.22 Cartridge Blowout

**Trundle** · 30-12-2014, 19:01

Spent the day at the range with my family.

We had our own little 3 gun shoot and the kids had huge fun.

On our final stage my wife was shooting her .22 Unique and had a blowout on the 2nd round. The gun had been used the whole day (over 300 rounds)
On previous shoots it has been a very catholic gun as it will digest any .22 ammo without any feeding issues.

My opinion is that it's not a cartridge failure, but a battery issue.

Attached are some pic's immediately post shoot. (She swapped out mags to finish)

My thinking looking at the case, is there is a notable bulge just ahead of the rim. Your opinions would be appreciated.

**ARM505** · 31-12-2014, 06:47

Having had one of these recently, I think the bulge is because of the blowout, not the reason for it (edit to add: as you probably know, and are mentioning to confirm your suspicions of out of battery firing). It looks like an out of battery firing, as you say. Maybe you can test to see if the gun will drop the hammer using a fired cartridge while keeping it just out of battery? It may well be just a dirty chamber, the round didn't fully chamber because of this, and when fired without being fully closed it blew (as it would)

Edit to add: Hmmmmm...just noticed that ammo you were using.....I'd always used S&B/Winchester in my rifle - however, by what must be an odd coincidence, I was ALSO using that Guerilla ammo for the first time when I had my blowout - maybe they're ever so slightly more towards the fatter end of the allowable spec and don't chamber as easily? Maybe they're more easily fired by a lighter strike (extractor slamming on a chambered round in my case, maybe a lighter OOB strike in yours?) Who knows...

**Trundle** · 31-12-2014, 08:13

Thanks for the response.

Will be cleaning today and I'll have a gander and a few options.

Interesting on the same ammo. My first thought was sub-standard ammo, but it's always easy to blame the manufacturer. I gave it some thought on the way home and then rechecked the pic's. Hence my out-of-battery suspicion.

If anyone else has had this happen it would be most interesting.

**Raymond Rundle** · 31-12-2014, 08:27

I cannot give you a reason why this happened...however I have a Model 71 Beretta that shoots any ammo, when I use Guerrila like you were shooting the exact same thing happened to me more that once.

**Maroelas** · 31-12-2014, 10:00

Hi 45Trundle,

No idea about the bulge. But my .22 Unique (bolt action) struggle to feed hollow points (Winchester). Have had anything done to your feed ramp?

**DYA** · 31-12-2014, 10:35

I don't think it is a out of battery problem, more than likely a ammo problem, I can remember about 25 or so years ago as a high school boy I brought CIL .22 ammo and had a similar problem with it in my late dad's BRNO Mod 1. The dealer sold me the ammo wanted to blame it on our rifle when we returned the unused ammo. Lo and behold when he tried it in his rifle a similar situation occurred.

**Trundle** · 31-12-2014, 14:39

OK just ran a few tests.

Basically used a thin piece of card to open the slide in increments. I doubled the card each time to increase the gap in the slide.

The Unique .22 fires OOB to a point where the action is open by 3.5mm

So, it still could be an OOB firing issue.

However we are editing some video of the shoot and I will be keen to see what the FA looks like immediately after the issue.

**treeman** · 31-12-2014, 19:42

My son uses that ammo and moaned some thing hurt his face once. I ashamedly did not think of this or check ground. - is it dangerous ?. CZ rifle

**nkosi** · 01-01-2015, 01:55

As rare as rim fire ammo case failures are, last year a guy at our club had a high end Eley .22 rim fire case rupture in a bench rest rifle - the 1st he has ever had & he has been shooting for about 50 years, so it can happen, even with expensive ammo.

**Trundle** · 01-01-2015, 12:07

Checked the vid, and there are two clear shots of the FA. Slide is definitely in battery.

So IMO this is quite probably an ammo failure.

I still have another brick, so dunno if I want to keep shooting it or not?

Nkosi, yes, I can believe that any ammo can fail, however this is a new kid on the block and there are already a number of reported failures.