Little Kaboom

[Classic12]

I have this .22 lr rifle, AMT small game hunter II, with an Archangel stock . Copy of the Ruger 10/22 in stainless steel with a match trigger. Very nice rifle, accurate but a bit finicky at times.




This morning I had an out of battery detonation, a little kaboom. Unusual noise, powder, smoke and debris.

Result :





That Remington bullet almost made it out of the barrel [emoji16]



After an unusual event / noise or recoil report I always check the barrel for obstructions. This one was rather obvious

Stay safe guys

[AZ_CZ]

Nice setup!

[Earl Keese]

Remington .22 ammo...that says it all.

[CCWLearner]

Seriously, I try to stick with CCI or Federal ammo only for my 10/22.  Aguila ammo seems to work fine but something with it, powder or primers, not sure... it smells bad when you shoot it.  Remington I will never buy or shoot again after removing the hunk of lead it left in my barrel, obstructing it so bad I couldn't pass my cleaning rod through it.  Fortunately I didn't have my own kaboom on the range that day, especially being a left-handed shooter with that blowback-operated rifle.

[M1A4ME]

Outside of the case is scraped.  Tight chamber?  Oversized brass case?  Some misalignment of the cartridge while feeding to the chamber?

It wasn't fully chambered when it went off.  I can't see firing pin mark in the rim from those pictures.  The brass is badly mashed.  Not a lack of powder in the case that left the bullet in the barrel, but a loss of pressure through the side of the blown out case.

I saw a TC semi auto .22 at an appleseed one time that was doing that every few rounds.  After 3 or 4 we asked him to take that rifle off the firing line and use a loaner 10/22. 

Has that rifle ever done that before?  Do you regularly use Remington ammo?

I don't have a lot of recent experience with Rem. rimfire ammo but my rifles/pistols always did fine with Thunderbolts.  Not much for hollow points as a headshot with LRN always did the job on small game and even groundhogs.

The problem with the rimfire ammo and a misalignment during feeding/chambering is that rim with the priming compound is what the bolt face makes contact with.  On a centerfire the primer is not contacting the bolt/breechface during feeding if the cartridge hangs up while feeding/chambering.  Good thing to, looking back on my chambering issues with that Storm Lake .40 S&W barrel for my M&P .40.  Now that would have been a scary thing.

[SI VIS PACEM PARRABELLUM]

Remington .22 ammo...that says it all.

^^^^
This exactly!. Remington .22 is absolute garbage. I've used my share of it over the years and it simply does not chamber well in quality guns. I still have a couple bricks of Thunderbolts-(the worst) and some of their golden plate hollow points and none of it will properly chamber in my S&W revolvers, Ruger .22 auto pistols nor even my Remington .22 pump. I have an old Ithaca semi auto .22 that has a loose chamber and will shoot them marginally well but just marginally.
There's simply better quality ammo from CCI, Federal and anyone but Remingtrash.

[Classic12]

Remington .22 ammo...that says it all.

Seriously, I try to stick with CCI or Federal ammo only for my 10/22.  Aguila ammo seems to work fine but something with it, powder or primers, not sure... it smells bad when you shoot it.  Remington I will never buy or shoot again after removing the hunk of lead it left in my barrel, obstructing it so bad I couldn't pass my cleaning rod through it.  Fortunately I didn't have my own kaboom on the range that day, especially being a left-handed shooter with that blowback-operated rifle.

Remington .22 ammo...that says it all.

^^^^
This exactly!. Remington .22 is absolute garbage. I've used my share of it over the years and it simply does not chamber well in quality guns. I still have a couple bricks of Thunderbolts-(the worst) and some of their golden plate hollow points and none of it will properly chamber in my S&W revolvers, Ruger .22 auto pistols nor even my Remington .22 pump. I have an old Ithaca semi auto .22 that has a loose chamber and will shoot them marginally well but just marginally.
There's simply better quality ammo from CCI, Federal and anyone but Remingtrash.

Outside of the case is scraped.  Tight chamber?  Oversized brass case?  Some misalignment of the cartridge while feeding to the chamber?

It wasn't fully chambered when it went off.  I can't see firing pin mark in the rim from those pictures.  The brass is badly mashed.  Not a lack of powder in the case that left the bullet in the barrel, but a loss of pressure through the side of the blown out case.

I saw a TC semi auto .22 at an appleseed one time that was doing that every few rounds.  After 3 or 4 we asked him to take that rifle off the firing line and use a loaner 10/22. 

Has that rifle ever done that before?  Do you regularly use Remington ammo?

I don't have a lot of recent experience with Rem. rimfire ammo but my rifles/pistols always did fine with Thunderbolts.  Not much for hollow points as a headshot with LRN always did the job on small game and even groundhogs.

The problem with the rimfire ammo and a misalignment during feeding/chambering is that rim with the priming compound is what the bolt face makes contact with.  On a centerfire the primer is not contacting the bolt/breechface during feeding if the cartridge hangs up while feeding/chambering.  Good thing to, looking back on my chambering issues with that Storm Lake .40 S&W barrel for my M&P .40.  Now that would have been a scary thing.

It is the first time I experienced this with this rifle. I had a Hämmerli 280 self destroy with an out of battery detonation and RWS match ammo










This is the ammo I shot with the rifle. I have shot a lot of it over the years in rifles and some pistols without any issue, in fact it has been reliable and accurate. I thought it was quality stuff made in the US

[Earl Keese]

I can't speak to that ammo in particular, but over here Rem .22 ammo is almost universally reviled, at least by competitive shooters and enthusiasts.

[M1A4ME]

Guns are funny.  Some guns "like" ammo that doesn't do worth a darn in other guns.

At one time if I bought anything but Remington (this was back in the 80's) it was only because it was cheap and I was going to reload the brass.

I can say, in the last few years, when buying a variety of ammo for some of these non-group shooting handguns I've bought, in no case did Remington ammo give me the best groups in the gun I was testing.  Talking about centerfire ammo.  Something has changed over the last 30 years or so.

[CCWLearner]

The corporate entity formerly known as Remington has gone through multiple bankruptcies in the past few years, with the last one resulting in the corporate assets being carved up and sold to various different new ownership.  The quality issues with their 22 rimfire ammo pre-dates those events, though.  I'm not sure where that ammo is manufactured, but I do know they have a large ammo plant in Lonoke, AR just to the east of Little Rock, right on Interstate 40.  From what I understood from local news sources in that area, many workers there were furloughed during the time leading up to the final bankruptcy, but since the Remington ammo business was bought out by Vista, which also owns Federal, CCI, and Speer, they ramped production back up to meet increased ammo demand in the past couple of years.

[SI VIS PACEM PARRABELLUM]

The quality issues with Remington rimfire ammo in my experience go back more than 30 years. You could buy Rem. Thunderbolts for $4 a brick on sale but it was very inconsistent even then. Very often you'd get a rounds that were had such low powder charges that they wouldn't cycle the action on a semi auto and you'd have to stop and make sure the bullet actually left the barrel. feed issues were common and chambering in revolvers was overly tight.
To be fair Winchester Wildcat rimfire was pretty sad as well.