How do YOU dispose of a dodgy round?

tac foley

In the thankfully rare cases where you have squoze the trigger and heard nothing but a dull 'click', the NARGC recommends THIS in their Ten Commandments -

6th Commandment:
If Your Gun Fails to Fire When the Trigger is Pulled, Handle with Care!

If for some reason the ammunition doesn’t fire when you pull the trigger, stop and remember the First Commandment of Safe Gun Handling (always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction).
Keep your face away from the breech, open the action, unload the firearm and dispose of the cartridge safely. Remember, any time there is a shell in the chamber, your gun is loaded and ready to use -- even if you've tried to shoot and it does not fire. It could still discharge.

How do YOU dispose of the cartridge safely? This is not a trick question, BTW.

tac

Tackleberrywho

tac foley wrote: »

In the thankfully rare cases where you have squoze the trigger and heard nothing but a dull 'click', the NARGC recommends THIS in their Ten Commandments -

6th Commandment:
If Your Gun Fails to Fire When the Trigger is Pulled, Handle with Care!

If for some reason the ammunition doesn’t fire when you pull the trigger, stop and remember the First Commandment of Safe Gun Handling (always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction).
Keep your face away from the breech, open the action, unload the firearm and dispose of the cartridge safely. Remember, any time there is a shell in the chamber, your gun is loaded and ready to use -- even if you've tried to shoot and it does not fire. It could still discharge.

How do YOU dispose of the cartridge safely? This is not a trick question, BTW.

tac

Snips, open the cartridge, put lead in on container for recycling, plastic in another, put a match to propellant and primer.

Or call in the Army bomb disposal and have them shoot it with a large shot blast !!

deerhunter1

tac foley wrote: »

In the thankfully rare cases where you have squoze the trigger and heard nothing but a dull 'click', the NARGC recommends THIS in their Ten Commandments -

6th Commandment:
If Your Gun Fails to Fire When the Trigger is Pulled, Handle with Care!

If for some reason the ammunition doesn’t fire when you pull the trigger, stop and remember the First Commandment of Safe Gun Handling (always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction).
Keep your face away from the breech, open the action, unload the firearm and dispose of the cartridge safely. Remember, any time there is a shell in the chamber, your gun is loaded and ready to use -- even if you've tried to shoot and it does not fire. It could still discharge.

How do YOU dispose of the cartridge safely? This is not a trick question, BTW.

tac

Before opening the gun keep it pointed in safe direction for at least a minute before extracting the round.

virminhunter

not as dangerous as you might think, still wouldnt like to be standing beside one though...:rolleyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BX1kvJVrjc

tac foley

deerhunter1 wrote: »

Before opening the gun keep it pointed in safe direction for at least a minute before extracting the round.

Good answer...hangfires can be, erm, embarrassing. And then?

tac

Grizzly 45

Drop the dud round in a bucket of transmission fluid,which is a very light oil for 24 hours.Trans fluid can work its way into almost anything,so you have wet powder and inert round.In the filed,a small hole dug out with your hunting knife ,drop said round in there and replace sod of earth.If the round hasnt gone off in the gun within 120secs,it is very unlikely to go off ever.

tac foley

In MY opinion, THIS is the best and safest way.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAvLAsyTVC0

tac

[Ths post has been amended to avoid pedantic comments regarding syntax]

Sparks

tac foley wrote: »

THIS is the best and safest way.....

Declarations like that are a bit extreme really. There's not a whole lot of difference between a kinetic puller and a pair of pliers when disposing of a dud round.


BTW, it's not just a hangfire you leave the round in the chamber for, slow primers were something else we were taught to watch for in rimfire.

Either way, we were taught the same procedure. No bang? Wait for a moment. Reset the bolt and refire. If still no bang, wait another minute, then carefully extract and tear down the round and dispose of it (though that was often overkill if there was no strike on the primer - faulty or dirty firing pins/bolts were the usual culprit).

tac foley

Sparks wrote: »

Declarations like that are a bit extreme really. There's not a whole lot of difference between a kinetic puller and a pair of pliers when disposing of a dud round.

