frangible cast boolit?!

[XWrench3]

has anyone ever had a cast boolit come apart on firing? :holysheep i think that is what happened today. i was shooting my 45acp along just fine. and out of the clear blue, i feel shrapnel hit the top of my head, the slide sticks open, and there are metal particles all over the inside of the gun. of course, i stopped shooting it immediately. when i got it home, i took it apart to clean and see what is happened. some chunks hit the floor when i pulled the slide off. as of right now, the gun is in the soak tank. they were just normal practice loads. so it is not like they were being pushed hard. i am glad nothing really bad happened. now, as long as the gun is alright......

[paul h]

Is it possible the gun fired out of battery?

[Down South]

What alloy were you using? Is it possible the boolit was damaged in the casting session?

[gray wolf]

metal particles, don't = lead particles.
Is anything broken in the pistol ? Metal came from some place.
Did you recover the case ?
did the mag stay in the pistol ? I know you said the slide stayed back.
Anything lodged in the barrel ?
Did the round sound funny ?
Gun goes off, bullet goes out the barrel, Something happened here, please let us know what you find.
The biggest thing is your OK

[**oneshot**]

Glad your OK.

[BD]

Sounds to me like a gun problem more than a boolit problem. No matter what happened to the boolit upon firing, if the pistol is operating correctly everything goes out the end of the barrel away from you and you should not feel anything hitting your head. On the other hand, if you're shooting at a hard target, (steel?), stuff can come back at you. But, that doesn't explain the slide stuck back or the metal fragments in the action.
BD

[XWrench3]

1) Is it possible the gun fired out of battery? ** i guess it is possible? i have never had one do that before, so i do not honestly know.
2)What alloy were you using? Is it possible the boolit was damaged in the casting session? *** the alloy was straight air cooled wheel weights. i would have to think that something strange DID happen to it in casting. but i have no idea what.
3) metal particles, don't = lead particles. ** just lead, no pistol parts or case material.
Is anything broken in the pistol ? ** no, the gun is fine, THANKFULLY. Metal came from some place.
Did you recover the case ? **well, i recovered about 150 of them. i have no way of knowing which was THE one. or, if that one is even in the lot. i guess it is possible that it got thrown further than the rest, and i did not find it.
did the mag stay in the pistol ? ** yes I know you said the slide stayed back.
Anything lodged in the barrel ? ** just lead particles, and burnt powder.
Did the round sound funny ? ** no, it recoiled felt, and sounded (with ear muffs on) the same as the rest of them.
Gun goes off, bullet goes out the barrel, Something happened here, please let us know what you find. ***other than little peices of lead in many places it should not be, i do not see anything else wrong or out of place.
//\\ F.W.I.W. the load was 5.5g of Winchester Auto-Comp, Win lg pistol primers, mixed cases and my standard oal of 1.260"

[XWrench3]

the pistol, after a good cleaning, looks and feels the way it always does. without actually shooting it, which will be tomorrow, it feels the way it always does as well. everything seems to function just like it has for thousands and thousands of rounds.

[JoeTheMechanic]

yea, something went horribly wrong. if i where you i would at least want a welding glove and something thick like 3/4" plywood or the side of my truck, between me and that gun. just till i put a few round through it.

if the bullet was in the chamber when it fired, there would be no lead in the action, period. im guessing the round went off on its way to battery and hit the chamber at an angle, spraying lead fragments on impact before whatever was left of the boolit headed down the bore. cant picture it going down any other way.

[gray wolf]

if the bullet was in the chamber when it fired, there would be no lead in the action, period. im guessing the round went off on its way to battery and hit the chamber at an angle, spraying lead fragments on impact before whatever was left of the boolit headed down the bore. cant picture it going down any other way. if the bullet was in the chamber when it fired, there would be no lead in the action, period. im guessing the round went off on its way to battery and hit the chamber at an angle, spraying lead fragments on impact before whatever was left of the boolit headed down the bore. cant picture it going down any other way.
So far I have to agree with the above theory ( idea )
Do you know how to test the disconnect for out of battery function ?
************UNLOAD THE WEAPON**********************
Rack the slide ( NO MAG IN THE PISTOL ) and with the hammer back push on the front of the barrel,
It will move to the rear. Keep pulling and releasing the trigger as you slowly move the slide to the rear. the slide will move back and at a point the barrel will start to drop and you will see a little daylight between the barrel hood and the breach face.
The hammer should not drop at this point or even a little bit before.
When the barrel starts to drop the pistol is out of battery.

