What to do with a misfire?

Today I was doing some plinking with the .22, it's a 9 shot H&R wheel gun and I was using cheapo Remington bullets. I had a couple of misfires. One I was able to turn the cylinder back to that round it fired on the second try. With the second one I had to open the gun turn the bullet so the firing pin would hit it in a new spot and then it fired. Here's my question, is this safe? The first example seams safe since I never had to open the gun. In the second example, is there a better way to handle a misfired round?

Thanks,
Kickn

No, you did fine. Just, when you have a hang fire, keep the gun pointed down range for a few moments. Never point it in an unsafe direction until you get the hangfire resolved. If the round just won't fire despite all of your efforts, remove it carefully, perhaps with good gloves on, and put it in a clearing barrel.

I did wait about 30 seconds before doing anything. Thanks for the reply. Back to the range tomorrow :)

I attempt to refire it and if it still doesn't go bang, pull the bullet and it goes into the next pot.

CD

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Originally Posted by Combat Diver

I attempt to refire it and if it still doesn't go bang, pull the bullet and it goes into the next pot.

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Same here.

The unfired primer can still be a nitemare to anyone who anneals it to swage. I crush the case mouth to make sure that doesn't happen.
Please Don't throw it on the berm either. Those who mine for lead don't like the tensil fairy visits.

I stopped firing duds a second time after my machine shop instructor told me of an incident he had in which the case ruptured at the first firing pin indentation when he fired it the second time.

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Originally Posted by frankenfab

I stopped firing duds a second time after my machine shop instructor told me of an incident he had in which the case ruptured at the first firing pin indentation when he fired it the second time.

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I looked in your album but didn't see anything relating to a case rupture, maybe I missed it? Anyway, what do you do with duds? Give it some time, then pull the bullet?

I just throw them down and let nature take care of them. I don't have a picture of it. This was years ago, when I was in college. But I did get to see what was actually left of the case. The gun spit brass particles into the shooters hand, but hew was not severely injured.

Please destroy them. On one visit to a range some young guys had run out of ammo and were picking up rounds from the ground and trying them. The guy who cleans out the trash barrels started hauling the barrels to the dumpster after to many fire crackers when he just burned them.

What's the safest way to destroy them? For me and for the guy who takes out the trash.

At my club we have receptacles for miss fired ammo and duds. As a service to the club I clean these out ever day or two and have found litterally hundreds of rounds of ammo thrown out by people some were never fired. Anyway if a 22 shell I pick up has two or more dents in the rim it is a real dud and I have never found priming compound in those cases when I pull the bullet and dump the powder (you can see the priming easily). With round that evidece either one hit or no hits I put them in a can for plinking ammo and reuse them. Some 90% or better go off on the second try. The rest have their bullets pulled and melted to make into new slugs, I collect the powder and the empty shells get recycled for brass. The powder makes a nice flair on 4th of July in my back yard. As for dud CF, I pull the bullets and reuse them, dump the powder (more flair material) and reuse the brass if I load for it or it goes to the metal recycler.

It's weird but before I was 50 I bet I shot 50 bazillion .22's and had maybe 2 misfires in my life.

Recently I had one box of Remington .22's that had 5-6 no fires and when retried only one of those actually fired the second time around.

I guess quality in these rounds is not what it used to be.

On another note when I was 8, I found a .22 shell and used pliers to remove the bullet, all the powder fell out and was lost. I put the case in my pocket and took it to school the next day. I had it sitting on the corner of my desk when the teacher walked by and knocked it to the floor with her dress. Yes, it did in fact go off, scaring the poor teacher Miss Biagi half to death. I was sent to the principals office to sit out the remainder of the day. Nothing more was said, my Mom wasn't called or anything. This was 1958.

I'd be in jail if this happened today.

But, I still cringe everytime I drop a live .22 on the ground.

Randy

Like Nick's club we have dud cans,I also clean them out when at the range. I pull aprart the 22's and melt the lead down and add it to the pot. I use plires to pull the bullets, do not use the hammer pullers. And do not use the plires onthe brass case, get hold of the bullet with the plires. They come apart pretty easy. The cases go into my dutch oven and get cooked of with the lid on and a rock on top of the lid. I find and pull a lot of berdan primed rifle ammo and the go into the pot also. When the rifle primers go off they will pop the lid off. Bill

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Originally Posted by W.R.Buchanan

It's weird but before I was 50 I bet I shot 50 bazillion .22's and had maybe 2 misfires in my life.

