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Out of battery discharge: Repair? Prevention?


July Smith

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10 hours ago, Cypress Sam, SASS #10915 said:

 

Junky,  I designed the test in the video and did it with the same .38 rifle in the “blow up” video.  The lever safety is intact and functioning.  The pin visible in the primed case is to stop the cartridge from chambering by about 1/4” (simulating a bulged case or obstructed chamber).  The lever is slammed closed and the inertia of the firing pin extension fires the primer.  The firing pin spring is stock.  This test is very repeatable.  I have done it about a dozen times with the primer firing EVERY time.  I also tried it with a titanium extension and it only fired about half the time.

 

I was only able to get the primer to discharge by slapping the lever closed.  I couldn’t get mine to go off by just closing the lever hard in normal levering.  I think that Traveling Kid’s OOB discharge was from a hammer fall - not inertia.

Wow that is surprising! That is with the stock Uberti firing pin spring and it's not cut down or anything!? Hat's off to you for some good info....pun intended. 

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On 8/15/2019 at 9:49 AM, travelin kid #51083 said:

hammer never fell

 

Sorry, Traveling Kid, I missed this when I said I thought it was from a hammer fall.  I was not able to get a primer to fire by levering the gun really hard.  In your video, you don’t seem to be “slamming” the lever either.  Maybe you had a stuck firing pin that impacted the primer hard enough to set it off.  It would be interesting to see the primer in the fired case.

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Check the firing pin spring.  Mine had broken and wound up on itself.  sometimes the spring would jam up in the channel and cause the firing pin to protrude just enough so when shooting it as fast as I can it would discharge.  There was no visible damage the 1st time and I was able to finish  the match still scratching my head.  The 2nd time it happened I bent the lever enough so I would not contact the lever safety.

But once it was fully disassembled, the broken spring was pretty obvious. 

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On 8/13/2019 at 10:06 AM, Abilene, SASS # 27489 said:

July, at the match Sunday Dutch Van Horn told me about the OBD and broken lever.  Holy cow.  Glad you weren't hurt.  Never heard of the lever breaking before.  I had seen in the results that you had 2 misses, so I asked him if you had 2 rounds left in the rifle and he said yes.  So the stupid OBD cost you a clean match as well!  My vote is for the firing pin sticking forward.

Yes, it did cost me a clean match, but that's no big deal.  I could have earned a new alias like "one eye July" or "nine fingers." 

 

It happened on the one particular stage with the split shotgun and split pistol targets.  That particular pattern I had shot as the "bonus stage" the previous month.  I was trying to beat my previous time, but figured out how to blow a clean match and gun instead.

 

I picked up a new lever from C&I but the rifle is going to take a pro to make run again.  I'll be sending it off to Boomstick by the end of the day.

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I cut down the firing pin spring a couple of years ago as I got faster in the search of  cycling faster.  I had, not an OOB, but the rifle went off as soon as the links locked up a couple of times.  Some misses, some hit.  I went back to the original spring but still had occasional bangs as the links locked up but before I hit the trigger.  I went to titanium bolt followers which helped for awhile, but eventually came back to an OOB problem where I hit the trigger but the lever banged back against my hand instead of me levering it.  Red River Ray ( I think, so forgive me if I have the wrong person) said it's because the lock time was too slow and I was starting to lever the rifle just as the primer was going off.  The solution was to increase the hammer tension, which also helped with jacking out rounds.  Right now, I think I have the happy medium.

 

Sometimes it's a fine line when you're trying to go fast.

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I'm thinking the biggest contributing factor is poor quality control for ammo. Bad crimps, bulges, etc. I've had an OOBD and it was due to some questionable ammo years ago. Last weekend I observed an OOBD due to poor quality ammo.

I drop all of mine into a case gauge or pistol cylinder, and I do a visual inspection before it goes into the box, and then again when I place ammo in the loading strips. When guys are running 10 rounds out of the rifle in less than 3 seconds it's paramount to QC check rifle ammo.

 

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Amen Assassin.  That is why I really like Shalako Tuckers new loading block. His hole tolerances are close so they check for split or bulged cases as well as high primers. Cant give it enough thumbs up as I only got two. http://cowboybullets.com/Loading-Block_p_97.html

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Shooter had an OBD today at our match, classic jinking & forcing of a stuck bullet. Luckily it just blew the bolt back & he was cut on the thumb by the fp extension. Full load of BP 44-40. Lucky!

DC

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Very lucky.  Similar case that happened last year caused the shooter to take a fall and ended up with a concussion that took months to clear.   It was also a 45 Colt case of black powder.  Most of rifle action was also damaged.  

 

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18 hours ago, Don Coyote, SASS #63736 said:

Shooter had an OBD today at our match, classic jinking & forcing of a stuck bullet. Luckily it just blew the bolt back & he was cut on the thumb by the fp extension. Full load of BP 44-40. Lucky!

DC

 It was a '66, only been shot a few times, not sure when the shooter had cleaned it last, but the firing pin extension, and firing pin came back at the shooters hand, it appears the small pin that connects the firing pin extension to the bolt broke upon the out of battery discharge. Shooter indicated that the lever was bent after the occurrence. Speculation that it was a bad round that failed to chamber, fiddling with the lever to try to get the round to chamber set off the primer and resulting round. Scary, fortunately the shooter's thumb was the only injury.

TB

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47 minutes ago, Turquoise Bill, SASS #39118 said:

 It was a '66, only been shot a few times, not sure when the shooter had cleaned it last, but the firing pin extension, and firing pin came back at the shooters hand, it appears the small pin that connects the firing pin extension to the bolt broke upon the out of battery discharge. Shooter indicated that the lever was bent after the occurrence. Speculation that it was a bad round that failed to chamber, fiddling with the lever to try to get the round to chamber set off the primer and resulting round. Scary, fortunately the shooter's thumb was the only injury.

TB

Have a suspicion it was a stock rifle or close to it. He had trouble loading it on the 1st 3 stages.

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It was supposed to have been short stroked by someone in OK, he is going to contact the gunsmith. Don't know what other work he had done.

 

 

TB

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