Sir, it's posts like yours that make me wonder why I bother.

I'd be guessing, mind, but I'm of the opinion that the kinetic puller - a foot or so away from even the end of your arm - is a lot safer to way to deal with a misfire than holding an iffy round in one hand while you perform major surgery on it with a pair of pliers in the other. Try it with something like a .300 Win mag or any crimped-in commercial ammunition...

But please do as you like [shrug].

tac

Sparks

Hey, you're right. Far better to use a puller.

After all, you don't have to handle the round to fit it into the puller, it just magically transfers itself from the chamber to the puller, a la Sooty.

simonmurphyeire

deerhunter1 wrote: »

Before opening the gun keep it pointed in safe direction for at least a minute before extracting the round.

Recently i chambered a Remington .22lr Subsonic round in my rifle and squeezed the trigger - i heard the firing pin strike but no bang. It was 10-15 seconds later the round went off.

I was benchrest shooting at the range when it happened and kept my eye at the scope and the gun on the target.

I've had more Remington .22lr Subsonic rounds misfire than any other round. That was the first one to delay fire.

tac foley

Sparks wrote: »

Hey, you're right. Far better to use a puller.

After all, you don't have to handle the round to fit it into the puller, it just magically transfers itself from the chamber to the puller, a la Sooty.

Ah, right.

At least with a puller you are not holding the round in your hands whilst dismantling it.

tac

Sparks

Nor with pliers, since you've got the bullet in one pair of pliers and the brass in the second pair of pliers. And it's not a hand grenade dipped in nitroglycerin, it's a round of ammunition. Granted, you don't tear it open like the wrapping on a christmas present, but it won't explode and kill your entire family if you carefully pull it apart with pliers either.

Mr Mole

Use the bullet puller. Its a tool designed for the job and is a no brainer way of completing the required task. A bullet puller is about the same price as a pliers..:)

To see what happens when you use a tool not designed for the job, do a Google search for "Why you should not use a .50 cal round as a hammer. " Warning, its quite graphic and might disturb some people.

4gun

Mr Mole wrote: »

Use the bullet puller. Its a tool designed for the job and is a no brainer way of completing the required task. A bullet puller is about the same price as a pliers..:)

To see what happens when you use a tool not designed for the job, do a Google search for "Why you should not use a .50 cal round as a hammer. " Warning, its quite graphic and might disturb some people.

NASTY!!!! :eek:

murph226

Hands up who has a bullet puller?

how many of you bring it with you when hunting or on the range?

Any DF Tiffy I've seen do this has used a pliers;)

Kryten

Of course dont use a pullers on rimfire ammunition :eek:

Mr Mole

Hands up who has a pliers?

How many of you bring it with you when hunting or on the range?:D

Its a lot simpler to bring the little thing home to dispose of it. Why would there be a need to dispose of it while hunting or on a range, and would you have a pliers with you while hunting?

Its a safety and common sense issue. If there is a proper tool for the job, use it.

Sparks

Mr Mole wrote: »

Hands up who has a pliers?
How many of you bring it with you when hunting or on the range?:D

Permanent part of my smallbore toolkit, along with a €10 knockoff.

FISMA

The dreaded click and nothing happens is like a blind date, you're just waiting for the inevitably bad outcome.

I just hate the idea that I am going to have to unchamber a round that just still might want to go off. I wait at least two minutes.

Still, when I rack the bolt to pop the round out, I dread the moment.

Here's a bit of advice. I use it whenever I shoot a firearm for the first time. It is also useful for these issues.

The range I go to has nice vertical wooden beams, I suppose they are 6"x6". When expelling the old round I hug the beam, with firearm. This way, my face, and most of my body are covered in case of unintended detonation. At worst, the auld arms are gonna get a bit of trauma, however, it seems like the best, most reasonable, easy-to-do action, given the situation.

