Me and my boy shot the cowboy shoot match here this morning.
Lots of fun till I got a bullet stuck in the barrel, about 6 inches into the bore.
Rifles a marlin 1895cb in 45-70. Loads a lyman 457191 sized to .458, SPG lube, 28grns imr-4198, Winchester LR primers in starline brass. Works good as long as I do my part.
Loaded five rounds into the mag tube, third round pull trigger and just a click! Like a dead primer click, pulled the hammer and click again. Worked the lever to dump the round and out came the case with a bunch of powder following it out and down into the action but no boolit! What a sec here wheres the boolit? It was crimped good. Came off the line. We dropped a cleaning rod down the bore and punched it right out, about 6 inches forward of the chamber. Had to dismantle the action and mag tube, get the remaining rounds out and get the powder out of the action. IMR-4198 WILL jam a 1895 solid. Inspected bore and no damage. Got it back together and finished the match placing 3rd in my class.
At home tore the marlin down, cleaned a lot more powder out of it. Cleaned the bore still looks like new, whew!
Inspection of the boolit and the base looks like there may have been a partial ignition, the case shows signs of burnt powder residue, unless it was just the residue from the primer going off???
Just trying to figure out what caused this? The powder is maybe a year old always kept in a climate controlled setting and smells fresh, Cases were tumbled dry, so no moisture there? The primers are probably 10+ years old, same batch of 1000, same controlled environment, We've used 200+ to load my boys 45 colt and he has had no miss fires as of yet or detonation problems. Course we are using both trail boss and unique in his loads.
So I am wondering, 28grns of 4198 in a 45-70 case maybe fills it just a bit over a quarter of the case, maybe 1/3? Could it be the powder was not exactly bunched up by the primer to get ignition of the powder? Maybe it was just the primers??
It was a 40 round match so shot a total of 60 rounds today, one stuck boolit and one round I had to strike twice to get it to fire.
My test batch for this load I used some 40+ year old Federal LR primers and they worked fine, had 20 left so I used them for testing and had zero problems. Normally use my old stash of those federal primers or cci for reloads.
Just wondering what the thoughts might be on this. This is the first batch of winchester primers I have ever used in my 35+ years of reloading and this is my first time ever getting a boolit stuck in a bore, so it kind of rattled me!