Two thumbs up for the AvE reference. 👍🏻👍🏻 Recently had a squib load that bulged the barrel of one of my guns and now I can’t get the slide off 😬 Correction…the subsequent firing of the next round bulged the barrel 💪🏼
I got a squib in an old S&W revolver back in the day. After scratching my head a bit, and being young and goofy, I primed up a fresh .38 case, poured a little bit of powder in it, and topped the whole mess with a little tissue paper. Then I just blew the squib out. Like I said, young and goofy.
Firing a 76mm auto cannon. Last round rammed home, breach block went up, firing pin dropped, no dice. That was a fun couple of hours trying to get the casing off the projo. The ogive engaged the rifling but the shell was crimped to the projo. Finally got it out, threw a clearing charge in and shot the projo out.
LoL it must have been a scary and sometimes lethal thing to deal with back in the days before fuses that relied on rotation to arm the cannon shell. I have read some essays written back in the day about that. Some of those early on impact fuzes were really temperamental and early impact striker setback at the shot when the projectile lurched forward was an issue. Did the striker change position,in the shell, or was there still enough clearance between primer and striker for a second potential striker setback when a shot to clear the clogged bore was fired? A run away event if it was one of the old burning timer type fused shells common in the muzzle loader and early breech systems, if one even lived long enough to realize the powder was wet but the fuse may still be lit and just smouldering.
Does squib missiles count? Once saw an ERYX wire guided anti tank missile hire its launch booster rocket but fail to ignite the main engine. Missile landed a few feet in front of the firing line and just laid there, gently hissing and making whirring servo noises while smoke seeped out. Low crawl to cover, was the order given...
Mark, I was a firearms instructor and one day at the range we were at the three yard line and I actually saw a bullet hit the target and lodge itself in the target and backer cardboard. Before I could stop him the Deputy fired another round and this one locked up the revolver solid. After making the line safe we took the revolver a model 66 S&W back to the bench and discovered the last round fired had only gone just about half way into the forcing cone ,enough to prevent further rotation of the cylinder. The cause was WD-40 ! The deputy had been spraying his loaded revolver every week and just wiping the outside and holstering. I pulled the bullets from the remaining cartridges and found that the WD-40 had indeed penetrated and turned the powder to a gooey mess. We added more cleaning and ammo care to the training from that day on. thanks for your great gun channel.
When I first met my Gun Guru, a friend of his had used his Brazilian Mauser 98/08 (his "1000 yard gun"), to try out some special loads, and did this. Tried to shoot out a stuck bullet, and screwed the barrel. Years later, as he had been a "Wild West Gun Shooter" (he and his buddies use to put on "Wild West" trick shooting, quick draw, cowboy action shows at the Calgary Stampede), I got him a couple of SA pistols in 44-40. Being a reloader (like precision rifle AND pistol calibers, with over a dozen different, plus custom lead cast "boolits", etc.), Old Vic, my Gun Guru, reloaded some rounds (a few hundred, with Starline nickel plated cases) using a new powder throw disk he had bought for the new guns, but didn't wash it properly to get rid of the static charge. Thankfully, we notice immediately and stopped shooting them. My point is that of complacency. If a man who had 84 years of shooting, and over 50 years of reloading, can screw up, then you can too!
I've had one squib. My dad bulged a barrel with one. I got lucky. I was shooting in the desert with a buddy. He was firing my 9mm Taurus G2. I heard the round go pop instead of a bang. The action did not cycle. He racked the slide, but it hit me before he could fire again so I yelled STOP!!!. I took my firearm from him, cleared it, and disassembled it then using a cleaning rod knocked the bullet out of the barrel. Had I not had experience from my years of shooting and reloading, I might not have told him to stop and at the very least I'd have had a damaged pistol. Thanks for posting this Mark, EVERYONE needs to know the signs of a squib because sometimes they don't just bulge the barrel...
In one of my first batches of .357 magnum reloads, I created my own squib. I missed the powder step... the magnum primer had enough go to put the pew-pellet into the forcing cone of my GP100, but not enough to handle a barrel's worth of friction. It was kind of obvious (much less recoil and sound) and I didn't stack rounds... (I picked reloading for a revolver on purpose for my learning round, and the beefy GP100 so I wouldn't wreck myself if I did mess up)... I put the rest of those reloads in quarantine (pulled and re-reloaded) but it was just the one. I've not done it again and I've been reloading for over a decade now... once is enough :) I haven't had a factory squib yet.
10:43 I learned that besides being a legend you also know about “idiocrisy” and that where this country is going. Thank you Mr serbu and keep the content coming.
I bought a Remington Nylon 66 that had a ring in it about 2.00 inches from the mussel, I just cut it off and recrowned it and reinstalled the front sight. Still shooting great.
I had a Remington model 24 gallery gun with 3 rings in it , it off gassed just enough that it was ... quiet 🤔 really quiet . But still accurate. There's a lesson there somewhere.
A friend''s 454 Casull squibed one of his reloads once. Our best guess is the primer failed to fully ignite the powder charge. Anyway, it successfully lodged a jacketed hollow point half down a 9.5" barrel. Took some effort to back the bullet out later. No shooters or revolvers were harmed and no further failures in that or any subsequent batches of reloads. Weird deal but it sure shut the range session down in a hurry.
They are terrifying. I just had one (due to my own handload idiocy), and neither I nor the RSO watching me realized it, he even said "you missed the target!" Only thing that saved me was that the next round wouldn't chamber.
Only experienced a squib load once. I was 16 or 17, my dad had just gotten a Ruger GP 100 from my grandma along with a few boxes of ammo that was either very old or some crap reload work. Boxes were dated to the 1960's. My dad fired a few rounds and eventually one of them went *thump* in an oddly quiet and dull sounding way and the shot was lacking in recoil. This was followed very quickly by a distinctly separate FWOOM of the powder actually burning. Nobody in the family was particularly knowledgable about guns aside from strict gun safety and basic handling. We all knew that definitely wasn't right though, so we unloaded it and inspected it to see a round stuck in the barrel! We knew nothing about guns at the time and were worried this alone would have already ruined the barrel. We decided to try and get it out but didn't have anything particularly well suited to tap it out with and were very ignorant and impatient so we used a 1/8 drill bit to put a hole all the way through the bullet and then were able to pull it out. Fortunately nothing was damaged, the gun shoots great, and my dad still has it 10 years later. And now fortunately thanks to a fantastic online community, creators such as yourself, classes, training, and experience I am more prepared for when guns don't do what you expect and how to solve almost everything short of actual gunsmithing. It was this experience and others like it (renting an AR15 when I was 19 and being unable to clear a double feed malfunction and feeling very embarassed having to ask the store owner to help me) that has led me to prioritize learning as well as doing all I can to ensure my friends and family never walk blindly into their first experience with guns. I figure you've only got three choices: fear and avoid the gun, respect and understand the gun, or risk causing accidental injury and death with the gun.
As the air pressure between the bullets is increased, the temperature increases dramatically. The combination of high pressure and high heat is able to overcome the weakest points at the interface between the barrel and the fired bullet (likely the squib bullet, too), which is at the square corners of the grooves. This is the point where the air escapes, allowing the subsequent bullets to stack one on back of the other. Because this area of weak obturation exists, the heat of compression doesn't get high enough to cause further damage, unless the second bullet is full power round. Then, all sorts of math and physics happens!
In the Army, once I felt reduced recoil from my M16 on the range. I dropped the magazine out, cleared the chamber, pushed the rear takedown pin, took out the BCG, looked down the barrel, and saw no light through it. I got a cleaning rod with no attachments on it over the very tip of the projectile, and I used a brass hammer to tap it out of the barrel. There was no damage to the barrel.
