Odd 10-22 kaboom

[C-grunt]

I wanted to run this by you guys as my brother in law and I couldn't figure it out.

A week ago my brother in law, we'll call him K. went out into the desert for some plinking. He has an older model 10-22 that his was shooting. We shot for a good hour when all of a sudden he had a kaboom.

The round sounded much louder than normal and a bunch of dark colored smoke came out of the action and through the mag well. K got some slight burns on his off hand fingers. the rifle ejected the casing.

My immediate thought was a squib load but we are both fairly certain the previous round fired as it sounded fine, ejected the shell and Im pretty sure I saw the impact.

One problem we had was that we couldn't find the ejected casing to look at it. K is sending the rifle back to Ruger to have it looked over but there was no visible damage what so ever. The ammo was a mixed bag of factory ammo so its unsure what brand it was.

So my question is, if the previous round fired as normal what else could have caused this?

[Dobie]

Case failure or out of battery ignition. Rimfire is the cheapest possible manufacture. I've had multiple case head failures with Remington golden bullets in my Advantage Arms kit on my G19. I usually have to pry the blown 22 case out of the chamber with the failure almost always at the rim. Sounds different and some powder out of the ejection port. Got to wear eyepro out there.

[Heavy Metal]

Out of battery detonation most likely. it happens on occasion with rimfires.

[ImBroke]

I've not experienced an out of battery with a rimfire but had a few GB instances as Dobie described. When you find the case it is torn open at the junction with the rim and side wall.

[lurpygeek]

Out of battery detonation most likely. it happens on occasion with rimfires.

My bet as well. I haven't had an issue like this with my 10/22, but I have experienced it with other, older .22 firearms.

A .22 cartridge makes a lot more noise when it detonates out of the ejection port than you would normally associate with a rimfire plinker.

[glocktogo]

I've had an OOB detonation in my 10/22. it was shortly after a local smith did a trigger job on it. Mine freckled the inside of the aluminum action and blew the plastic Eagle 30 round mag out the bottom. It was much louder than normal. I disassembled the gun and found a piece of machining debris in the trigger housing that appeared to allow the hammer to follow.

I cleaned it thoroughly and inspected the gun, then reassembled and it's never had another problem. That was a good 18-20 years ago.