Recently I had one box of Remington .22's that had 5-6 no fires and when retried only one of those actually fired the second time around.

I guess quality in these rounds is not what it used to be.

On another note when I was 8, I found a .22 shell and used pliers to remove the bullet, all the powder fell out and was lost. I put the case in my pocket and took it to school the next day. I had it sitting on the corner of my desk when the teacher walked by and knocked it to the floor with her dress. Yes, it did in fact go off, scaring the poor teacher Miss Biagi half to death. I was sent to the principals office to sit out the remainder of the day. Nothing more was said, my Mom wasn't called or anything. This was 1958.

I'd be in jail if this happened today.

But, I still cringe everytime I drop a live .22 on the ground.

Randy

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Guess you never shot any Remington Golden ammo then as I quit using that ammo years ago because of the duds

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Originally Posted by stillkickn

What's the safest way to destroy them? For me and for the guy who takes out the trash.

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An easy way to diassamble .22rf is to slip a fired 22mag or 22 centerfire case over the bullet and use the fired case for leverage to bend the bullet out of the loaded case.
The bullet will slip right out of the fired case for addition to the lead stash.

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Originally Posted by stillkickn

What's the safest way to destroy them? For me and for the guy who takes out the trash.

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The safest way to destroy duds (supposing you don't want to re-use components) is to soak the round in WD-40 or some other quality penetrating oil to make them inert. You can then either toss them (irresponsible) or take them to your local police station or gun club and ask them to kindly destroy the rounds. This works for any caliber, particularly well with centerfire.

Since this is Cast Boolits and I assume you value lead as gold, simply pull the bullet, dump the powder in a non-static container (most plastic Gladware or the like), and use the bullet and brass for whatever your purposes may be. To dispose of the powder, I'll usually fold it into a paper towel and set it ablaze in my firepit. Smokeless powder burns pretty spectacularly, so it's fun to do. Black powder explodes, so please; make sure you don't do this with BP. :coffeecom

We have a "dud bin" at my club that I regularly empty for the bullets and brass. There's a stigma among non-reloaders that duds will blow up and kill you. The propogation of this stigma works in my favor. :-D

I used a ton of the Remington golden bullets in the past. But lately have been getting too many duds and accuracy has dropped off.

I pull the bullets with pliers by bending then sideways, dump the powder on the grass, then a squirt of engine oil from my old pump can and into the scrap brass. There is usually no priming compound in the duds.

I simply dump all duds into a can that has some motor oil in it, this is not rocket science, think about it!

You wouldn't believe the amount of 22 rf duds I find at the the range, I'll find half a dozen every time I am picking up brass. Every one of them with only one (1) fireing pin stike on the rim and every one without fail has fired when I try them in my Ruger Mk II. I have fired thousands of rounds of 22rf from my several rf guns and I can count on one hand the amount of misfires I have had. This leads me to think that many people are having problems with their guns perhaps mechanical or perhaps they never clean their guns as we all know that filthy rimfires will have ignition problems. Are they so ignorant of what they are doing that they asssume the amunition of faulty.???? What bothers me the most is that they just toss it out on the ground, we have a dud box.

To each his own, but I would never chamber and fire any 22 lr
I found on the ground. The lube picks up dirt and grit that can and
will damage your barrel. This includes any unfired round I may have
dropped myself. Even the $5 a box and up stuff! If it hits the ground
it's junk to be recycled.

one of the fathers at 4H asked me this while his daughter was shooting the silhouettes course
she shoots at home , from the drive way , like the inside of the shooting shelter it is gravel he noticed that we were telling the kids if they dropped a round not to pick it up and fire it.

we explained that it isn't worth damaging a 200 dollar barrel to save a nickle , so what to do with those rounds , they get some that don't go off and some that get dropped.

my suggestion was a bucket of water in the shed toss them in by the time the water evaporates they should be dead , but if you just add water every time you get a dud round and toss it in you will eventually have a bucket with a fair number of rounds in it but by then they will be green or black with corrosion and the powder fully inert and they can go to the dump.

i know the dump isn't good recycling but it was the easiest thing for a parent with a few rounds here and there to dispose of.

