1903 bolt jam

[FredBuddy]

One of our ceremonial 1903's jammed
on Memorial Day. Could not open the bolt
on a fired blank. I went thru 16 pages and 3
searches of this forum to find a cause/solution
to no avail. I finally decided to use my plastic
HAMMER and by gently tapping got the bolt
open and had to tap a dowel down the bore
to get the casing out. Turns out the blank cartridge
was LC69 in its factory loading. The neck of the
brass appears tightly expanded and shows some
'abrasion' from being extracted. I'm going to use
that cartridge with some fine grit and spin it in the
chamber to see if that will smooth the neck of
the chamber a little.

At this point I will mention that I have been
reloading our blanks for several years because
of many malfunctions of surplus blanks. This was
not one of them. I generally empty the powder from
surplus blanks, punch out the primers, remove the
crimp and start over. Our members have been
quite satisfied with the results.

I would appreciate any comments from cast booliteers
that would help my efforts.

[725]

Moving beyond the universal maxim of "stuff happens", my first question would be about the interior of the chamber and barrel. Did somebody fire a blank or series of blanks and not clean it? Racked armory guns get handled by many folks and some ride 'em hard and put 'em away wet. Anything sticky on the lugs? Will be interested in finding out what the problem was. Have you tried it again?

[FredBuddy]

The bolt cycles smoothly. When I put a patch
in just to the neck, it seemed to turn smoothly.
The cartridge itself at the neck looked like it
was fire formed, i.e. the rounded crimp was gone
as was the groove that keeps the little plastic lid
from falling into the cartridge. Usually these blanks
are more like duds, but this one acted like it
was over pressure. Cleaning the chamber may
be the key.

[725]

Hope it's just a single event and all goes well from here. Maybe just a bad cartridge.

[Martin Luber]

How did you load your blanks?

[thegatman]

Had the same thing happen to our Legion guns. Working on the problem. Our guns are 1903a3's. It chambers live rounds with no problem.

[rockrat]

That stuff is over 50 years old. Might be age hardened. Maybe you need to anneal the brass before you re-load it.

[TNsailorman]

I got a 1917 rifle from CMP that had been used for ceremonial purposes. The barrel, throat, and chamber were badly corroded by the blank ammunition. I am not sure whether it was a matter of never being cleaned or whether something in the powder itself did the trick. I do not know what powder or type of powder is used in blanks but something sure worked on that rifle. It took me over a week of soaking and brushing to be able to see the lands and grooves good. Worst case of powder coating I ever saw in any rifle. I ended up selling it to a collector who didn't care about the bore and chamber, he just wanted to hang it on his wall with his other military rifle. The outside of the rifle was in very good to very good plus condition, so he was happy.

[Gtek]

Know anyone with a bore scope? Maybe find a really strong carbon remover, just a guess from here.

[pietro]

.

Also, a double charge of powder may have snuck by, during the reloading.

.

[alfadan]

Im not very familiar with blank loading. What is used for the wadding or whatever its called? Could some of that got between the case and chamber?

[FredBuddy]

Thanks to all for comments.

As I mentioned, the offending cartridge
was a factory loaded LC69. I have been
pulling these down because there have been
so many problems, but one of the guys
found this in the gun vault and loaded it
instead of the reloads. I guess I better
gather up the strays.

Annealing might be in order
although it's a PITA for me.

How do I load these? I save the powder
(it looks like splashed mercury) if its any
good. Punch out the primer and remove the crimp.
Resize the brass in a 'small base' sizer (without the stem) which seems
to help cycling. Reinstall a fresh primer. Mix the good blank powder
with some old pull down 4895, add some Red Dot.
Measure in 23 grs of the mix and tamp in a wad
of dacron. Why the mix? The members want to
hear a loud report ! Finally, run into the seater die
to round the mouth as much as possible to ease chambering.

[725]

Interested to hear about your powder mixing. I don't know anybody that does that. Did you follow some procedure for this or figure it out on your own? Must be OK for blanks as you do it regularly and get the desired results. How close to a standard ammo report does your custom blend give?

[FredBuddy]

I started out just using the original
powder charge, but since the little red
'cap' was missing there was just a pop.
Lots of complaints. After some experimenting
I had a mix that sounds about like a 1500 fps
cast boolit load - the SWAG method. No more
complaints and no more little kids crying.

I was surprised that the little red cap played
such a large part in the overall function of
the original blank so I had to compensate
with the powder mix.

[30calflash]

Used to parade with CW era muzzleloaders and replicas. Had to bump the charge to 80-90 grains to get a fair report.