Cartridge problem
 

I have a serious question.

A buddy and I were shooting sporting clays, I was out of town and had borrowed his VH 20 . He provided the cartridges, Winchester discount store shells 7/8 at 21/2 dram, ribbed case , steel base.

I shot about three boxes, then right barrel odd noise, odd recoil jump, clear gas exhaust out to the right by my hand. Opened gun, extracted shell normally , checked bore clear, loaded again, pulled trigger and trigger jammed. Looked at right index finger, powder mark across finger directly under outboard edge of right trigger slot, finger not harmed , just black powder mark . Stock cheek on right side split out maybe 1/64. Crack at end of upper frame tong
Didn’t think to go back and try to find cartridge. I’m assuming it was a pierced primer by the symptoms. Dick is sending the gun off to Bachelder . I assume it will need internal wood work, maybe internal pin, and possibly a stock piece may have split off inside. The jammed trigger, I don’t know , the parts are pretty robust but a pivot pin could have bent and jammed or the hammer may have been thrown back and jammed. What ever I thought parts might be needed that I didn’t have and it was best to send it off rather than me trying to fix it.

So,
Is this consistent with a pierced primer?
What is the likely internal damage?
Are the Winchester or other good name cartridges in the low end line not as well quality controlled and more likely to have this happen as opposed to high quality shells like AA’s ?

Finally I guess I’m fortunate that that the escaping hot gas didn’t split my index finger open and leave soot in the wound .

It likely is some wood jamming somehing up. I cannot imagine any metal parts getting damaged in that sort of a scenario.

Punctured primers with a hot enough load can blow the side of a stock head right off. So there is some force there for sure.

I have witnessed this twice by other shooters and have it happened to myself.

all times were pierced primers.
One gun developed wood damage as a result of the above. the other two had pre existing wood issues which is what allowed the gas to escape down thru the trigger area vs blowing out a quarter panel/ stock head panel.

good idea to send her off for inspection/ repair.
the shells were all cheap shells but all had pierced primers.

Dang Bruce. Hard to believe that much pressure could came back into the action thru the firing pin. That is crazy.

The trigger area of the action is open to allow gasses to get there on all hammerless Parkers. Regardless of prior wood issues or not.

Brian,

Not questioning you. But if so why do some blow out quarter panels when they pierce primers.
Again not arguing.

Guess that is correct though. Gas operated semi autos develop enough pressure to work the action and all it takes is a small pin hole. Also makes sense since that pressure would build up since most of action is housed in stock head. That still sounds like a very rare occurrence like a lightening strike hitting something twice but guess it does happen.

When I was kid lifeguarding at a pool a storm came up and lightening struck the chain link fence. Pyrotenics with sparks flying all around the pool. Once was enough an luckily no one was injured and we had just gotten kids out. Two weeks later another thunderstorm comes up and we also get everyone under shelter away from the fences and sure enough the fence got hit again. Very strange given the terrain and all the tall trees by that pool for that to happen.

Sorry to hear that happened and glad nothing happened. I guess shooting gloves do make sense after all. Bruce you need to go buy a lottery ticket.

I would be very suspicious of the Winchester economy shells. The plastic is very prone to splitting. Last summer my son had some and in one box two shells were split clear to the top of the steel head. Perhaps further but we did not dissect them. One was so bad it would not chamber. These were factory loaded shells. I would not be surprised if there was much more than primer gas at play here.

Once I tried to reload some because the hulls are so easy to acquire. I quickly quit as many split longitudinally when inserting the wad. Those hulls/shells are terrible.

Good question, and i was just about to go back and edit my post to explain this.

Earlier hammerless Parkers have hammers that have, what i like to call, a “horn” on the rear of them. This design required a good amount of wood to be removed behind the hammers which would create a good sized pocket in the wood behind each hammer in order for the hammers to draw back. Later on in hammerless manufacture (in the late teens i beleive), this “horn” was removed from the hamers. This made the hammers easier to manufacture and also the head of the stock easier to inlet. It eliminated those large packets from the stock head.

I would speculate that any stock cheeks getting blown off (i have seen examples of this about a dozen times, and repaired a few) are on earlier guns that have the inletted pocket.


And when it comes to the cheap wallyworld winchester/federal shells... you get what you pay for.

Thanks Brian. That makes sense.