Squib

[jay524288]

I was shooting my S&W .500 last weekend and had a squib. This is the first time I've ever had one. I'm perplexed because there was powder in the case.

My load was 42.5 grains of H110, Winchester large rifle primer, and 350 grain JFP from Berry's. I loaded it about 4 months ago with components that I had bought within the last year or so. I had already shot at least 100 rounds from this batch, and a couple hundred others from the same primer and powder batches.

When I removed the case from the cylinder, some powder came out and the end of the cylinder was plugged with about 3/4" of compressed powder. When I pushed the powder out, it remained stuck together.

The powder that came out of the case was a greenish yellow instead of the usual black. The same is true for the end closest to the primer in the plug of compressed powder. I would post pictures, but my camera is MIA.

Any idea what could have caused this? Contaminated powder? Bad primer?

 

[bobotech]

Sounds like contaminated powder. Maybe something from the brass cleaning was left in it or your choice of case lube?

 

[mokin]

Good thing you noticed before you tried to take another shot.

I had a sort of similar situation occur with a rifle cartridge. The primer went POP! and when I opened the action (a bolt action rifle) powder spilled out. I checked the bore and found it blocked with the bullet. I had fired over half the batch of 20 or so rounds with no problems. I had also used the other components in other loads without any problems. All I could figure, with some research, was that there was a piece of polishing media stuck in the flash hole.

I'd guess there was probably something in your cartridge case that contaminated the powder.

 

[The Bushmaster]

Do you use water in your case cleaning process?

 

[SASS#23149]

my guess is cleaning media from your tumbler was left in the caseunnoticed,and contaminated your load.


don't as me how I know this.

 

[Iron Sight]

When ever I add "Flitz tumbler media additive" to my walnut hull media I always run the tumbler for a while to get a good mix before adding any brass to be cleaned. If I dont I will find brass cases jammed up with walnut and the additive.

 

[jay524288]

I use Hornady One-shot as the case lube. It's possible that I got a bunch of it inside this case.

I use walnut shells or corncob with Nufinish as my cleaning media. No water. I don't think I had any media in the case. With the .500 cases, it's pretty easy to get it out, and I'm more careful about it with .500 than other calibers.

I'm kind of glad this happened with the .500 instead of 9mm. It was pretty apparent that the round didn't fire right.

 

[rcmodel]

If you use a loading block, and stand the cases up in the holes as you charge them, it's pretty apparent there is contamination when you look at all the charges before seating bullets.

Any with powder granules stuck around the mouth would be very suspect.

rc