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.

The wood was sound on the VH20, no prior damage or visible cracks, no oil soaking. It was a standard commercial pressure load, I’d guess about a 9000 psi chamber pressure in order to cycle those semi autos.

The hull had not split, I would have noticed that on the manual extraction. I don’t reload those shells either because they split after a few reloads , some less. I did have one of the many I shot that day split downwardly from the crimp. Those are harder to pull out and noticeable. Not that one.

Brian, we go through maybe 35,000 rounds of Federal Estate 20 ga cartridges over summer shooting at our BSA camp. They are great shells, right priced for us and never a misfire, hangfire, split case or pierced primer. A little dirty with the powder but the boys have to be taught gun cleaning anyway.

Had the same ammo ruin the ejector timing on one of my Arrieta's. Cheap primers are the culprit. They swell during detonation...everytime. They swell so badly that they make it almost impossible to break open the action to extract the casings. I no longer shoot anyone's steel base ammo unless it's in an auto loader. Typically, Walmart also carries Federal 1-1/8 ounce loads in 7.5, 8 & 9's (Which have Brass Bases). IMHO it's far superior to the Winchester rounds...Never had any trouble with it in any of my fine double guns.

That is an interesting comment and maybe some merit to all or part of it. Indirectly or directly your saying or suggesting brass being may be softer than steel, it can absorb some of the flexing due to primer deformation. Btw are we certain that a so called cheaper primer is the culprit, as compared to more quality primer in a steel case, they might do the same thing. I do know that primer piercing is an issue even with rifle rounds that have brass casings but are at higher pressures. May not be any absolutes or single cause but maybe a combination of things. I will have to admit though I have no knowledge of what causes a primer piercing.

At any rate going forward for me for now that might be something to always consider about not using steel for any breach loading gun, especially some of these older guns. I have some newer sxs and o/u that that for me going forward will give me pause loading steel based shells for any breach loading gun.

My story along these lines involve an older .410 hardware store SxS hammer gun with fluid steel barrels

This was a friends gun which he had shot for several seasons while dove hunting. He was using factory ammo when he pulled up on a dove, pulled the trigger & seconds later he was on the ground holding his right eye screaming in pain. After all the dust settled and we got him emergency medical care, we looked the gun over to see what happened. The hammer was broken into two pieces & the firing pin had blown out the back of the breech ball. We never did find the firing pin. The conclusion we came to for the cause of this failure was a pierced primer that let chamber pressure back into the action which caused the firing pin to blow out and did the hammer damage at the same time.

Luckily my friend was wearing shooting glasses which protected him some. The glasses did shatter and he did loose his vision in that eye. The doctor said that if he hadn't been wearing the glasses there was a good possibility he would have been killed.

I also have a sad story where my best friend was stuck & killed by lightning while we were out dog training in June of '97. We were only about forty feet apart from each other. He was killed and I only had minor muscle/nerve related issues out of the ordeal. Emotionally I still have issues to this day from it.

Holy cow Paul. Brutal story. I know about the one eye thing. It's not fun.

As for Bruce's story, I certainly have noticed the cheapening of shotgun ammo over the years. The bases are of thinner, and cheaper metal, the rims out of round(AA's especially) and the primers are thinner and easier to cave in during setting with one of the old hand tools. For some you just can't use those as you'll cave in every primer, especially if you're using older stout based paper shells. I sure never had that issue when I was using gradpa's old hand kit on vintage ribbed green Remington paper hulls in the early 60's. So, I have no trouble seeing a modern primer getting severely pierced and degassing out the back. I've had a lot of mildly pierced primers, generally on hammer guns that are set to activate the stout old primers. New primers just don't require that much of a whack to set them off so the hammer guns pierce them. I'm sure it's the same with older hammerless guns. They're designed for the stout older primers. There had to be some design criteria for how hard the hammers struck; surely they didn't just make up a stout spring, install it and dry fire it once and say, "that sounds good enough". They would have engineered and experimented until they got what worked properly.

Wow Paul. Incredible life experiences. One of those events is enough for most folks. There are lots of beautiful and wonderful things in life, and in a moments notice tragedy can happen. You live an active lifestyle at some point in time everyone is exposed to some tough stuff.

I am wondering if there is enough intel or occurrence reporting on this to get back to shell manufacturers. The quickest way would be a lawsuit but we already live in to litigious a society. If they are being penny wise pound foolish for cheap components then they need to know about it stop making it. What you described with your friend with an inexpensive old gun and inexpensive shells sounds like a perfect storm, even in the so called diminutive 410 but I think pressures on those loads are on par with any gun and deserve respect.