I just drop them in the outhouse. I have never had the desire to recover and fire one after they have been put there.

I shouldn't admit this but I was at our .22 range on a visit,have been a member for 25 years,avid around weapons for 40 years.Anyhoo I had never picked any range dud fodder up before,but this one time,the temptation was just to great.I had to know if it really was a dud or someone that had a faulty lead slinger.I picked it up,inspected it closely,everything looked o.k.,looked at the end,only 1 light strike on it....so I chambered it,pulled the trigger and....pffffft:roll:.Didnt sound at all right,a baby could fart louder:wink:.I looked in the forcing cone and sure enough a lodged .22 round about a 1/4" up[smilie=b:.Ended my day of shooting and taught me a life lesson about greed and stupidity,couldnt be ignorance:dung_hits_fan: (I DEFINATELY KNEW BETTER!}:groner:

As I said in a posting on this thread I have scrapped out a lot of 22 ammo that is tossed into my clubs misfire bucket. Recently I pulled down a hundred rounds and I watched and recorded the head stamps on them just to see percentages. The maker with the largest percentage was remington with 77 % followed by Federal with 15% and winchester with 5%. The rest were non-name brand ammo or ones that I did not recognize the head stamp. From personal experience Remington has the poorest performance of all the bulk packed ammo. Followed by Federal bulk and then Winchester bulk. Also in my rifles and hand guns accuracy follows the reliability factors. I have quit buying bulk Remington or Bulk Federal if I can get Winchester. As far as more premium ammo the different brands get closer in performance but CCI Mini mags top my list for accuracy at longer ranges.

My solution is one most sane people frown on. I try each one a couple times in the gun it misfired it, then after waiting at least a minute (in between attempts as well), I try it in a different gun a few times. If nothing happens, it goes into a box that eventually ends up in the fire pit, one round at a time. This is NOT the smartest way to dispose of them, but it is fun. Over almost 25 years, we have only had one injury. My brother walked past the fire pit knowing there was a dud in it, and it went off and threw the brass into his leg. It was only a minor cut and burn, but that is why most sane people frown on it. I recommend NOT doing it my way, unless you are willing to take the chance of getting severely injured. If the one that hit my brothers leg had hit an eye, things wouldn't have been so amusing. I only pass this info along because the question was asked. If you are dumb enough to use this method, please don't do it with children around. They will tell others, and grow up to do the same thing. And we wouldn't want that now, would we.

The range we have an ammo can for misfires - I just toss them in. At the parent's farm I twist out the bullet (used to use my teeth but now pliers, and either put the case on the ground and drop a lit match on it or dump out the powder and hit it with a hammer.

Not all that safe but don't really have too many .22 duds to worry about.

[QUOTE=carlsonwayne;1433151] it goes into a box that eventually ends up in the fire pit, one round at a time. [QUOTE]

We had a large pile of brush one time and about 75 old paper shotgun shells and about 100 rounds of assorted ammo that was so corroded it was of no use - especially since we didn't have a gun to shoot it in. We put the rounds in a wood box in the middle of the pile and lit it. About 10 minutes later they started going off like popcorn for about 2 minutes.

We was all standing about 50 yards away, and the next day collected the brass to be sent to the scrap yard.

Of course we also used to toss 5 gallon plastic jugs full of oxygen/acetylene mix in the bed of coals and run real fast.


It's a wonder we all survived intact to adulthood.

Several years ago a friend and his wife raked their yard of leaves and burned the pile. A .22 cartridge cooked off and the CASE hit the wife in the eye blinding it. They should be desposed of safely.

This discussion has led me to wonder about the poor guys that have to mow the outdoor ranges with the misfires laying in the grass! I wouldn't want to be around while it's mowed.

i use remington bulk packs....i know they are cheap but they shoot the best out of my modified ruger 10/22 and cant argue with 1 hole gorups at 25 yds and 3/8 at 50 and am suprised that they do not jamm or mis fire.

The bullets are pulled with a pliers, powder dumped, mouth squeezed shut, then pitched.

Shiloh