[XWrench3]

unfortunatly, it is not a 1911. it is a Taurus 24/7 pro. no external hammer. i am not really sure how any of the mechanism works. i am great with engines, manual trasnmissions and the like. i can even figure out how most trigger work, and where and how to work them over to make them much, much better. but everything is hidden on this, and i have not figured it out yet. i would like very much to trade this in on a new Remington R1911. but cash flow is a huge problem right now. let me ask you this. as a test of out of battery, it used to not fire if the slide was not completely shut, as in if the oal was just a little lonf. i could pull the trigger, and it would not fire at all. as little .010" over was enough to stop it from firing. is this the same basic idea?

[XWrench3]

p.s. i tried to upload some photos, but i had no luck. i have had this problem with other websites as well. there has to be something in my computer that is stopping me from doing it. but i can not figure out what.

[MikeS]

The Taurus works in a similar way to a 1911, that is that the barrel & slide move back a small amount together, then the barrel drops as the slide continues further back on it's own. You say the gun used to not fire if it wasn't fully forward, is that still the case? If not, then something is broken in the gun that let it fire slightly out of battery. If this is the case, contact Taurus, they will fix the gun for you. You might also want to contact them, explain what happened, and see what they say. If you contact them, you might want to leave out the fact that you reloaded the lead boolits, and just say that they were lead target rounds, so they can't pull the "don't shoot reloads" line on you. I have the same gun, although I have never shot lead thru it as it's been out of my possession for the last 3 years or so (it's currently in a police property unit as evidence to be used against the minor they found with it, it's considered recovered stolen property - I had 5 handguns stolen at the same time, why is it that the ONE gun they recover is the cheapest of the bunch, and the one I care the least about?) and back then I didn't carry reloads in my carry gun (I used to believe the stories that you have to carry factory ammo or face legal problems if you have to use it) now I do carry my handloads in my carry gun, even bought a mould just for such carry (Accurate Mold's 45-250A).

Is it possible that the cartridge in question had a high primer which resulted in it going off without being hit by the firing pin, but rather some other part of the gun as it chambered?

[gray wolf]

Please don't take this the wrong way,
but , try to get a little more familiarized with how your pistol works and why.
To say : it never did it before OR it never happened before means nothing.
Every round you fire has the potential to be different than the last round you fired. Parts get old, parts get tired, and they break.
You could do a test for every function and safety before you shoot
and the whole thing could go South with the second round.
Does it happen often ? NO, can it happen YES.
IMHO We should have as much understanding about our equipment as we can gather.
You had an incident, nothing happened and that we are all pleased to hear.
If it were me, I would not fire my pistol until I new exactly what happened and why.
I think the advise about talking to the manufacturer is very sound.
We can help and advise, but we weren't there. How you proceed is up to you, but it would be prudent to explore a little further.

[runfiverun]

what i am hearing is that a boolit come forward hit the feed ramp and then shattered.
or broke apart.
there are a couple of things that will make lead act like this.
i'd look at them and see if one of them fit what happened at your casting bench.

[41 mag fan]

The question i've got is, has the firing pin been taken out of the slide and cleaned?

If the spring has gunk on it, it could of been sticking out just enough to cause it to strike the primer before full battery is obtained.

[XWrench3]

You say the gun used to not fire if it wasn't fully forward, is that still the case? If not, then something is broken in the gun that let it fire slightly out of battery.
after you asked this, i had to think about it. and i could not be 100% certain about the answer. so i went to a friends house, who has the same gun, except in 40 caliber. my gun works exacly the way his does. which is as long as the slide and barrel are not locked up, it will not fire. but once the barrel and slide come together (as in the barrel starts its way up the "toggle link" if i am saying that right) if you pull the trigger, the firing pin will fire when the trigger is pulled. all of that happens so fast, that i certainly could never move 1/10th as fast as that works. if a bullet is seated to long, and keeps the barrel/slide from coming all the way forward, it will not fire.

Please don't take this the wrong way,
but , try to get a little more familiarized with how your pistol works and why.
no offense taken. i know i do not know a lot about this gun. but i have no idea of who would sit down with me, and do a complete tear down of the gun, and explain how each piece works. i certainly can not take a gunsmithing class for years to learn about one gun. even if there was one close enough to do so, which there is not. i would love to know all about each gun i own, but i have no idea where i could go to learn.

The question i've got is, has the firing pin been taken out of the slide and cleaned?
no, it has not been removed. i have no idea how to dismantle the slide assembly. it looks nothing like any rifle i have seen. and is nothing like any of the other pistols i own either. i was a mechanic until an injury ended my career. so i am fairly mechanically inclined. but i have zero gunsmithing type training. if i have a manual, or even a good clear diagram, i can usually understand most mechanical things. but the owners manual diagram is tiny, and not detail oriented. and that is all i have to go by. if i can not put it back together, i am not very inclined to try to take it apart. i do spray cleaner and lube into it at every cleaning. it has always moved freely before. i have shot 300 rounds out of this beore with no reliability problems. i know that guarantees nothing, but it is an indicator of what a person can expect. i also agree that it needs to be checked out by someone who knows what they are doing. as that obviously is not me. when i started this post, i had never heard of a gun firing out of battery. it does seem to make the most sense though.