02:45 This 25 pocket pistol style firing pin spring means that, unlike on glock based guns, you may use a much powerful firing pin spring without out of battery risk. Take a look at the GSh18, the russian striker fired pistol, it uses the same concept. I like it, looks old but prevents light strikes.
I was teaching a class of students on handgun safety years ago, when one of the students had a squib load. We covered squib loads in class before the range session started, so they notified the rangemaster immediately. They were shooting some old reloads at the time and we found that they all squibbed. We brought the entire class to that booth and fired the 38 squibs in a Smith & Wesson Model 28 highway patrolman. For those who don't know, that's a heavy-duty "N"frame .357 revolver. After each shot we knocked the bullet out with a cleaning rod and showed the students . We did that six or eight times in a row and then the remaining ammo was ultimately broken down for components. It was the best teaching session we had ever had when it came to covering squib loads!
I’ve shot many 10s of thousands of rounds and have yet to encounter a squib. I was warned about them as a kid, as a neighbor had a shooting range in his backyard and competed in local rim fire matches. He taught me a lot about guns and shooting. Of course, when I trained on the M16A1 in Basic, the possibility of a squib load was always present, as we used reloaded ammo to train with. Only thing I’ve had happen was an out of battery explosion with an extremely dirty M4 while testing coatings during a consulting gig.
Like a true craftsman. Everything is a hammer. Haha. Love it. Glad you noticed that happened instead of ignoring it and trying to chamber and fire another round.
I have noticed from my experience that if a bullet gets stuck nearer the chamber, there is a much better chance of the next round uneventfuly pushing it out of the barrel. If however; it gets stuck nearer the muzzle, then you are much more likely to have a catastrophic failure when the two bullets collide in the barrel.
The Jennings striker retention design was a cheaper made variant of the old Browning vest pocket pistol design. The big difference is unlike the Browning or Jennings/Bryco versions that retention loop on this Walther is not a removable part of the take down and just a projection of the frame..I am curious why Browning abandoned strikes in favor of hammers when he went to larger calibers. I suspect it was because his military customers liked hammers, but only he could say why he dropped the striker.
I happen to have some 7.62's loaded by an unknown source. Something I picked up in Syria. They are made to render the firearm unusable and potentially harm the rifleman. I've extracted the secondary propellant. I would like to have its spectrum composition tested. Its a liquid oily substance that is heat and shock sensitive. Extremely reactive substance. Its polar but I see relevance to this concept. Thank you Mark.
Actually, it would be really cool to see high-speed footage of the Walther firing. There seems to be some debate whether the P7's gas delay really had much of an effect and I'd like to see what you make of it.
As an owner of a CCP I would like to see that as well. I really like mine from a mechanical perspective. That being said, they should have made a stack and a half magazine (plenty of room in the grip)version to compete with hellcat and p365.
Wish I had the money to buy guns to play with them and check them out. Love gun mechanics. One of my favorite things in life. Have invented many things that people invented after me... but being disabled, I never got the chance to patent anything myself.
Glad you caught that mark. I try to keep my stuff wire tight and have never encountered anything like that luckily. I remember learning about them in hunter safety class but this was a good Refresher also I have to talk crap on Walther pistols I would never own one
best way ive cleared a squib that was really stuck was put the barrel in my freezer over night then let it rewarm up to room temp in the morning and the barrel contracts just enough from being cold that it squishes the bullet and then it just about slides on out with a couple light taps. so much better than hammering the bejesus out of the barrel.
Pretty neat little Walther , I didn’t know they made that one. I wouldn’t mind having one. I love the different mechanical systems that are in different guns. The more unique and weird the more interesting they are to me. By the way is there any way you can put iron sights on my RN 50. I’m tired of fixing scopes and buying scopes . I only really shoot it about 300 yards at my range and I’m probably never going to have a location to shoot any further than that so irons would be nice.
I own one, well technically My gf owns one, it is a nice shooter. The delayed blowback is pretty nice for quick followup shots. It shoots pretty soft, or at least I think so but I have big meaty hands.
if its got a rail, slap some "back-up" irons on it...I get it, Ive got an old mosin alI tricked out, short of bending the bolt and attaching a scope, because I too only have access currently to a 300rd range, and I can smack a standard target all day with irons on it.
My wife chose the CCP for her carry gun because the grip fit her so well. I have to say the ergonomics on that grip are fantastic. Good shooting little gun
I have a Ruger P95 that had a squib/second round. It survived and still operates fine. The rounds were Linotype Lead cast bullets that were loaded with a progressive hand loader. I knew to look for problems, but my brother was using my gun and ammo, and thought he would be all tactical and do a tap/rack when the gun misfired. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. BOOM, the gun tried to leap from his hand. It took us a half an hour of pounding to get the two bullets out of it. The barrel didn't bulge, and I still use it today.
I think the thing I like the best about Mark's videos and tools, is half the time (until he breaks out the CNC) they look they could have come out of any common homegamers shop.
Squib story: Years ago a friend of mine bought a key fob thing from someone he worked with I think it was, maybe not...anyway it was a 9mm cartridge with a hole drilled through it for the key ring. We both noticed that the primer was ...untouched (yeah you know where this is going) so he brought out his Beretta 92. Fortunately the apartment we lived in at the time had an open field directly behind them out our back patio so we had a clear and safe direction to point it, just in case. He loaded it up and *pop* it went. We were both a little surprised that someone would sell such a thing still "live" as a key ring attachment. I got out my cleaning kit and knocked the bullet out of the barrel and he replaced it in the now spent case and reattached it to his key ring. He kept it for a while after that but I think I recall him losing the bullet at some point or other.
I had a squib in my intregrally suppressed 9mm AR. Tink Tink Tink BANG! All the noise came out of the ejection port from just the primer (and possibly a really low powder charge). Projectile was easily removed by pounding a 5/16 dowel down the barrel from the front. Really glad it wasn't on the go-fast lower when it happened.
I'd absolutely love to see some good high speed video of different sorts of actions cycling, and especially of them failing to cycle. Limp wrist a Desert Eagle in slow mo to see how many amusing varieties of jam you can induce.
I had a few squibs back in the mid 1980s when I started reloading. I miscalculated a few times. Fortunately, I was alert to such things and when I heard a light "pop" instead of a "bang" I knew to check.
ooh! I have a squib story, of all the years and all the rounds I've been shooting, I personally have only ever gotten maybe one squib? One of the first times I shot a gun, I think with my step brother's dad, I'm pretty sure I got a squib and he took the gun from me and dealt with it, but my memory is hazy on that. I was shooting with one of my friends that had never really shot a gun before, a few rounds in the gun makes a pop sound more than a boom and he immediately goes to trying to clear it and fire the next round and thank god I caught him in time because sure enough, he'd gotten a squib, somehow the powder failed to ignite fully bc there was tons of unburnt powder everywhere and it took several minutes with a cleaning rod to pount the bullet back out. Thankfully the gun was undamaged as far as any of us could tell and the day wasn't ruined but MAN, he didn't get how awful it could have been had he cleared it real quick-like and fired again.
Back in the late 80's, I got a P-85 at Walmart. About a year or two later, I bought some factory remanufactured ammo from my local gun store. I loaded up a magazine, loaded, aimed at a target and pulled the trigger. I had super strong earmuffs on, it sounded like a gunshot to me. Then I pulled the trigger and it was dead, like it was uncocked. I looked and I had a feeding problem. I racked the slide to eject the live round and the casing came out, leaving the bullet laying on top of the next round and powder was all over the place. What happened, the first round was a squib and it had barely entered the barrel and kept the second round from chambering. The second bullet was deep enough that the little bit of room it had to go into the chamber was enough pressure to pull the bullet out of the casing. I looked closer at the bag of ammo and there were two more empty casings and two bullets laying in a pile of powder. That batch of ammo hadn't been crimped. I took it back to the store and the owner freaked out. She gave me two boxes of name brand ammo and said she would call the factory to tell them about it. I was lucky I didn't have a kaboom.
