22 Mag too old????????

[oldred]

I thought I had found a bargain but now I am not so sure, I was paying for some welding rods at our local Farmer's Co-Op when I spotted a box of Winchester (Silver box) 22 Mag hollow points priced at $9.95! Naturally I pounced on them and would have bought as many boxes as they had but unfortunately (but maybe fortunately!) they had only that one box. They don't sell a lot of ammo here and just stock things like the common shot shells, 22's and maybe a box or two of 30-30 or something of that nature so that might explain how this lone box of 22 Mag survived the panic until now. In any event they are very problematical, about every third one on average needs to be snapped at least twice before it will fire and this often means turning the round so that the firing pin strikes a different spot before it will fire, one such round looked as if it had been beaten around the rim with a chisel before it finally fired! Add to that the fact that some of these rounds sound seem under powered and leave the bore fouled while others seem to sound normal and burn much cleaner, plus at least three out of the fifty split the cases nearly half the length!

What could possibly have happened to these cartridges to cause all this? I don't think age would be the problem as obviously they are relatively new manufacture as evidenced by the box design, also manufacturing defects of this magnitude would have prompted a recall on that lot number. Improper storage is the most likely culprit but what was the killer here, to much heat maybe?

[bubba.50]

all of my .22mag ammo is from the 8 or 9 bucks a box era & it goes bang every time I pull the trigger. my guess would be improper storage or comin' into contact with some type of contaminant.

[pietro]

all of my .22mag ammo is from the 8 or 9 bucks a box era & it goes bang every time I pull the trigger. my guess would be improper storage or comin' into contact with some type of contaminant.


Ditto........ I'm still shooting (hunting, actually) with ammo I bought in the mid-70's (I bought a LOT of ammo, cheap, from the widow of a funshop owner who passed suddenly.



.

[NSB]

I've shot a lot of ammo that's probably older than most of the members on here......no problems at all with any of it. I'm guessing storage caused the problem. Too much heat is the most likely cause.

[smkummer]

That silver box of Winchester 22 mag. is at least 15 years newer than my early 70's box that works fine. Could it be the gun?

[JSnover]

Clean your bolt, especially if it's a semi-auto. Fouling will cause light strikes.

[oldred]

This is a single shot that I chambered myself but until now I have not had any problems such as I have had with this ammo. The firing pin strike is heavy enough and again none of the other ammo I have used had this problem, I just tossed the remaining rounds (about half the box) since obviously they were defective for whatever reason. I mostly posted because I was curious as to what could have happened to these cartridges to cause this and see if maybe someone else had run into the same thing(s) that I experienced. The excess fouling and seemingly under-powered performance from a few of these rounds would indicate poorly burning propellant but the most disturbing problem of all was the split cases on some of them. That one has me thinking about doing a chamber cast just to be sure but again there has been no problems such as that from the other ammo I have used.

[wv109323]

The rough handling of RF ammo can destroy the priming compound inside. Rough handling will cause the priming compound to break away from the rim in an area. If this is where the firing pin strikes there is no ignition. Like you said, rotating the rim to a different area may ignite the round.
This could also cause poor ignition.
I knew an Olympic free pistol shooter and he inquired about how the ammo had been handled before he would buy.
The splitting brass may be caused by poor quality or age or contamination.
I would fire a few different different brands and compare the diameter of the fired cases.

[Mica_Hiebert]

Just curious what brand of ammo? I am a machine set up in the rimfire priming department for CCI. The problem you had sounds like it could be caused by a multitude of problems more would have been learned by pulling some of the unfired rounds and looking inside the case without seeing the priming in the cases I can only specate what was wrong...

[oldred]

Just curious what brand of ammo? I am a machine set up in the rimfire priming department for CCI. The problem you had sounds like it could be caused by a multitude of problems more would have been learned by pulling some of the unfired rounds and looking inside the case without seeing the priming in the cases I can only specate what was wrong...


These were Winchester (Silver Box), not sure what was wrong with them but since starting this discussion I decided to try some of my other ammo and so far have had no problems so obviously it was the ammo. The Fail to fire and under-powered rounds are fairly easy to think of a couple of different things that might have caused the problem but the three split cases has me a bit puzzled, after the third split I just decided not to press my luck and tossed the rest of them.

[Wayne Smith]

Split cases suggest exposure to ammonia sometime in their lives.

[cuzinbruce]

I have used a bunch of silver box Winchesters in 22wrm without problems. Gun was a Ruger 77/22 bolt job.

[376Steyr]

Did all the headstamps look the same? Just speculating, maybe somebody got some nasty old mistreated ammo, polished it up nice and bright with a little Brass-O, and stuck it in an empty Winchester box. I could see that happening with a garage-sale find, but I don't know how it would get into a real place of business.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I haven't heard of a problem like this, with fairly recent cartridges. If it is something extremes of heat could do, I think it would have to be extreme extremes, like being left in a closed car in summer for a long time.

What was the rifle, and was the ammunition that worked also Winchester? If the firing-pin has contacted and indented the chamber wall where It needs to support the rim, it might affect cartridges which are thin or soft in the rim area, and are normally satisfactory, but not others.

[rollmyown]

I was given a box or two of winchester magnum ammo by a gunshop a few yeary ago. It was faulty ammo and it was badly primed. I don't recall what the box looks like but I'll recognize them when I see them. Sounds like yours are from the same batch.

[too many things]

freeze /thaw will do that. I have run into it , the box was very cold and brought in to warm room and they will sweat. if that happens a few times then moisture can get inside.
I had 5 boxes of 22s that was left in the truck under the seat. and 2 had problems. I didn't have any split but about 1 in 5 would miss fire. worked through 2 boxes till I had a delay fire. the rest went in a hole under a fence post

[oldred]

I was given a box or two of winchester magnum ammo by a gunshop a few yeary ago. It was faulty ammo and it was badly primed. I don't recall what the box looks like but I'll recognize them when I see them. Sounds like yours are from the same batch.



That's a possibility, I have already tossed the box and the remaining ammo to the trash so I no longer have the box but it was a silver 50 rd box of hollow points. I have had no issues with the CCI Maxi-Mags I have shot since but I have only gone through about a dozen rds, 22 Mag is very hard to get and while I have a good supply of LR my 22 mag supply is down to the last 2 1/2 boxes so I have been rather stingy with it.

[Mica_Hiebert]

I would guess with split cases/missfires that the priming compound was some how breaking up and dislodging from the rim causing both problems, when the firing pin hit the rim of the case absent of priming compound it did not fire, the same case if rotated 180 degrees may have still fired if you could find a spot in the rim that was still primed but all of the high explosive priming compound has broken up and mixed with the low explosive propelant causing a high pressure condition splitting the cases. Once again just speculating.

[oldred]

Well that would explain both the split cases and the distinctly different sounding rounds, to be honest however I never thought about whether or not the sound was different on the rounds that cracked the cases but I would be willing to bet they were.

Most of the fail-to-fire rounds went off on the second attempt despite having a good primer indentation but one in particular took several strikes to the same spot and never fired until it had been rotated 3 or 4 times, that's the one I said looked as if it had been beaten on the rim with a chisel by the time it fired.