Lame Excuse for a Trip to the Range

[Carl N. Brown]

Previous trip to the range I found a slew of discarded .22 shells each with a light strike. Out of curiosity I took them home, cleaned them up, and tried them next trip in a Heritage Rough Rider and an M6 Scout.

(original firing pin strike down, my guns' strikes top)

Six on top were fired successfully in my HRR, the others fired successfully in my M6.

I am pretty sure the unsuccessful shooter cursed his ammo. In cheap bulk pack rimfires might have missing primer in parts of the rim for a few shells out of hundreds but not for as many as I found.

I am inclined to blame this many unfired rimfires on light firing pin strikes. That would be lot of cartridges to be missing primer. It could have been the fault of his gun, or maybe a very light hammer or striker spring. Or fouling or lead pieces preventing the bolt or slide of a semi-auto from closing.

But in the past I have had fail-to-fire in some of my .22s due to the firing pin and its channel getting gummed up with fouling. I learned the hard way awhile back my end-of-season cleanup must include checking that the firing pin and its channel in the bolt or slide is not badly fouled.

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

No such thing as a lame excuse for a trip to the range!

 

[mokin]

Sounds like a great reason to go to the range. But you need to realize that sometimes I go to the range and don't even think up a reason.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

Sounds like a great reason to go to the range. But you need to realize that sometimes I go to the range and don't even think up a reason.

 

[FROGO207]

It was not THAT many years ago that I had a failure rate of at least 1:10 with the REM golden turds in any one of my many .22's. Three bricks and I was over it. I heard about 3 years ago REM rebuilt their rimfire equipment. At the present point if I found any of their .22 on the shelf I would let it sit.
BTW I took the bad rounds apart for the lead and foumd all of them had partial or completly missing primer compound. I got sick of trying to use them in a single shot rifle and clocking them to a new spot on the rim. REM did deserve the bad rep for that ammo though.

ETA I feel these days one bad per 50 seems good but back in the 50's-60's I never had a bad round that I can remember in any brand and I mostly shot the REM dogbone boxes and WIN/ Olin.

 

[Reloadron]

Don't need an excuse to go to the range, I just go because I want to. Science experiments at the range are always a good reason to go though.

I have shared the same observation with rimfire firing pin strikes. I always look long and hard at the gun before I worry about blaming the ammunition. I have two S&W Model 17 revolvers which really strike hard and seldom if ever a failure to fire with them. Just need to look at the spent rounds and you know they were hit hard. More often than not I have seen people blame the ammunition when the problem lies with the gun. Not to say bad ammunition doesn't happen because it does on occasion.

Ron

 

[Carl N. Brown]

FROGO207 Post #5.

Back in the late 1950s into the 1960s Remington Golden Bullet was considered really good ammo.
I too have heard that the various owners who acquired Remington did not replace equipment as it wore out and the quality of the ammo went down hill over the decades.

 

[Riomouse911]

Unless I want to drive 80 miles each way out to the desert, I get so few opportunities to use a rifle range unfettered with drawing or rapid fire rules that I got up three hours before the class I was teaching started on Wednesday. I had to stop by the office to retrieve more ammo first, by the time I was done I arrived at the range about an hour and a half early. I set up my table and rest as the sun rose and sighted in two of my rimfires at 50 yds. (CZ 455 and Ruger 10/22 international) and confirmed my 50 yard zero with 30 rounds of 5.56 through my BCM.



Then I spent the next eight hours in the 90 degree heat finishing day two instruction to the 15 folks in the course. A couple of the guys struggled on day one, which made me wonder if they were going to get through it or have their rifles pulled from duty. With a good bit of extra one-on-one instruction provided by two of my cadre on both days, these guys pulled it together, shot well and everyone qualified .

Any range trip is a great range trip . Sometimes they’re ones you have to scramble a bit and improvise around, but it’s always better than another Zoom meeting .

Stay safe.