I have healthy respect for lightening really sorry to hear about your friend. I really hope some day you can find peace. Bad things sometimes happen to good people for no dang reason.

These incidents are why I don't use cheap ammo. You get what you pay for. If you can shoot a Parker, Fox or any other valuable gun you can certainly afford decent shells.

Early vs. late stock head inletting. As i described earlier.

Attachment 62142

Very interesting

As they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Thank you Brian.

That jam might have saved your hand.

I had a similar experience with a 1910 GHE 16ga 20 years ago while shooting clays, although I believe it was a bad reload (using a friend's--never again). The recoil and sound were greater than normal so I knew something was wrong, and the gun would not open past the primer. Nothing hit me, fortunately, but a piece of the top left cheek wood blew out and sailed past my face, and I had some mild powder residue on my right cheek. I called it quits for the day. I sent it to Turnbull who made it all right, and he sent the fired shell back with it. Obviously the primer was pierced, but the only other anomaly was that the unfolded edge of the plastic shell--a remington--was very feathered as if torn by the wad entering the forcing cone. I measured the empty shell and a few other 16s of various manufacture, and found that the Remingtons tended to be about 1/16" longer than most others. Doesn't seem like this would have caused the large overpressure that occurred, though.

The only other pierced primer issue I have ever had was my 10 gauge lifter shooting new RST Bismuth loads in the red Cheddite hulls. Even after rounding off the cone shaped firing pins, the primers would still pierce more than three times out of four. No damage, no excessive recoil, just a pierced primer and some black soot around the primer and into the firing pin hole. Not what you want to see. When I changed to some of the old RST Bismuth 10 ga loads, using brown Federal hulls, the piercing problem was gone completely. I called RST about it and the lady on the phone said they couldn't get Federal hulls anymore and had had several reports about thin primers on the Cheddites. Apparently they buy primed hulls from the source.

My personal takeaway from all this is: 1. Don't use anybody elses reloads, 2. The pierced primer problem is usually with the shells, not the gun, 3. There is no gas escape mechanism on Parker shotguns other than through the firing pin holes and out the back. Too late at this point (about 80 years or so, 25 for the repro's) to do anything about it, so we all assume the risk of bad shells, including bad factory shells.

Thanks for the post. Glad to know its not just me.

There is a natural inclination to be frugal. In one's selection of loaded cartridges as well as reloading components. I too fall prey to this. I once bought thousands of import primers because they were cheap. Like Cheddites. UGH!

Believe me, they are CHEAP. I've never had as many pierced primers as with those imports. AND I was using them in light 3/4 oz. loads.

I've long-since switched to Federals, and over many thousands of rounds, have NEVER experienced a pierced primer or failure to fire.

Moral: Buy reliable American components, put your mind at ease, and skip one Happy Meal a week to cover the added cost.

IT's funny how we have different luck with the same reloading components, I shoot nothing but cheddites and I have never pierced a primmer over thousands shots or a pierced primmer with any I have used but shoot light loads too.
scott

Nope. Not if they are giving away Hillary pantsuit dolls.

Have loaded about 40 thousand Cheddite primers and pierced them only in a Remington hammer gun that had a new firing pin made for it. When compared to the old pin it was 5 thou long, a few strokes of a file and all was well.Different guns different results.

I had this problem from primer/shell I never expected. Shortly after I bought my lightened 16 gauge on a O frame , I ordered a flat of RST shells. After the 3rd piercing out of 6 shells fired, I junked them and never bought anymore. Since I had previously reloaded all brass cases (RMC cases)with 209 primers, I concluded that the shells were at fault and not the gun. I attempted to discuss this with RST at the next Parker annual meeting. They were not interested in my problem.

Bill I have shot thousands of RST's and never had a problem. Perhaps your firing pins are a little long. The Win 209 primer might be a little tougher/heavier than the cheddite primer as well.

I have only ever had pierced primer problems with one Parker hammer gun. I filed, rounded and polished the noses of the plungers and never had the problem again. Yes, they were RST cheddites.





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I have noticed pierced primers on new RST's quite a few times, they use Cheddite primers. I asked Morris about this and he said either the firing pins were too long or the end needed dressing. I tend to disagree because it doesn't happen to other US primers in the same guns.

From business to bullS#$t
 

Educational and funny!

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