I bought a dan wesson 38/357 revolver that had a squib. Took me years to find a barrel and the outside barrel sleeve since it cracked too. Mine was a rare model made under high standard name.....
Had a squib in my S&W 625 about 4 years ago while doing fast DA shooting, and set another round off - the difference between normal, squib and two bullets in the barrel was obvious. No bulge. The 625 of course has a very strong barrel, and it held up to the extra pressure, which all things considered did not surprise me, until I saw your formula. I guess the first bullet was moved by the pressure before the second one got close? That sounds weird. Maybe the first squib did not leave a bullet in the barrel? But, there was extra recoil. One squib in 50+ years of shooting, and a great deal of it doing fast DA work in revolvers. I also have a Winchester 1922M with a ringed barrel, I bought it pretty cheap, and since it is pretty accurate as is, I have just left it like that. Might not be from a squib; spiders nests, cleaning patches, etc.. lots of potential suspects.
Back when I was new to shooting and reloading. I loaded .38 special with FMJ and an amount of powder intended for soft lead. I got 6 rounds stuck in the barrel of a Taurus revolver (UK legal, so 12" barrel). Scrapped the gun and learned a lesson.
I had a squib back in the late 80's. Heard a pop when I should have heard a bang, so I stopped and disassembled the pistol. Sure enough there was a bullet about half way down, so I went in to the guy working the counter to see if I could borrow a rod to get it out. I told him what happened, and he reached under the counter and pulled out a cardboard box that was maybe 10" on a side. It was half full of blown barrels. So I learned two things from that incident. First, squibs are evidently a lot more common than I ever suspected. And second, when a bullet gets far enough into the barrel to engage the rifling, it's in there TIGHT. It was a real booger to get out, and a cleaning rod is definitely NOT the tool to use. Okay, maybe that's three things... 🙂
I had a squib from some 9mm that I reloaded. Recognized it and knocked it out. Now I deprime, resize, trim and reprime. Then sort reprimed cases by weight. Then weigh each after reloading. Haven't found another one in years but still check each one.
I had trouble lighting 4198 in my 45-70. The bullet moved just forward enough that it wouldn't allow the case to eject, but not far enough forward to clear the case completely. I had to tap the bullet backwards into the case to eject it from my 1895.
I must be a sympathetic dropper. When you dropped that barrel, I dropped my fork with a chunk of steak on it. Don't worry, I applied the 3 second rule and ate it anyway.
I used to play around with 22s, definitely made plenty of squibs, it is wicked fun to shoot a 22 without a suppressor and have it dead quiet, but always check the bore because if the shot didn’t register, you may not have “missed”.
My theory on stacked bullets: Where did the air go? I suspect the air escapes out through the bulge, releasing back into the chamber and probably out the cylinder gap for a revolver where the pressure is ambient. What that means is, the 2nd shot after the initial squib causes the bulge, thereby expanding the inner diameter of the barrel. There is now a difference between the inner diameter of the bulged barrel and the outer diameter of the compressed 2nd bullet going through the rifling. The THRID shot then pushes the second bullet through the bulge and into the first bullet, releasing the pressure between the 1st and 2nd (around the 2nd bullet through the gap from the bulge and 2nd bullet, possibly also expanding the bulge further) and shoving the 1st bullet further down the barrel. This continues to happen until the bulge is filled up and the cycle would start again, creating a new bulge closer to the breech. In some of the pictures you've used, there are signs of several bulges along the barrel where this might have happened. PS: I don't think the rifling would have flattened. The lands would have offered more structural support since there is more material there, whereas the grooves offer a reduced barrel-wall thickness and would be the point of failure (or a weak point that would be expanding.)
Looks like it was primer only . Missed the powder charge all together. And i wouldn't think that a subsequent round would go into battery if the first projectile never cleared the forcing cone
I had my first squib a few months back, it was an M+P 9 I got lucky because it happened on the last round in the mag...I didnt even notice until days later when I happened to clean up look through the barrel, guess luck was on my side that day.
Had squib on a mosin, gun goes click and then pop. Ok hang fire and squib, bullet got about 50mm in to the barrel. Was a pita to hammer it out. Those surp jackets are hard. And powder everywhere. Friend had a scuib on .452 XP airgun some how the valve didn’t fully open and the first bullet got stuck in the barrel, second one made a nice ring in the barrel.
Had one in a suppressed .22… at some point. Such low standard report and no recoil that god only knows when the squib happened. The ring in the barrel was found sometime later during cleaning. (Was a .22 pistol, didn’t bother cleaning it very often haha). Didn’t appear to affect the accuracy either, which was the funniest part.
Had a few pop no kick loads. Only two actually stuck in the tube, one was a 22 rifle and was easy to rod out. The other was a 12 Guage and the wad went halfway down the tube, the buckshot literally fell out of the muzle lol. My favorite actually left the barrel about as fast as i could spit it out. That one was out of a 357 Dan Wesson 4" . I watched it hit the dirt 10 feet in front of me lol.
Yep, the joys of a squib. It is surprising how far a primer with no powder can shove a bullet into the barrel. In the process of working up new loads I disengage my auto powder dump. a time or two I've missed the reengaging of that part, hence bullets with no powder. Not fun. The second time that happened, I'd run about ten rounds through (or so) not being convinced that I'd caught them all, I ended up pulling about twenty rounds apart. Lesson learned. I average about 100 rounds loaded in ten minutes , I don't rush, methodical repetition. Thousands of rounds loaded in several different calibers, sad to admit, about three squibs, all in the past. A guy should learn from his mistakes, right?
Got lucky and noted mine before I put a round up the other ones but. The thing that would get me but not like Scott, Kentucky B. Was ammo that was loaded by someone on their day off and was overcharged.
This might be interesting enough to mention.. I had just finished my heavy barrel AR 22 target rifle. I was using and anschutz reamer and an anschutz barrel. So, very tight bolt gun target reamer on what should be a pretty decent quality barrel blank. I decided to break it in with some old ammo that I had laying around and wouldn't use for any other purpose because I have moved on from cheap crappy ammo. I believe this was the Federal 525 bulk box. About 200 rounds in of just mag dumping into a bullet stop, I had what I thought was an out of battery. I didn't think anything of it and continued shooting. When I took it out to the range with a variety of semi-decent target ammo, the group's weren't all that great. Not what I was expecting anyway. When I cleaned it I found a bulge in the barrel just in front of the chamber. Maybe 2" in. That's not a very interesting, until you realize that a 22LR bulged a 1.25 inch diameter barrel by a few thousandths. And, it was a blowback. Lesson learned, the next time it happened I didn't continue shooting.
