Originally Posted by
Duelist
Hey, Yung!
Squibs and deadlining:
this happened to me once in a Kframe revolver from a reload I made that had no powder in the case. The primer pushed the bullet into the forcing cone, where the nose contacted the rifling and stopped, leaving the rear of the bullet in the chamber mouth and locking up the revolver but good. It did *not* require a gunsmith to clear, but it did require a wooden dowel down the barrel and a solid thunk with a rubber mallet to knock it back into the chamber. Since I had neither mallet or dowel at the range, shooting with that gun was done for the day.
Similar situations I have seen in other guns:
a semiauto 9mm, loading the first round of the day from the magazine with a reloaded lead round. The loading cycle felt off, so I stopped and tried to clear the round. It resisted clearing and then when more force was applied to the slide, the bullet pulled from the cartridge and remained lodged in the chamber mouth, locked in place by engraving on the rifling. What had happened was I was shooting a pistol with a particularly short throat, and shooting reloads made by my reloading mentor for a different gun with a standard length throat. My reloads with the same bullet worked in that gun, but his did not because they were seated too long for my chamber. The same remedy was required as with the previous squib .38 round: a wooden dowel and rubber mallet, which I happened to have in my range bag. Without the proper tools, it would have needed to wait till I got home to my workbench.
A bolt action rifle: while developing loads for a new bolt action, I checked bullet seat length in a couple of ways - micrometer and by chambering the round. A bullet that was seated too long while I was in this process engraved on the rifling and stuck in the chamber, pulling from the case when extracted in much the same way as the previous 9mm. A cleaning rod from the muzzle and light tap with the heel of my hand was required to clear it.
Each case required knowledge and tools to clear. Without those tools, each gun was deadlined. None were field clearable by things I normally carry except sometimes at the range. Each was also the result of either a mistake in reloading, or a reloaded cartridge with an incorrect cartridge length for that chamber. Each of those guns has since fired a pile of reloaded rounds without a problem.
Bottom line: the squib described in that class would have deadlined a semiauto pistol, too, until tools could remediate the issue. In either case, revolver or semiauto, if the squib had lodged far enough into the barrel to allow the next round to fire, a catastrophic failure or bulged/ruined barrel would have occurred.
Second section of your quote: those running modern CNC-produced revolvers (S&W, Ruger, Colt - Kimber?) seem to be doing fine. My newest revolver is a S&W made in 2003, and has fired a pile of factory and reloaded ammunition with never a problem.