this is the result of a reloading mistake
Man came in with a AR15 he'd just finished building(not his first), and a box of ammo he'd loaded to test fire it. Came about a few minutes later with a dazed look on his face and said something like "I think I grabbed the wrong powder." This is the upper; the lower had, I was told, a bit of a bulge on the sides but that was about it. You could salvage the handguard, and that's about it. The bolt, bolt carrier, upper receiver, probably the barrel extension from the look, all trashed.
Amazingly, he was pretty much undamaged other than the shock and a couple of scratches/bruises. Let us keep this to put in our reloading room to show people "PAY ATTENTION IS A RULE!" In this case he grabbed a powder bottle without actually looking at the label and grabbed A1680 instead of the BLC-2 he intended, 1680 being a MUCH faster-burning propellant.
4 comments:
one of the 100,000 reasons I don't reload........................
The lathe hall at the RAEME training base at Bandiana, Vic, Aus, has (had...1992) a display panel with a collection of 3.7" HAA and 40mm/L56 Bofors barrels that had failed in various dramatic and impressive ways. Bore obstructions, HE bore detonations, improper heat treat, etc. Some with bulges, some with cracks too, all the way to Looney Tunes style flower petals. Guarantee some of those crews had nasty injuries and deaths.
Best to be slow and methodical and work strictly from checklists when fiddling withh boomboom things. Be anal, or the last thing to cross your mind may be your own bunghole. Worse, someone else may also suffer.
Stefan v.
I also mark the powder type on the lid and whether it's open.
One of my favorite missions as an Army EOD tech was dislodging stuck 155 rounds from the barrels of M109 howitzers. We did it hydro-dynamically (water and small C-4 charges down the barrel) and it always drew a lot of attention from the brass. Do it wrong and you've cost the tax payers a lot of money, do it right and the gun still has to go back to depot maintenance for tear down and inspection. Big guns can blow up just like little ones. Good times! Eod1sg Ret
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