I haven''t bulged a barrel yet, I have been trying to avoid that. However, I have dealt with lots of squib loads. There is a gunshop not far from me that sells reloads cheap and I have learned that, even when he resizes the rounds so they fit (one bag of 50 rounds, not a single one of them would fit in any of my 1911 barrels, LoL), sometimes he apparently forgets to put the powder in. Well we get what we pay for so I eventually stopped buying his reloads. But it can happen with any ammo as I have experienced it with commercial loads too. Sometimes there is powder, unburnt powder. Especially with mil surplus stuff. How and where the ammo was stored in the past 80 years or so affects performance. Humidity is not the friend of the powder. I remember one agency I used to work for that felt every penny had to be saved, so when they ran low on Hoppes 9, they switched to surplus LSA and when that ran out they switched to WD40. They ignored the many duds on the range and one day in a Pentagon parking lot one of us had a shooting incident and the agent's bullets just went pop pop and rolled around on the ground in front of him with two little clumps of WD40 soaked powder laying on the ground. Luckily the bad guy surrendered, but there was some stink over that and the Hoppes 8 came back. Anyway this method shown of removing a squib can get you in trouble and cause more problems. I have seen enough squibs knocked out to comment. The knock out rod should be much closer to barrel diameter. The material used for the rod needs to be softer than the barrel steel unless you want deep gouges in your barrel, but hard enough so it doesn't immediately mushroom on the first hammer blow. Pointed bullets in a rifle like to deflect the rod and if it is thin enough you may find piece of the rod jammed in the barrel. Wood rods are prone to breaking off someplace in the barrel which leaves you wondering how to get the wood out of the way before returning to driving out the bullet. I shoot enough and have seen it enough so that I made some brass rods just wide enough to mostly fill the bore and perfect for the barrel lengths I shoot. I even have two long ones )20" and 28") for my 12 gauges. Makes driving squib shotgun slugs out pretty easy. A .44 diameter brass rod for the .45s, a .41 diameter brass rod for the .44s, .34s for the 9s and .38s. Luckily I haven;t needed to use any of them for the past few years (I have been shooting mostly new commercial stuff) but they are there in my shop for when it happens. Stuff happens. Beware of timed speed drills. Stay alert, don't use reloads (aka remanufactured) ammo for speed fire drills or street carry. Save it for your hunting trips when you are only going to fire one round anyway. Side note, some barrels with internal rings caused by firing a 2nd shot into a squib shoot better afterwards with a ring inside them. But some shoot much worse. Trying to remove a bulged barrel from a semi auto without a removable slide bushing may require a cutting torch if the gun didn't just fly apart.
I had one in my glock 19 with Blazer one in my SAM-7 with Wolf one in my 870 with federal target and I stopped my friends kid after he rechambered a round in his Mini-14. The best way I can describe is it feels like you threw a "Snap-Pop" on the ground. But each time there was an absolute mess of gun powder in the chamber.
Have had two squibs heard the weak report of both so no ringed barrels. One was CCI quiet in a CZ 455 and the other was a hand loaded 38spl +P with long shot. Too much empty space in the case makes insufficient ignition 👍
had a squib in a KAR98K the second round knocked it out but there is still remnants of a jacket embedded in the wall of the barrel. No matter how much I scrub even with copper killer and a stainless brush I can feel the rough spot in the barrel with the cleaning rod. Thought about pushing a lead or brass slug through, even considered pushing a rifle button through but I'm sure that would destroy the existing rifling.
I think what causes bulging in squibbed pistol barrels with when one bullet rams and deforms another bullet, and at the high energy build up of the second bullet, it deforms the steel of the barrel because of the speed.
Squibs are no joke. If you ever have a Hornady LNL AP watch the powder measure because they'll turn out of the bushing and you'll end up having ammo with no powder in it. Had a lot of revolver ammo I made this way and thankfully none of the bullets unseated due to the heavy roll crimping. Got a SD9VE I ringed, I cringe about that one. It's not much but it's a few thousandths you can feel. Confirmed it with a mic. I'll also say I got a chuckle from you trying to figure out how to position the grinder. I typically end up doing the same thing.
I had a 220 grain, 300AAC BLKOUT somehow manage to twist it's tip up into the gas port of my AR. A secondary round fired off and popped the gas block off in two pieces inside the handguards. There was no indication that the first round squibbed and got stuck in the barrel at all until the second round.
I had one years ago in a .22 single action. I think it was a cheap FIE. Didn't hear it at the time, just noticed the accuracy got way worse. Looked down the barrel. It wasn't bulged, but it blew out the steel sleeve and a chunk of aluminum. DOH! I was lucky!
I have seen one with Glock 17 and hand loads. Shooter did tap, rack bang after clearly mild detonation. Barrel was ruined and he told taking it apart took some time. Personal experience from S&W m19 with hand loaded .38 ammo. To make that even worse, that ammo was loaded by someone else. Bullet got stuck between cylinder and barrel. That was interesting experience. It was pretty soft lead bullet and had to tap it back into cylinder to get it open. No more hand loads loaded by anyone else than me.
When you find your firing as many test rounds as Mark Serbu , Your bound to find a under and over charge in brass cases or Slap Rounds in the put " A Thumb in it " of the Kentucky Ballistics. Rounds are sometimes just like the Mint flawed.
Air is just atoms.. if compressed enough those atoms can form bonds with surrounding atoms and change from a gaseous state to a liquid state then to a solid state. That’s where the “air” went..it was “absorbed” by the surrounding metal. 😊
I’ve had two squib loads with my hand loads. Decided to change the way I put powder in my loads. First one was .357 Magnum in a lever action rifle. I did not notice when it happened, but the 158 Gr. bullet made it out of the case and that was it. The bullet made it so I could not chamber another round. No powder in the case. Second time was with 260 Gr .45 Colt in a lever action rifle. The bullet did not make it out of the case and I did notice the poof of the primer going off that time. I’m guessing that the primer in the .45 Colt case wasn’t enough to push the 260 Gr. bullet out of the case, but the primer in the .357 Magnum case was enough to just push the 158 Gr. Bullet out of the case. Lessons learned. I was loading powder in the case, then seating the bullet, then on to the next one. Rookie mistake. That made it real easy to grab a case and forget to put powder in it. From that point on, I loaded all cases with powder, then checked all cases to make sure they had powder in them, then I seated the bullets. I guess I thought I knew better than the books and videos. That has never happened again.
I got a bad box of blazer brass 115 grain last year. A lot of weak rounds, a few failures to feed, and 2(!) squibs. Primers went off, failed to ignite powder both times. Both times only got a partial extraction, and when i forced the slide open a bunch of un burnt powder fell out.
I've destroyed 2 .22lr barrels with squibs. One was a Mark IV, which Ruger fixed for free (awesome customer service), and the other was a 22 AR. I was rapid-firing the AR, so I didn't have time to react to the squib.
Had many squib loads but as cz has a very short freebore it would not chamber another round behind so no boom. But saw many of those and in open guns and major loads guns always got totalled. Most of the time was all scrap including the red dot.
This past winter i unfortunately had my first squib in 20+ years of shooting and reloading. Bulged the barrel on my taylor 32-20 revolver. It was the 6th round in the cylinder and i didnt catch it because i thought i just miscounted shots. Reloaded and saw a flame around the forcing cone on the next shot. Still pissed at myself for not catching it.
1:04 "FOCUS YOU F@#$!!" I swear I yelled "Uncle Bumblef@#$!" at my screen! AvE is a national treasure... and he ain't even Murican. 🇺🇸🇨🇦
Didn't know they had cutoff wheels during the medieval period. You learn something new every day.
Me either! 🤣 I get what he was saying though.
😂😂😂😂
On a chyna p.o.s too!! We all get wht Mark is saying though:)
thats why i love this channel 😁
That's hilarious, "Focus you F$%#!" cracking me up
AvE reference lol! ❤😂
Two thumbs up for the AvE reference. 👍🏻👍🏻
Recently had a squib load that bulged the barrel of one of my guns and now I can’t get the slide off 😬
Correction…the subsequent firing of the next round bulged the barrel 💪🏼
Haha I did a double take. When he was telling the camera to focus. Then he mentions AvE.
I got a squib in an old S&W revolver back in the day. After scratching my head a bit, and being young and goofy, I primed up a fresh .38 case, poured a little bit of powder in it, and topped the whole mess with a little tissue paper. Then I just blew the squib out.
Like I said, young and goofy.
