View Full Version : Tap, rack, hm, wait a second.....
Ned Christiansen
10-17-14, 14:55
Guy brings me this M&P. He's using some ammo that has had some squibs in the past, he's pretty sure he shot one out before-- I'm going to say I THINK that's possible without bulging the barrel is the squib round is lodged just right, so that the incoming round's bullet tip is in contact with the rear of the stuck bullet, or if it (less likely I'd say) was almost out of the barrel, that is, sticking out the end and just hanging in there by 1/32" or so. Never seen nor heard of that, just talking theoretically.
Anyway, this time he did a tap, rack, hmm. Good thing. Then he tried to get the stuck round out with the wrong tool. Bad thing.
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo125/NedChristiansen/DSC04345.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo125/NedChristiansen/DSC04347.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo125/NedChristiansen/DSC04349.jpg
Voodoo_Man
10-17-14, 15:05
oouuucchhhhhh.
Guess that's one way of making an excuse to buy a barrel.
notorious_ar15
10-17-14, 18:30
Amazing pictures - and useful information that we can learn from, as always.
Thank you for posting, Ned.
steve462x0
10-17-14, 18:42
WOW, just Wow
WickedWillis
10-17-14, 18:46
Damn. There is always a right tool for the job, and billions of wrong ones.
Quick Draw
10-17-14, 20:15
I have seen checkered front straps, mainspring housings, and grips, but never rifling lands.
Should make for some serious leading with cast bullets.
Ned Christiansen
10-17-14, 23:35
Him: I screwed up, didn't I?
Me: Yes, yes you did screw up.
Him: How bad is it? Do I need to get a new barrel?
Based on my experience with 1911 barrels over the years, and most recently this one
(shortly after the mysterious incident):
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo125/NedChristiansen/DSC03689.jpg
(and, maybe 3K rounds after the mysterious incident):
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo125/NedChristiansen/DSC04212.jpg
......I said, No, you don't need a new barrel. This one's gonna be fine.
And I believe that. Little or no accuracy degradation will result, at least once it's all smoothed out. It's an M&P used for carry and combat competition, I don't think he's taking it to Camp Perry. The above 1911 barrel has exhibited no loss in accuracy in the hands of its very capable owner. Not saying it ever was the most accurate, this gun has well over 110K though it (but not the barrel), but it does right fine.
vicious_cb
10-18-14, 03:01
Amazing pictures - and useful information that we can learn from, as always.
Thank you for posting, Ned.
This guy obviously doesnt know how to take hints. I dont think you unlearn this kind of stupid.
Ned,
Interesting post as always man. Ironically a few years ago I (relatively) did the same thing to an AR barrel. Tried a field expedient round removal of the squid and had no luck. Between myself and another guy the rifling ended up getting gouged along about an inch of the barrel. Can't really say if it was myself or the other guy who did the destruction. For a few months the upper with that 'screwed' barrel felt no love. I couldn't send it to BCM (14.7" std profile CHF barrel) for warranty b/c I knew ultimately the gouging was my own fault. A while passes and I decide to retry this bad barrel. To my astonishment, and probably 4 other guys on here can attest to my amazement, it had practically NO affect on accuracy.None. The rifle still shoots slightly larger than 1"groups with 55g Hornday V-Max ammo (my control ammo for accuracy) at 100 yds. Ask me to explain that.... not gonna happen. :)
-Jax
Ned Christiansen
10-18-14, 22:13
Yeah.... after all the years of doting on barrels and sweating little things like "what if I clean it too much, will it damage the barrel?", kinda surprising how much you can really get away with!
The guys that buggered up these barrels, both smart guys but sometimes a feller gets deperate...... the 1911 barrel we don't really know what happened there. It does not seem to have been the result of a pound-out but I just don't really know for sure.
I suppose this has been discussed here but I'm just not inclined to do a big search right now: What's the consensus on drilling tap-rack-bang constantly? I can see some real downsides, and, if the need comes up after some rounds have already been fired, safe to say we know the magazine is seated and it's probably something else. So in that case, does it seem like the best approach. I'd say no.
Considering the amount of wear some barrels show from being shot thousands upon thousands of times, sometimes with the rifling being damn near obliterated for several inches from being so heavily used, and yet still maintaining combat accuracy I would not be surprised by the fact that the marking causing little to no appreciable loss in accuracy.
I do wonder if a polygonal rifled barrel could be more adversely affected over a standard cut barrel though. Any word to that?
