops.  Even more scary, with AR's, I've even had the hammer hit hard enough to finish closing the bolt completely now - but not go off.  It'll mind-fuck you good too, because you'll look at the ejection port and see that BCG is fully bottomed out home (after the click), so why is there no primer strike and why didn't the gun go off?   That's how safe the AR system is on this topic.  

While in the M1A / Garand system, that bolt is bottomed out and the pin can engage before it rotates.  In theory it can't, but in practice, it often can.  And kaboom.

Since OP friend was a match reloader of an M1A; it's entirely likely casings were sized rather tight, and bolt didn't fully close.  My Garand brass would stretch quite a bit, and it's quite an effort to get those casings properly sized back down, and many of them are still quite tight.  And with that, Garand and M1A kabooms aren't uncommon at all with reloaders.  I haven't yet, but to be honest, I think I'm probably lucky.  I've run about 6000-10000 rounds through Garands (I shoot a lot, and use to run Garand Heavy), and haven't had a Kaboom, but it's a risk.  I'm in the GCA (or was, before they got cheap about supporting Camp Perry competitors); and they have articles on this, and Kabooms definitely happen, and with those guns, they happen to reloaders.  I've got lots of reloaded ammo that's quite tight, and in others' tighter bolt actions take a little effort to close.  


but no, a pierced primer isn't doing that.
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a4or2A6_460sv.mp4

Or OP's friend botched the powder and contaminated.  There are a LOT of people who would NEVER but ever EVER screw up .300 BO in their 5.56 gun, and then kaboom with a 150 gr slug pounded out of the barrel.   I'm going to say probably not, and it was most likely an oversize casing that prevented proper complete bolt closure, but really - an assessment from this far away from a retelling of a story that's 40 years old repeated with far more confidence than a human memory is actually capable of, is a setting where it'll never really be more than conjecture, of course.  

Given the bolt was sent off to Springfield w/ the bolt and case head locked in the chamber, I'm leaning towards your theory not being applicable here.

Ah, I missed that.  If the bolt remained locked, then you're right, that can't be it.   In that case it sounds more like a catostophic overpressure event.   Which general means bore-obstruction (which isn't the case, since the prior bullet impacted and gun cycled).  So an overchanged reload via pistol powder contamination, or a case-head that just ripped open.  

In terms of pistol powder it's not unreasonable to have 1 or 2 throws of powder if he didn't fully empty it before filling it with rifle powder. The first round out of the magazine is not necessarily the first round loaded from the powder measure.

I'd rather have something break at a weak point then build it so strong that when it breaks it becomes much more dangerous.  Kinda like an AR gas tube.

Attached File

Attached File

Attached File


Notice the pressure test change by simply changing primers and brass on the last page. Now average Joe reloader, using mixed brass and standard loads from any reloading manual, discovers the hard way that Lake City 7.62x51mm brass is already at maximum pressure using published starting loads from virtually every manual.

I didn't know that about the KA ammo, so some listed last week...

I think I have had 1 kaboom with a handloaded .40 round- which was in a different brand casing, in a Gen 2 Glock 22 with the old unsupported chamber issue.  And it was a fairly hot reload as well.  So that particular casing gave up the ghost, but all the others held.  Upgraded to Gen 3, stopped loading at the top end as well, and dumped those casings.

On the other hand, I had 2 kabooms with surplus .308 (Indian, 90’s dated headstamps), and 2 kabooms with commercially reloaded .223 ammo.  

Pulled down all the commercial .223 reloads and powder charges were all over the place.  The Indian also had a shitload of QC issues as it turns out.  

So it isn’t like stuff run on large scale is any safer, at least not when there is no concern given to QC.  Sometimes there are just bad batches of brass.  Hell, I am currently trying to run down info on potential problems with new batches of Winchester #41 primers, concern is they failed to anneal the brass after the primer was punched out of the sheet of brass, and some are failing as a result….  Lots of things can go wrong when dealing with high pressures.

The whole impending competency crisis does not bode well for the shooting sports…

I was shooting some really old battlefield pickup 5.56.  Don't remember the origin, maybe Guat?  Anyway, I was about halfway through a mag when BLAM!!!!  I got a face and hand full of gas and particulates, and my magazine blew out and apart all over the fucking ground.

Corroded case let loose and cracked around the base of the cartridge and the energy went both to driving the bullet, and backward into the action.  

I have had legit brand new commercial ammo let loose - primers and case head failures.  It isn't commonplace, but it isn't rare.  That's why good gun designers build in safety measures, like a good route for the inevitable gases to go.  50k psi ain't beanbag.