I like the way you explain all of the geeky and physics that go into making firearms.
Firing a 76mm auto cannon. Last round rammed home, breach block went up, firing pin dropped, no dice. That was a fun couple of hours trying to get the casing off the projo. The ogive engaged the rifling but the shell was crimped to the projo. Finally got it out, threw a clearing charge in and shot the projo out.
LoL it must have been a scary and sometimes lethal thing to deal with back in the days before fuses that relied on rotation to arm the cannon shell. I have read some essays written back in the day about that. Some of those early on impact fuzes were really temperamental and early impact striker setback at the shot when the projectile lurched forward was an issue. Did the striker change position,in the shell, or was there still enough clearance between primer and striker for a second potential striker setback when a shot to clear the clogged bore was fired? A run away event if it was one of the old burning timer type fused shells common in the muzzle loader and early breech systems, if one even lived long enough to realize the powder was wet but the fuse may still be lit and just smouldering.
Does squib missiles count? Once saw an ERYX wire guided anti tank missile hire its launch booster rocket but fail to ignite the main engine. Missile landed a few feet in front of the firing line and just laid there, gently hissing and making whirring servo noises while smoke seeped out. Low crawl to cover, was the order given...
So what caused it? No primer? Did you restrike?
Mark, I was a firearms instructor and one day at the range we were at the three yard line and I actually saw a bullet hit the target and lodge itself in the target and backer cardboard. Before I could stop him the Deputy fired another round and this one locked up the revolver solid. After making the line safe we took the revolver a model 66 S&W back to the bench and discovered the last round fired had only gone just about half way into the forcing cone ,enough to prevent further rotation of the cylinder. The cause was WD-40 ! The deputy had been spraying his loaded revolver every week and just wiping the outside and holstering. I pulled the bullets from the remaining cartridges and found that the WD-40 had indeed penetrated and turned the powder to a gooey mess. We added more cleaning and ammo care to the training from that day on. thanks for your great gun channel.
When I first met my Gun Guru, a friend of his had used his Brazilian Mauser 98/08 (his "1000 yard gun"), to try out some special loads, and did this. Tried to shoot out a stuck bullet, and screwed the barrel. Years later, as he had been a "Wild West Gun Shooter" (he and his buddies use to put on "Wild West" trick shooting, quick draw, cowboy action shows at the Calgary Stampede), I got him a couple of SA pistols in 44-40. Being a reloader (like precision rifle AND pistol calibers, with over a dozen different, plus custom lead cast "boolits", etc.), Old Vic, my Gun Guru, reloaded some rounds (a few hundred, with Starline nickel plated cases) using a new powder throw disk he had bought for the new guns, but didn't wash it properly to get rid of the static charge. Thankfully, we notice immediately and stopped shooting them. My point is that of complacency. If a man who had 84 years of shooting, and over 50 years of reloading, can screw up, then you can too!
I've had one squib. My dad bulged a barrel with one. I got lucky. I was shooting in the desert with a buddy. He was firing my 9mm Taurus G2. I heard the round go pop instead of a bang. The action did not cycle. He racked the slide, but it hit me before he could fire again so I yelled STOP!!!. I took my firearm from him, cleared it, and disassembled it then using a cleaning rod knocked the bullet out of the barrel. Had I not had experience from my years of shooting and reloading, I might not have told him to stop and at the very least I'd have had a damaged pistol.
Thanks for posting this Mark, EVERYONE needs to know the signs of a squib because sometimes they don't just bulge the barrel...
In one of my first batches of .357 magnum reloads, I created my own squib. I missed the powder step... the magnum primer had enough go to put the pew-pellet into the forcing cone of my GP100, but not enough to handle a barrel's worth of friction. It was kind of obvious (much less recoil and sound) and I didn't stack rounds... (I picked reloading for a revolver on purpose for my learning round, and the beefy GP100 so I wouldn't wreck myself if I did mess up)...
I put the rest of those reloads in quarantine (pulled and re-reloaded) but it was just the one. I've not done it again and I've been reloading for over a decade now... once is enough :)
I haven't had a factory squib yet.
I love GP-100's, great choice. Tanks! Same with Ruger P series autos.
Haha love AvE
10:43 I learned that besides being a legend you also know about “idiocrisy” and that where this country is going. Thank you Mr serbu and keep the content coming.
I bought a Remington Nylon 66 that had a ring in it about 2.00 inches from the mussel, I just cut it off and recrowned it and reinstalled the front sight. Still shooting great.
I had a Remington model 24 gallery gun with 3 rings in it , it off gassed just enough that it was ... quiet 🤔 really quiet .
But still accurate.
There's a lesson there somewhere.
A friend''s 454 Casull squibed one of his reloads once. Our best guess is the primer failed to fully ignite the powder charge. Anyway, it successfully lodged a jacketed hollow point half down a 9.5" barrel. Took some effort to back the bullet out later. No shooters or revolvers were harmed and no further failures in that or any subsequent batches of reloads. Weird deal but it sure shut the range session down in a hurry.
Squib loads scare me a lot. Looking at videos of it really makes you not forget safety glasses. Thanks for a good video about the subject 👍
They are terrifying. I just had one (due to my own handload idiocy), and neither I nor the RSO watching me realized it, he even said "you missed the target!" Only thing that saved me was that the next round wouldn't chamber.
@@BCPvideo yikes! Close call 😅
Only experienced a squib load once. I was 16 or 17, my dad had just gotten a Ruger GP 100 from my grandma along with a few boxes of ammo that was either very old or some crap reload work. Boxes were dated to the 1960's. My dad fired a few rounds and eventually one of them went *thump* in an oddly quiet and dull sounding way and the shot was lacking in recoil. This was followed very quickly by a distinctly separate FWOOM of the powder actually burning. Nobody in the family was particularly knowledgable about guns aside from strict gun safety and basic handling. We all knew that definitely wasn't right though, so we unloaded it and inspected it to see a round stuck in the barrel! We knew nothing about guns at the time and were worried this alone would have already ruined the barrel. We decided to try and get it out but didn't have anything particularly well suited to tap it out with and were very ignorant and impatient so we used a 1/8 drill bit to put a hole all the way through the bullet and then were able to pull it out. Fortunately nothing was damaged, the gun shoots great, and my dad still has it 10 years later. And now fortunately thanks to a fantastic online community, creators such as yourself, classes, training, and experience I am more prepared for when guns don't do what you expect and how to solve almost everything short of actual gunsmithing. It was this experience and others like it (renting an AR15 when I was 19 and being unable to clear a double feed malfunction and feeling very embarassed having to ask the store owner to help me) that has led me to prioritize learning as well as doing all I can to ensure my friends and family never walk blindly into their first experience with guns. I figure you've only got three choices: fear and avoid the gun, respect and understand the gun, or risk causing accidental injury and death with the gun.
As the air pressure between the bullets is increased, the temperature increases dramatically. The combination of high pressure and high heat is able to overcome the weakest points at the interface between the barrel and the fired bullet (likely the squib bullet, too), which is at the square corners of the grooves. This is the point where the air escapes, allowing the subsequent bullets to stack one on back of the other. Because this area of weak obturation exists, the heat of compression doesn't get high enough to cause further damage, unless the second bullet is full power round. Then, all sorts of math and physics happens!
In the Army, once I felt reduced recoil from my M16 on the range. I dropped the magazine out, cleared the chamber, pushed the rear takedown pin, took out the BCG, looked down the barrel, and saw no light through it. I got a cleaning rod with no attachments on it over the very tip of the projectile, and I used a brass hammer to tap it out of the barrel. There was no damage to the barrel.
02:45
This 25 pocket pistol style firing pin spring means that, unlike on glock based guns, you may use a much powerful firing pin spring without out of battery risk.