BTW - When I shoot the firearm for the first time, I am always the first and only person at the range, have no reason to believe there's any problem, have thoroughly inspected the firearm, and hit the paper, not a bulls-eye, but on paper at 50.

murph226

like I said, Defence Forces Tiffy's use a pliers, thats good enough for me:D

he pulls the tip from the cartridge case, he does not use the round as a special tool for removing the locking pin on a .5:rolleyes:

IRLConor

The extension segments for some of DURC's spotting scopes have a roughly .22 hole on the top. Insert the bullet part of the way and then gently lever it sideways. Much handier than the pliers, and easier to find.

I've seen a few people go for the brass end of a .22lr with a pliers.:eek:

EDIT: Having finally looked at tac's video, there's no way in hell I'd use one of those yokes on a dud/partially cooked .22lr.

tac foley

I 'spose that one of the perils of offering the shooting equivalent of 'Mrs Doyle's Handy Hints for Housewives' is that you are going to get shot out of the sky by folks who have always done it another way, and nothing has ever gone wrong......

Let's hope that nothing continues to go wrong, eh?

Anyone else got anything they would like to highlight as a potentially useful 'handy hint to shooters'?

tac

Sparks

"THIS is the best and safest way" isn't a hint though tac, not really. It's a declaration that doing things any other way is wrong. That's not to say that you're automatically wrong for making such a declaration - but it is to say that if you're going to make such a declaration, you'd best be willing to defend it, as it's a sure thing that others will have opinions on it.

sfakiaman

Back in my teens I wanted to see what would happen if a round exploded outside of a firearm so I stuck a few rounds of .303 into splits in the end of a log and fired at them with an air rifle. The results were (fortunately) very disapointing as all that happened was that the primers blew out. I'd imagine that is what would happen with most hangfires in a CF caliber, rimfire would of course be different. Experiments with ammunition in ovens is a different story as the round is cooking off igniting the propellent.

In the event of a hang fire I follow the same procedures as mentioned earlier in the thread and wait a minute keeping the firearm pointing in a safe direction, recock and try again, if still no bang I extract the round and as Grizzly said bury it in the ground or throw it in water.

I think the real danger is while the round is still in the chamber, the scary bit for me is when the rifle bolt is half open!

Tackleberrywho

In the 80's Turf stealing was a major problem.
Co-incidently several Turf burning ovens in the locality had the rings blow off them and soot to the clouds.

Rumor has it there was a little surprise sod left for the thieves.
If your house was known to have a oven issue, you would not want to be seen in the vicinity of the bog.

"This is only a rumor, I do not, or have never owned bog, or subscribe to the idea"

I never had any Hornady or Remington Centrefire ammo that did not go off.
I did have Seller & Bellot with that issue.

Mr Mole

This old crack of burying rounds that are potentially dangerous is alarming. Just because it doesnt fire from your firearm, doesnt mean it wont fire from another. It could be a hard primer, and you may have a damaged firing pin. Proper disposal is required, and this means either firing off the round, or dismantling it. Safely.You have the licence to possess use and carry ammunition, not abandon it in someones field.:D

Opinions will differ, and it was a genuine and reasonable question asked by Tac in good faith. The matter has been explored, and each, based on the information at hand (if you still have one after using the pliers!) ;)can be responsible for your own actions.

If some unfortunate is injured, then your Insurance Company will decide what the most appropriate method was. The principal of working backwards from the accident or occurrence, to the beginning, often clarifies things.

Tackleberrywho

Mr Mole wrote: »

This old crack of burying rounds that are potentially dangerous is alarming. Just because it doesnt fire from your firearm, doesnt mean it wont fire from another. It could be a hard primer, and you may have a damaged firing pin. Proper disposal is required, and this means either firing off the round, or dismantling it. Safely.You have the licence to possess use and carry ammunition, not abandon it in someones field.:D

Opinions will differ, and it was a genuine and reasonable question asked by Tac in good faith. The matter has been explored, and each, based on the information at hand (if you still have one after using the pliers!) ;)can be responsible for your own actions.

If some unfortunate is injured, then your Insurance Company will decide what the most appropriate method was. The principal of working backwards from the accident or occurrence, to the beginning, often clarifies things.

I generally find if you use only good quality ammo you will not have this issue.