[Down South]

I'm still thinking there was a problem in the casting process. I've dropped boolits to soon from the mould before where the booits would crack. The boolits were still to hot when I dropped them out of the mould. I think you may have loaded a damaged boolit and it came apart when you pulled the trigger or it came apart when it hit the feed ramp.

[gray wolf]

If the bullet came apart someplace inside the action ( feed ramp Ect. )
how would it get into the chamber ? Not in chamber = out of Battery.
Out of battery = will not fire. In the chamber = out the barrel.
I understand it may not be this simple, but just saying.

[41 mag fan]

unfortunatly, it is not a 1911. it is a Taurus 24/7 pro. no external hammer. i am not really sure how any of the mechanism works. i am great with engines, manual trasnmissions and the like. i can even figure out how most trigger work, and where and how to work them over to make them much, much better. but everything is hidden on this, and i have not figured it out yet. i would like very much to trade this in on a new Remington R1911. but cash flow is a huge problem right now. let me ask you this. as a test of out of battery, it used to not fire if the slide was not completely shut, as in if the oal was just a little lonf. i could pull the trigger, and it would not fire at all. as little .010" over was enough to stop it from firing. is this the same basic idea?

I've got 2 of these pistols XWrench. One in 45, the other in 40. The 24/7 Millenium and Mil Pro
Unfortunatley, i've got exactly 1 mag thru each of them, and into the safe they went.
When it comes to pistols, the 1911 style is my favorite type, steel frame not poly framed.
What you have is the DAO not DAO/SA, so the trigger mechanism will be of the striker type, IIRC.
If it's out of battery, the slide should not lock up at all, there will be no click, of the trigger going off. You can take your slide, rack it back, and let it down, slowly while at the same time pulling the trigger. You take it all the way towards full battery, and its hard, but get it to where your thinking its .10 over OAL, the trigger will not engage, you can pull the trigger, but it wont click as if its firing.
Now the trigger, will go back, while racking the slide, but it will not engage.
while looking at my 24/7 Pro,(I dug it out of the safe)(only took me 10min to find), my firing pin is right at the breach face of my slide.
Hence the thought the firing pin has gunk built up, causing it to stick out and while the slide was coming back to full battery, the load hit the feed ramp, maybe slightly off while going into the chamber, which put enough resistance on the whole cycle process causing the firing pin to hit the primer, hence firing out of battery.

Take a look at your firing pin and see if it's flush with your slide face.

The reason i still say it's the potential of being the firing pin having gunk, is due to last fall i had this happen to a, new back then, RIA compact. I had stripped and cleaned, ran 500ish rounds thru it, and when the slide locked back on the last round, for some reason I glanced at the slide and seen the firing pin sticking out.
When I took it apart, there was all sorts of gunk, dirt, debris on the firing pin and spring, Cleaned up and used a Q-Tip and no problems since.

Yours could potentially if it's what happened, had/have just enough buildup to make it stick out, but not enough gunk on it, that hitting the primer caused it to retract fully.

You Tube has videos on how to take apart your 24/7 Pro. If you have problems getting the videos to feed on your comp or don't want to go thru watching them, pm me and I'll gladly give you my ph number and you can call me, or give me yours and I'll call, and walk you thru the process of taking it apart to check the firing pin and spring and clean it.

Another question I have, is what did the inside of the barrel look like when you got it home, and/or after this happened?

[XWrench3]

well, after looking the pistol over pretty thoroughly, and not finding much wrong after a good cleaning, (the fireing pin moved freely) i decided to push my luck, and went out and fired it. i put a full magazine of fmj factory loads thru it, without so much as a hiccup. so then i shot the remainder of what i had with me last time out (home cast boolits), and everything worked fine. so that steers me back towards thinking there was something wrong with that one bullet. maybe i think to simplistically, but i have always thought the answer that makes the most sense, is probably the correct one. of course, that does not always apply to laws in these United States, or the law makers. but in most things in my life, it makes sense.

[softpoint]

Maybe you had some small lead particles already in the gun from bullets hitting the feed ramp, etc. and you ruptured a case. it really sounds like a case rupture to me. A case thas been reloaded too many times, or one that has a bulge from being fired in a grossly oversize chamber and then resized can rupture.