Take a look at the GSh18, the russian striker fired pistol, it uses the same concept. I like it, looks old but prevents light strikes.
“Focus you phuck” hahaha laughed a little too hard at that
I was teaching a class of students on handgun safety years ago, when one of the students had a squib load. We covered squib loads in class before the range session started, so they notified the rangemaster immediately. They were shooting some old reloads at the time and we found that they all squibbed. We brought the entire class to that booth and fired the 38 squibs in a Smith & Wesson Model 28 highway patrolman. For those who don't know, that's a heavy-duty "N"frame .357 revolver. After each shot we knocked the bullet out with a cleaning rod and showed the students . We did that six or eight times in a row and then the remaining ammo was ultimately broken down for components. It was the best teaching session we had ever had when it came to covering squib loads!
I’ve shot many 10s of thousands of rounds and have yet to encounter a squib. I was warned about them as a kid, as a neighbor had a shooting range in his backyard and competed in local rim fire matches. He taught me a lot about guns and shooting. Of course, when I trained on the M16A1 in Basic, the possibility of a squib load was always present, as we used reloaded ammo to train with.
Only thing I’ve had happen was an out of battery explosion with an extremely dirty M4 while testing coatings during a consulting gig.
Ruger 10/22 with WD-40 in the barrel. I was young and still learning. Watching the backstop made me stop and examine my mistake. Lesson learned.
Like a true craftsman. Everything is a hammer. Haha. Love it. Glad you noticed that happened instead of ignoring it and trying to chamber and fire another round.
After 74 years I have finally found a clear cut practical application of math that I can understand. Now. Do the Crackercaster video.
I have noticed from my experience that if a bullet gets stuck nearer the chamber, there is a much better chance of the next round uneventfuly pushing it out of the barrel. If however; it gets stuck nearer the muzzle, then you are much more likely to have a catastrophic failure when the two bullets collide in the barrel.
The Jennings striker retention design was a cheaper made variant of the old Browning vest pocket pistol design. The big difference is unlike the Browning or Jennings/Bryco versions that retention loop on this Walther is not a removable part of the take down and just a projection of the frame..I am curious why Browning abandoned strikes in favor of hammers when he went to larger calibers. I suspect it was because his military customers liked hammers, but only he could say why he dropped the striker.
That was primer only propulsion. Nice catch.
I'm 42 years old and I've been shooting my whole life. Thankfully I've never had a squib. And yes, I'm knocking on wood right now!
I happen to have some 7.62's loaded by an unknown source. Something I picked up in Syria. They are made to render the firearm unusable and potentially harm the rifleman. I've extracted the secondary propellant. I would like to have its spectrum composition tested. Its a liquid oily substance that is heat and shock sensitive. Extremely reactive substance. Its polar but I see relevance to this concept. Thank you Mark.
Actually, it would be really cool to see high-speed footage of the Walther firing. There seems to be some debate whether the P7's gas delay really had much of an effect and I'd like to see what you make of it.
As an owner of a CCP I would like to see that as well. I really like mine from a mechanical perspective. That being said, they should have made a stack and a half magazine (plenty of room in the grip)version to compete with hellcat and p365.
Wish I had the money to buy guns to play with them and check them out. Love gun mechanics. One of my favorite things in life. Have invented many things that people invented after me... but being disabled, I never got the chance to patent anything myself.
4:30 "It's really important how you beat it" - Mark Serbu 2023
Glad you caught that mark. I try to keep my stuff wire tight and have never encountered anything like that luckily. I remember learning about them in hunter safety class but this was a good Refresher also I have to talk crap on Walther pistols I would never own one
best way ive cleared a squib that was really stuck was put the barrel in my freezer over night then let it rewarm up to room temp in the morning and the barrel contracts just enough from being cold that it squishes the bullet and then it just about slides on out with a couple light taps. so much better than hammering the bejesus out of the barrel.
Pretty neat little Walther , I didn’t know they made that one. I wouldn’t mind having one. I love the different mechanical systems that are in different guns. The more unique and weird the more interesting they are to me. By the way is there any way you can put iron sights on my RN 50. I’m tired of fixing scopes and buying scopes . I only really shoot it about 300 yards at my range and I’m probably never going to have a location to shoot any further than that so irons would be nice.
I own one, well technically My gf owns one, it is a nice shooter. The delayed blowback is pretty nice for quick followup shots. It shoots pretty soft, or at least I think so but I have big meaty hands.
Seems to have a fair amount in common with the old Walther Model 9.
Get yourself one of those LaRue pistol sight thing-a-ma-jigs that attach to picatinny rail.
if its got a rail, slap some "back-up" irons on it...I get it, Ive got an old mosin alI tricked out, short of bending the bolt and attaching a scope, because I too only have access currently to a 300rd range, and I can smack a standard target all day with irons on it.
My wife chose the CCP for her carry gun because the grip fit her so well.
I have to say the ergonomics on that grip are fantastic. Good shooting little gun
Love AvE. Good thing you noticed the squib and stopped!
Mark, you’re a the man!!
I have a Ruger P95 that had a squib/second round. It survived and still operates fine. The rounds were Linotype Lead cast bullets that were loaded with a progressive hand loader. I knew to look for problems, but my brother was using my gun and ammo, and thought he would be all tactical and do a tap/rack when the gun misfired. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. BOOM, the gun tried to leap from his hand. It took us a half an hour of pounding to get the two bullets out of it. The barrel didn't bulge, and I still use it today.
Always bonus points for AvE references!
Got a good powder burn from a squib load in a cap and ball revolver. Brought a whole new meaning to keep your powder dry.
I think the thing I like the best about Mark's videos and tools, is half the time (until he breaks out the CNC) they look they could have come out of any common homegamers shop.
Squib story: Years ago a friend of mine bought a key fob thing from someone he worked with I think it was, maybe not...anyway it was a 9mm cartridge with a hole drilled through it for the key ring. We both noticed that the primer was ...untouched (yeah you know where this is going) so he brought out his Beretta 92. Fortunately the apartment we lived in at the time had an open field directly behind them out our back patio so we had a clear and safe direction to point it, just in case. He loaded it up and *pop* it went. We were both a little surprised that someone would sell such a thing still "live" as a key ring attachment. I got out my cleaning kit and knocked the bullet out of the barrel and he replaced it in the now spent case and reattached it to his key ring. He kept it for a while after that but I think I recall him losing the bullet at some point or other.
I had a squib in my intregrally suppressed 9mm AR. Tink Tink Tink BANG! All the noise came out of the ejection port from just the primer (and possibly a really low powder charge). Projectile was easily removed by pounding a 5/16 dowel down the barrel from the front. Really glad it wasn't on the go-fast lower when it happened.
I'd absolutely love to see some good high speed video of different sorts of actions cycling, and especially of them failing to cycle. Limp wrist a Desert Eagle in slow mo to see how many amusing varieties of jam you can induce.
"Focus you faw....thank you"
Everybody loves AVE
I had a few squibs back in the mid 1980s when I started reloading. I miscalculated a few times. Fortunately, I was alert to such things and when I heard a light "pop" instead of a "bang" I knew to check.
ooh! I have a squib story, of all the years and all the rounds I've been shooting, I personally have only ever gotten maybe one squib? One of the first times I shot a gun, I think with my step brother's dad, I'm pretty sure I got a squib and he took the gun from me and dealt with it, but my memory is hazy on that. I was shooting with one of my friends that had never really shot a gun before, a few rounds in the gun makes a pop sound more than a boom and he immediately goes to trying to clear it and fire the next round and thank god I caught him in time because sure enough, he'd gotten a squib, somehow the powder failed to ignite fully bc there was tons of unburnt powder everywhere and it took several minutes with a cleaning rod to pount the bullet back out. Thankfully the gun was undamaged as far as any of us could tell and the day wasn't ruined but MAN, he didn't get how awful it could have been had he cleared it real quick-like and fired again.
