Misfire/hang fire time

I’ve never had a hangfire in a cartridge gun. The one I got in a hawken rifle using spit patches went into the sky. I should have waited longer. I dropped the rifle from level almost instantly and regretted it when the ball departed to parts unknown.

I've had a few, but the cartridge fired within a fraction of a second. Just long enough for me to hear "Click/boom" instead of just "Boom". I've had misfires where I just heard a "Click". I've always kept the rifle pointed down range for 10-15 seconds then quickly ejected the round while still pointing the muzzle in a safe direction. I may, or may not pick up the cartridge, reload it and try again. I've had a few fire the 2nd time, but that is pretty rare. I usually simply dispose of them. This happens far, far, more often with 22's than centerfire cartridges BTW. It's pretty rare with centerfires.

I don't use a muzzle loader but could see where this would be a much greater problem.

HB said:

I’ve never had a hangfire in a cartridge gun.

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Me neither, although I did have a few misfires in a Winchester 70 (.270 Winchester) because I was new to handloading and I hadn't seated the primers to the bottoms of their pockets. So, the primers went off on the second strike.
At any rate, I guess I only waited about 5 seconds (with the rifle still on my shoulder) before re-cocking it and trying again. I probably should have waited longer. I don't know.

dodo bird said:

Question is for rimfire

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From what I've seen over the years on THR this might sound kind of strange, but I can't remember ever having a misfire or hangfire with a rimfire cartridge. I've always found rimfires extremely reliable.

I can consistently load "click boom" rounds for 6.5mmanbun using small primer brass and w748.
For smokeless powders it's very rarely longer than a few seconds.

* PSA *

For those who are not aware ...

Many older boltguns sport grooves (for use with a case rim) that allow one to recock the bolt to restrike without the danger of lifting the bolt handle.

I have seen them happen slow enough a bolt could have been lifted.

The worst I had was a 12 gauge trap load.
Pull
Click
(gun coming off shoulder)
Bang.

never seen a hangfire. think about when I get a dud shooting .22, never seen a centerfire not work correctly. knock on wood. for .22 we just eject it, and then load it later if we can find it.

I've never seen a hang fire with a centerfire cartridge. Even shooting BP (including flintlocks), the worst I have gotten was hiss/boom occurring in a fraction of a second. I'm convinced that the modern shooting fundamental concept of follow through has its origins a,, the way back to flintlocks

I had some roulette rounds given to me once, and it took about 10 shots before we threw it overboard.Turk made 8mm mauser is sun bleached bandoleers. Click......Boom, Click-Boom, Boom, Boom, Click....a couple just hissed and smoked. Near all the brass cracked at the shoulder or spilt at the neck.

Pyrodex, in deep cold will do the same, and its flintlockish. Actually the name of the first firearms in a culture reflect the sound of a flintlock, Chinese 'Sha- Pow' (obviously in my phonic spelling) and the Inupiaq Eskimo "Sa-poon", an Sangali (?) SSS-poot and others.

I bought some 1942 vintage .303 British from The Sportsman's Guide many years ago that had an amazing ability to occasionally pause 1-2 seconds between the primer strike and ignition.

This is the only hangfires I have experienced. I have had FTF with rimfires and some centerfires with certain primers, but those just went “Click!” and not “Click..BOOM!”

I wait 10-15 seconds when it happens with these other rounds, just in case.

Stay safe.

I have fired somewhere in the ballpark of 1-2 million rounds of ammo. Every thing from rimfires up to tank rounds, belt feds, and Gatling-style munitions. I only recall about 6 or so hangfires. True hangfires, where the trigger was pulled and there was a noticeable delay in firing. More than half of those were on belt fed weapons while in the military. In my experience, hangfires are one of those ridiculously rare things that have a very rare practical training application. Essentially, not worth wasting too much time thinking of or training for.

Army Doctrine says in a training environment, wait 30 seconds before clearing a hangfire. Army Doctrine also says 30 seconds is a long time to wait in a firefight to fix your weapon. As a trainer I teach both ways. In the event of a hangfire you can a) wait the 30 seconds or b) immediate remedial action (ie tap, rack, bang).

Numerous shotgun shells.
Send to have gotten worse in the last few years.

22's don't really count, nature of the beast. Rimfire things are notorious for it.

It’s been several decades since I experienced or witnessed a hang fire. Seems it was much more prevalent with older military surplus ammunition.
I also have seen and experienced some with muzzle loaders, but mostly with reproduction flintlock and early percussion guns. Utilizing shotgun #209 or large pistol/rifle primers largely eliminated hang fires.
The old rule I was taught was 60 seconds before opening the action.