Tap, rack, scratch! Wow.
On the consensus of these drills I can say that any time in the past that I've ever had a squib load I've still heard the primer pop off. These include a couple of times when it happened to friends guns beside me and I was able to catch it sound wise. I can't say that'll be the case with everyone but so far I've been fortunate. Maybe I'm just more focused on having situational awareness with the guns function. Like when I feel the slide lock back instead of return to closed or the bolts on my AR's kicking back and locking open.
Another fortunate factor is personally the ones I've been around the round has never gone deep enough in to allow the followup round to fully feed into the chamber. I do know of one Glock 22 that did go into the rifling and a second round was fired off. Both rounds exited the muzzle but the barrel was bulged to the point it had a ring around the outside of it. I also was told that the owner had a smith turn down the barrel, blued it, and then took the gun to a gunshow and sold it without disclosure on what had happened.
I've also seen one 16" Uzi carbine barrel that was bulged because of this.
I throw that all into this discussion to draw attention to everyone to very carefully inspect anything you buy used. There are some unscrupulous people out there.
That is one of my bigger 'fears' when shooting, is getting a squib round and not knowing it, then trying to send another.
Wow!
-------------------------------------
"One cannot awaken a man who pretends to be asleep."
Tap, rack, attempt is only useful on the first round after a mag change... If the case properly ejects and the magazine manages to stay in the magwell.
I consider it a training scar, a waste of time, and I recommend going straight to ripping the mag out and actually solving the problem.
Tap, rack, attempt is only useful on the first round after a mag change... If the case properly ejects and the magazine manages to stay in the magwell.
I consider it a training scar, a waste of time, and I recommend going straight to ripping the mag out and actually solving the problem.
I think most look at TAP, RACK, BANG as an immediate action drill and all other drills as remedial action drills.
It's kind of coincidental that this conversation is taking place at this time. We just returned a whole order of 9mm ammunition this cycle because we had 2 squib rounds within the same lot of new ammunition.
My experience kind of echoes an earlier poster - my experience is that one of two things happen 1) the shooter does immediate action and the weapon won't go into battery; or 2) the shooter recognizes lack of report and lack of recoil and takes no further action.
Both the rounds that squibbed last cycle wouldn't go into battery.
I see the rationale behind immediately going to remedial action if the weapon hasn't reset/cocked after firing - you more than likely have a fail to extract or eject, but there is a far greater likelihood with a striker fired pistol that the weapon wasn't fully into battery, the mag wasn't fully seated, or you had a dead, or hard primer. In that respect immediate action clears 70-80ish percent of stoppages - more like 90 percent if you instruct shooters to look at the top of the slide to ID the fail to eject.
In any event, even if you choose to go full remedial action for everything, unless part of your remediation process is checking the bore for obstruction, you won't catch a squib round that has traveled much into the bore.
JMO YMMV
Bad primers are a non issue. In literally around 100K rounds of all manner of cheap factory ammo I had 4 duds with some Blazer Alumimum back in '08. No squibs, knock on wood, but I do keep the chance im the back of my mind.
In observation, a tap, rack, attempt usually exacerbates the most common malfunction. Failure to extract.
Ned Christiansen
10-20-14, 11:54
Agreed on all.
ChrisCross
10-20-14, 17:52
Having watched too many youtube videos with squibs and a gun actually going boom (not in the good way)... this makes me less thrilled. It's one of the reasons I always stick to new (not reman) ammo from reputable manufacturers (and even then there are issues).
Howdy,
That's why everyone should carry a wooden dowel in their shooter's bag.
Paul
Bad primers are a non issue. In literally around 100K rounds of all manner of cheap factory ammo I had 4 duds with some Blazer Alumimum back in '08. No squibs, knock on wood, but I do keep the chance im the back of my mind.
In observation, a tap, rack, attempt usually exacerbates the most common malfunction. Failure to extract.
We run through a little over 500K per year. On occasion we have primer issues - dead, seated too deep.
I do agree that if the weapon hasn't recoiled enough to try to feed the next round that immediate action does somewhat exacerbate the problem in that magazine removal involves either ripping the mag out or locking the slide to the rear.
Other than that, meh.
Our most frequent malfunction is probably fail to fires due to striker fired weapons not going all the way into battery - usually near the end of the day.
In the end it really doesn't make much difference, if it FTE's in the middle of the two-way range and you just stand there fiddling with the weapon without seeking cover, it really doesn't matter what you do.
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