Back in the late 80's, I got a P-85 at Walmart. About a year or two later, I bought some factory remanufactured ammo from my local gun store. I loaded up a magazine, loaded, aimed at a target and pulled the trigger. I had super strong earmuffs on, it sounded like a gunshot to me. Then I pulled the trigger and it was dead, like it was uncocked. I looked and I had a feeding problem. I racked the slide to eject the live round and the casing came out, leaving the bullet laying on top of the next round and powder was all over the place. What happened, the first round was a squib and it had barely entered the barrel and kept the second round from chambering. The second bullet was deep enough that the little bit of room it had to go into the chamber was enough pressure to pull the bullet out of the casing. I looked closer at the bag of ammo and there were two more empty casings and two bullets laying in a pile of powder. That batch of ammo hadn't been crimped. I took it back to the store and the owner freaked out. She gave me two boxes of name brand ammo and said she would call the factory to tell them about it. I was lucky I didn't have a kaboom.
Walther ccp is one of my all time favorites. I love mine
I bought a dan wesson 38/357 revolver that had a squib. Took me years to find a barrel and the outside barrel sleeve since it cracked too. Mine was a rare model made under high standard name.....
Had a squib in my S&W 625 about 4 years ago while doing fast DA shooting, and set another round off - the difference between normal, squib and two bullets in the barrel was obvious. No bulge. The 625 of course has a very strong barrel, and it held up to the extra pressure, which all things considered did not surprise me, until I saw your formula. I guess the first bullet was moved by the pressure before the second one got close? That sounds weird. Maybe the first squib did not leave a bullet in the barrel? But, there was extra recoil. One squib in 50+ years of shooting, and a great deal of it doing fast DA work in revolvers. I also have a Winchester 1922M with a ringed barrel, I bought it pretty cheap, and since it is pretty accurate as is, I have just left it like that. Might not be from a squib; spiders nests, cleaning patches, etc.. lots of potential suspects.
Back when I was new to shooting and reloading. I loaded .38 special with FMJ and an amount of powder intended for soft lead. I got 6 rounds stuck in the barrel of a Taurus revolver (UK legal, so 12" barrel).
Scrapped the gun and learned a lesson.
please keep doing the "focus you fuck" coined from AVE, I spit out my drink hearing you say that and it was so well done too!
I had a squib back in the late 80's. Heard a pop when I should have heard a bang, so I stopped and disassembled the pistol. Sure enough there was a bullet about half way down, so I went in to the guy working the counter to see if I could borrow a rod to get it out. I told him what happened, and he reached under the counter and pulled out a cardboard box that was maybe 10" on a side. It was half full of blown barrels. So I learned two things from that incident. First, squibs are evidently a lot more common than I ever suspected. And second, when a bullet gets far enough into the barrel to engage the rifling, it's in there TIGHT. It was a real booger to get out, and a cleaning rod is definitely NOT the tool to use. Okay, maybe that's three things... 🙂
I had a squib from some 9mm that I reloaded. Recognized it and knocked it out. Now I deprime, resize, trim and reprime. Then sort reprimed cases by weight. Then weigh each after reloading. Haven't found another one in years but still check each one.
I had trouble lighting 4198 in my 45-70. The bullet moved just forward enough that it wouldn't allow the case to eject, but not far enough forward to clear the case completely. I had to tap the bullet backwards into the case to eject it from my 1895.
I must be a sympathetic dropper. When you dropped that barrel, I dropped my fork with a chunk of steak on it. Don't worry, I applied the 3 second rule and ate it anyway.
Had my first squib in my vz61. Got it home and tapped it out with a piece of brake line that was lying around. PMC Bronze. Switched to Federal.
I used to play around with 22s, definitely made plenty of squibs, it is wicked fun to shoot a 22 without a suppressor and have it dead quiet, but always check the bore because if the shot didn’t register, you may not have “missed”.
My theory on stacked bullets: Where did the air go?
I suspect the air escapes out through the bulge, releasing back into the chamber and probably out the cylinder gap for a revolver where the pressure is ambient.
What that means is, the 2nd shot after the initial squib causes the bulge, thereby expanding the inner diameter of the barrel. There is now a difference between the inner diameter of the bulged barrel and the outer diameter of the compressed 2nd bullet going through the rifling. The THRID shot then pushes the second bullet through the bulge and into the first bullet, releasing the pressure between the 1st and 2nd (around the 2nd bullet through the gap from the bulge and 2nd bullet, possibly also expanding the bulge further) and shoving the 1st bullet further down the barrel. This continues to happen until the bulge is filled up and the cycle would start again, creating a new bulge closer to the breech.
In some of the pictures you've used, there are signs of several bulges along the barrel where this might have happened.
PS: I don't think the rifling would have flattened. The lands would have offered more structural support since there is more material there, whereas the grooves offer a reduced barrel-wall thickness and would be the point of failure (or a weak point that would be expanding.)
8:30 or the air heats up so much from being compressed, it reacts with the metals and forms oxides.
Looks like it was primer only . Missed the powder charge all together. And i wouldn't think that a subsequent round would go into battery if the first projectile never cleared the forcing cone
8:30 air probably squeezes through the rifling, yeah?
I had my first squib a few months back, it was an M+P 9
I got lucky because it happened on the last round in the mag...I didnt even notice until days later when I happened to clean up look through the barrel, guess luck was on my side that day.
Love the AvE reference!! One of my favorite TH-cam channels. It makes me very happy that you're familiar with his work.
Yep I have one my full auto Mac 10 9 mm the barrel had six rounds in it, but it did not ring the barrel. Thank God it was a custom-made barrel.
Had squib on a mosin, gun goes click and then pop. Ok hang fire and squib, bullet got about 50mm in to the barrel. Was a pita to hammer it out. Those surp jackets are hard. And powder everywhere.
Friend had a scuib on .452 XP airgun some how the valve didn’t fully open and the first bullet got stuck in the barrel, second one made a nice ring in the barrel.
Had one in a suppressed .22… at some point. Such low standard report and no recoil that god only knows when the squib happened. The ring in the barrel was found sometime later during cleaning. (Was a .22 pistol, didn’t bother cleaning it very often haha). Didn’t appear to affect the accuracy either, which was the funniest part.
Had a few pop no kick loads. Only two actually stuck in the tube, one was a 22 rifle and was easy to rod out. The other was a 12 Guage and the wad went halfway down the tube, the buckshot literally fell out of the muzle lol.
My favorite actually left the barrel about as fast as i could spit it out. That one was out of a 357 Dan Wesson 4" . I watched it hit the dirt 10 feet in front of me lol.
Thanks Dr. Lexus!
I have made a few over the years, especially when trying to make up new subsonic loads.
Yep, the joys of a squib. It is surprising how far a primer with no powder can shove a bullet into the barrel. In the process of working up new loads I disengage my auto powder dump. a time or two I've missed the reengaging of that part, hence bullets with no powder. Not fun. The second time that happened, I'd run about ten rounds through (or so) not being convinced that I'd caught them all, I ended up pulling about twenty rounds apart. Lesson learned. I average about 100 rounds loaded in ten minutes , I don't rush, methodical repetition. Thousands of rounds loaded in several different calibers, sad to admit, about three squibs, all in the past. A guy should learn from his mistakes, right?
there isn't a worse feeling in reloading than being sure you just threw a squib into a container of loaded rounds.
Got lucky and noted mine before I put a round up the other ones but. The thing that would get me but not like Scott, Kentucky B. Was ammo that was loaded by someone on their day off and was overcharged.
