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I was RCO for one of my clubs at the weekend. One of the shooters had a round that didn't go off. When he extracted it, the case came out with a fired primer and the bullet was stuck in the lands.

The strange part about it was that the case was still full of powder.

I've never seen this before. Anyone?

Yes but I could not explain it either.

Suspect powder or contam powder?

blocked flash hole ?
primer cleared it and pressurised case enough to push bullet out, but in clearing didn't have enough left to ignite powder.

+1.

The primer must have supplied sufficient energy to propel the bullet into the rifling, but the main charge didn't ignite for some reason.

Did anybody try to light a sample of the charge with a match/lighter to see if it burned OK?

Les wrote:+1.

The primer must have supplied sufficient energy to propel the bullet into the rifling, but the main charge didn't ignite for some reason.

OK?

Exactly this ^

Yes, as an RCO I have seen a few of these over the years. Have stopped twice now shooters racking another one in too which would be catastrophic.

Could be contaminated powder. Oil can do this quite effectively.

Degraded or compromised powder. Used to see this a lot when old fellas were still loading their Enfiekds with rusty tins of ICI propellants that they had kept in the shed for 30 years. Basically a partial ignition.

Sim G wrote:Degraded or compromised powder. Used to see this a lot when old fellas were still loading their Enfiekds with rusty tins of ICI propellants that they had kept in the shed for 30 years. Basically a partial ignition.

To be fair that does make sense. Primers are pretty pokey and if they don't get powder to go there is probably something wrong with it. Lionel once kindly gave me a miss fired .50 for my collection. It was that wet internally the powder was all caked.

I had this with some 9mm ammo that had been poorly stored. The powder granules had lost their shape when i pulled the bullets and the powder smelled 'foisty'. It still burned when i tried it though. In fact far more efficiently than i expected and i got 3" wide 3' high column of blue/green flame right in the face

Thanks everyone. I'll pass those thoughts on the the shooter (he was using reloads).

No we didn't think to try lighting the powder.

Blackstuff wrote:I had this with some 9mm ammo that had been poorly stored. The powder granules had lost their shape when i pulled the bullets and the powder smelled 'foisty'. It still burned when i tried it though. In fact far more efficiently than i expected and i got 3" wide 3' high column of blue/green flame right in the face

Did you not do genies when you were a kid (and still do). You weren't a proper kid in Sunderland around november time if you still had your full compliment of eyebrows......