Only a couple hangfires that I can recall, and both were with old mil-surp .303 British. IIRC they were 1950's vintage stuff that was made in Iraq. Just a half second delay before ignition. A few others never went off at all and I got to waiting a good 30 seconds before opening the bolt. It's terrifying to even think of a round going off when you lift a bolt handle. Have never had a hangfire with any rimfires, in my experience they either go off or they don't, and sometimes will go off on the second try if you rotate the round a bit so the firing pin hits a different spot on the rim.

dodo bird said:

I am sure this has been discussed before, I got to ask again. How long is a reasonable time to wait after a failure to fire? Question is for rimfire, center fire, and black power.
From what I have read 10-20 seconds on rimfire/center fire and 60 seconds on blackpowder. Rimfire are the ones that probably get the most people impatient.

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With center or rimfire, 0 seconds. If I have a failure to fire, the defective round is out of the gun, on the ground and (depending on the situation) several more already down range long before 10-20 seconds passes.

I wait 10 or 15 seconds before opening the bolt.

My dad bought a batch of cheap Turkish surplus 8x57 ammo from Woolworths in the 80's that all either hang-fired or not-at-all'ed. We waited 20-seconds for the latter.

When opening the bolt after a no-go, we worked the action very briskly. The real moment of danger in an out-of-battery incident is the time when the cartridge is still partly chambered and the action is unlocked. You don't want any part of your body over the chamber or directly behind the bolt.

Once no longer confined by the chamber, the bullet receives little energy if the charge should still go off. The chief danger then is potential brass shrapnel from a case rupture.

Riomouse911 said:

I bought some 1942 vintage .303 British from The Sportsman's Guide many years ago that had an amazing ability to occasionally pause 1-2 seconds between the primer strike and ignition.

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I think I had a batch of that same stuff. I think it was Pakistani, I forget. I still have some. Yes, long hang fires. Since I am blessed with rock-solid follow-through, I could shoot it as accurately as anything else. (not that it was accurate ammo) As I recall, I don't think any of the hangs were over two seconds. Usually about a one second delay.

caribou said:

I had some roulette rounds given to me once, and it took about 10 shots before we threw it overboard.Turk made 8mm mauser is sun bleached bandoleers. Click......Boom, Click-Boom, Boom, Boom, Click....a couple just hissed and smoked. Near all the brass cracked at the shoulder or spilt at the neck.

Click to expand...

Seems like others have had that experience with Turk ammo, but I bought several cases of it when it was $75.00 for 1400 rounds, with no hang fires. I don't think I culled more than a dozen rounds out of any of the batches for split necks. Yes they did often split the necks when fired. I wonder if a weak firing pin spring aggravates the problem, or maybe just where the ammo was stored? Had a lot of fun with that ammo, out in the desert, sitting in a lawn-chair, having an adult beverage, and plinking at clays 100 yards away with an unissued (but I issued it to myself) Yugo M49 when they hit the market for cheap. (paid $80.00 for mine)

Lots of hangfires with black powder guns, but it is dependent on the humidity and your cleaning routine. I usually wait 8-10 seconds with the barrel pointed in a safe direction before working on it.

Never had one in a few million rimfire rounds (but have had a few case splits which get your attention about the same way).

50 in a row on centerfire in a match two years ago. Handloads, primers were a pack from the center of a 1000 primer case, about 400-500 of which had worked fine up till then. I pulled the other 50 I loaded at the same time as those which didn't work and sent the lot (with firing pin strikes and without) to Remington. They reported that none of them had priming compound in them, and sent me a check for what I had paid for the full 1000 case way back when). First couple on no-fires I waited 5-6 seconds before reloading, but after it became obvious that there was a primer problem it was more like 3 seconds.

All my smokeless hangfires have been a matter of a few fractions of a second. I've seen a couple that might have been a second or so. And we've probably all heard of ones that go off a couple of minutes later - though I wonder how many of those are exaggerations if not outright lies.

I give centerfire misfires a full 60 seconds. Rimfire misfires usually get dumped after just a few, with my face turned away as I dump them, just in case.

Blackpowder is a different animal. The longest I've experienced is a couple of seconds, but I have seen several that exceeded 10 or 15 seconds - and I was watching the whole thing, so know it for a fact. In those cases where it became obvious that there was a misfire rather than a hangfire, the problem has always been solved be picking the vent or cone, re-priming, and trying again - sometimes repeatedly. Thankfully, I've never been around a BP gun that was loaded and simply would not go off. That situation would terrify me, and I probably would wait at least an hour before pulling the load.

I had one hang fire in an old 10 gauge shell while shooting my Ithaca Mag 10.

Pulled the trigger, it went click, held position (thankfully) and it went off after about 2 seconds at what seemed like about half power.
I had enough time between to click and boom to have the "ok, now what do I do" thought go through my head before it went off.

Stopped cleared the shotgun and checked to make sure the barrel was clear before doing anything else.