Just got off the phone a while ago with my good friend and hunting bud. He is up at their country place and was hoping to do some load work with his 41mag. He got in one the Mihec GB molds for 41 Mag. #258 (Keith), and has poured up several dozen boolits using different alloy to decipher which might be best for his gun and hunting.
Several weeks back he had been shooting some of these same boolits using a 10.7gr charge of AA-5. He has been using the CCI-300 if I am not mistaken. Cases are trimmed to length. He has been shooting this same load with several of these boolits already, but with a tad different alloy. We are in the process of trying to soften it up a bit to keep the HP on them while at the same time, keep the loads accurate. His revolver is a S&W 657 with the solid cylinder and a 7.5" barrel. It was cleaned prior to this weekend and a patch with a bit of LLA smeared on it, was run through the barrel. Again nothing he hasn't done in the weeks prior to this.
He loaded up 6 rounds, walked out to the end of his barn and shot the first one. He said the noise and recoil was worse than when he shot my 454. He initially thought he had set the scale up wrong so he walked back inside to check it. Right where it was supposed to be. Then he considered the possibility of using the wrong powder, but there was only the one can of AA-5 sitting there. Again running down the list he checked the primers and there were only the six missing from the box he said he had just opened.
So he unloaded the rest of the rounds, and put in some from two weeks ago. He walked outside and proceeded to shoot all 5 of them into the target with a nice mild recoil and hitting the area around the bull very easily. Thinking WTH to himself, he walked back in and loaded up the other 5 rounds he had just loaded, and went back out. Again the revolver recoiled like something four times heavier, he said he simply couldn't believe it, but the recoil had pulled the other bullets out and locked up his action.
So after finally getting the powder and bullets somewhat back into place, he managed to get the action open, and remove all but the one he fired. He said he had to use a dowel and small hammer to remove the now ruined case from his cylinder. He said the primers on both of the cases were ironed so flat, that the dimple from the firing pin wasn't even visible in them.
Ok, so I immediately went through the list of things I thought it MIGHT be,
Wrong powder, primers, bullets, cases, fouled bore, fouled cylinders, OAL too long, cases too short, wrong charge weight. I'm stumped...Heck I even considered that he might have a boolit that is wedging up in the cone inside the cylinders chamber. Thinking that possibly the shoulder on the front driving band might have been jammed in just a bit causing the pressure to spike, but he shot the same exact loads that he loaded two weeks ago and nothing, nada, zilch, of an issue.
The powder was purchased new about a month to two months ago. Primers at the same time. The boolits are sized to .411 which fit his cylinder chambers perfectly, and the bore was checked at .410. The alloy has been Isotope ingots he purchased from Muddy Creek here on the board, followed up with some Core ingots he smelted down and poured up week before last.
We're looking for something to grasp onto here and determine what the issue is. I told him to bring home the remainder of the loads he had left that he has been shooting and that shot well, and also the can of AA-5 it came out of. To contact Accurate tomorrow ASAP and find out what their take on it is.
Granted the powder hasn't been stored in a total climate controlled area, but it hasn't been exposed to much over 80-85 degrees nor any type of humidity. It's been kept inside an insulated room which is built inside their barn, and has kept plenty of powder good for years and years. Now if it were some of my old 97 era stuff that had sat out on the back porch shelf in heat and cold for years on end I would know right off the bat, especially since I had to pour out several jugs of it that went south on me. Another thought was that the powder was simply warm from sitting in the room, but he said this was first thing in the morning so it hadn't gotten warm yet. Since he keeps it in a plastic box sitting on the concrete floor it is usually cooler in there anyway.
Being brand new and only being a couple of weeks since he shot some of the same powder, from the same jug, has us both a bit twisted up. Everything else being the same as well. He left everything set up and ready to go the last time he was there, so nothing has changed, at least that is obvious anyway. The measure he used was checked, the scale was re-zeroed and checked with the standard, and like I mentioned above everything else was gone over as well.
Anyway possibly someone here has an answer or question that I might not have thought of. If so please feel free to post it up, cause this has us both baffled.