Thanks for the explanation
I was quite impressed to watch someone pull a bullet and fire the empty case/charge to blow the squib out.
This might be interesting enough to mention..
I had just finished my heavy barrel AR 22 target rifle. I was using and anschutz reamer and an anschutz barrel. So, very tight bolt gun target reamer on what should be a pretty decent quality barrel blank.
I decided to break it in with some old ammo that I had laying around and wouldn't use for any other purpose because I have moved on from cheap crappy ammo. I believe this was the Federal 525 bulk box.
About 200 rounds in of just mag dumping into a bullet stop, I had what I thought was an out of battery. I didn't think anything of it and continued shooting. When I took it out to the range with a variety of semi-decent target ammo, the group's weren't all that great. Not what I was expecting anyway. When I cleaned it I found a bulge in the barrel just in front of the chamber. Maybe 2" in. That's not a very interesting, until you realize that a 22LR bulged a 1.25 inch diameter barrel by a few thousandths. And, it was a blowback.
Lesson learned, the next time it happened I didn't continue shooting.
I haven''t bulged a barrel yet, I have been trying to avoid that. However, I have dealt with lots of squib loads. There is a gunshop not far from me that sells reloads cheap and I have learned that, even when he resizes the rounds so they fit (one bag of 50 rounds, not a single one of them would fit in any of my 1911 barrels, LoL), sometimes he apparently forgets to put the powder in. Well we get what we pay for so I eventually stopped buying his reloads. But it can happen with any ammo as I have experienced it with commercial loads too. Sometimes there is powder, unburnt powder. Especially with mil surplus stuff. How and where the ammo was stored in the past 80 years or so affects performance. Humidity is not the friend of the powder. I remember one agency I used to work for that felt every penny had to be saved, so when they ran low on Hoppes 9, they switched to surplus LSA and when that ran out they switched to WD40. They ignored the many duds on the range and one day in a Pentagon parking lot one of us had a shooting incident and the agent's bullets just went pop pop and rolled around on the ground in front of him with two little clumps of WD40 soaked powder laying on the ground. Luckily the bad guy surrendered, but there was some stink over that and the Hoppes 8 came back.
Anyway this method shown of removing a squib can get you in trouble and cause more problems. I have seen enough squibs knocked out to comment. The knock out rod should be much closer to barrel diameter. The material used for the rod needs to be softer than the barrel steel unless you want deep gouges in your barrel, but hard enough so it doesn't immediately mushroom on the first hammer blow. Pointed bullets in a rifle like to deflect the rod and if it is thin enough you may find piece of the rod jammed in the barrel. Wood rods are prone to breaking off someplace in the barrel which leaves you wondering how to get the wood out of the way before returning to driving out the bullet. I shoot enough and have seen it enough so that I made some brass rods just wide enough to mostly fill the bore and perfect for the barrel lengths I shoot. I even have two long ones )20" and 28") for my 12 gauges. Makes driving squib shotgun slugs out pretty easy. A .44 diameter brass rod for the .45s, a .41 diameter brass rod for the .44s, .34s for the 9s and .38s. Luckily I haven;t needed to use any of them for the past few years (I have been shooting mostly new commercial stuff) but they are there in my shop for when it happens. Stuff happens. Beware of timed speed drills. Stay alert, don't use reloads (aka remanufactured) ammo for speed fire drills or street carry. Save it for your hunting trips when you are only going to fire one round anyway.
Side note, some barrels with internal rings caused by firing a 2nd shot into a squib shoot better afterwards with a ring inside them. But some shoot much worse. Trying to remove a bulged barrel from a semi auto without a removable slide bushing may require a cutting torch if the gun didn't just fly apart.
I had one in my glock 19 with Blazer one in my SAM-7 with Wolf one in my 870 with federal target and I stopped my friends kid after he rechambered a round in his Mini-14. The best way I can describe is it feels like you threw a "Snap-Pop" on the ground. But each time there was an absolute mess of gun powder in the chamber.
Have had two squibs heard the weak report of both so no ringed barrels. One was CCI quiet in a CZ 455 and the other was a hand loaded 38spl +P with long shot. Too much empty space in the case makes insufficient ignition 👍
had a squib in a KAR98K the second round knocked it out but there is still remnants of a jacket embedded in the wall of the barrel. No matter how much I scrub even with copper killer and a stainless brush I can feel the rough spot in the barrel with the cleaning rod. Thought about pushing a lead or brass slug through, even considered pushing a rifle button through but I'm sure that would destroy the existing rifling.
I think what causes bulging in squibbed pistol barrels with when one bullet rams and deforms another bullet, and at the high energy build up of the second bullet, it deforms the steel of the barrel because of the speed.
Squibs are no joke. If you ever have a Hornady LNL AP watch the powder measure because they'll turn out of the bushing and you'll end up having ammo with no powder in it. Had a lot of revolver ammo I made this way and thankfully none of the bullets unseated due to the heavy roll crimping.
Got a SD9VE I ringed, I cringe about that one. It's not much but it's a few thousandths you can feel. Confirmed it with a mic.
I'll also say I got a chuckle from you trying to figure out how to position the grinder. I typically end up doing the same thing.
I had a 220 grain, 300AAC BLKOUT somehow manage to twist it's tip up into the gas port of my AR. A secondary round fired off and popped the gas block off in two pieces inside the handguards.
There was no indication that the first round squibbed and got stuck in the barrel at all until the second round.
I had one years ago in a .22 single action. I think it was a cheap FIE. Didn't hear it at the time, just noticed the accuracy got way worse. Looked down the barrel. It wasn't bulged, but it blew out the steel sleeve and a chunk of aluminum. DOH! I was lucky!
I have seen one with Glock 17 and hand loads. Shooter did tap, rack bang after clearly mild detonation. Barrel was ruined and he told taking it apart took some time. Personal experience from S&W m19 with hand loaded .38 ammo. To make that even worse, that ammo was loaded by someone else. Bullet got stuck between cylinder and barrel. That was interesting experience. It was pretty soft lead bullet and had to tap it back into cylinder to get it open. No more hand loads loaded by anyone else than me.
Can honestly say have never had one so this was a very informative and interesting video thank you for sharing this with us six stars brother
When you find your firing as many test rounds as Mark Serbu , Your bound to find a under and over charge in brass cases or Slap Rounds in the put " A Thumb in it " of the Kentucky Ballistics. Rounds are sometimes just like the Mint flawed.
8:23 I can only imagine what that gunsmith would be thinking if that happened.
"Ooh, nice hiss."
Good video Mr Serbu I like how you actually make content that is helpful
Air is just atoms.. if compressed enough those atoms can form bonds with surrounding atoms and change from a gaseous state to a liquid state then to a solid state. That’s where the “air” went..it was “absorbed” by the surrounding metal. 😊
Can you balance that equation for me real quick?
@@garyhost9356 😂
I hope it was clear that I was joking.
@@highoctanehotrod Poes law lol, you got me.
I’ve had two squib loads with my hand loads. Decided to change the way I put powder in my loads. First one was .357 Magnum in a lever action rifle. I did not notice when it happened, but the 158 Gr. bullet made it out of the case and that was it. The bullet made it so I could not chamber another round. No powder in the case.
Second time was with 260 Gr .45 Colt in a lever action rifle. The bullet did not make it out of the case and I did notice the poof of the primer going off that time.
I’m guessing that the primer in the .45 Colt case wasn’t enough to push the 260 Gr. bullet out of the case, but the primer in the .357 Magnum case was enough to just push the 158 Gr. Bullet out of the case.
Lessons learned. I was loading powder in the case, then seating the bullet, then on to the next one. Rookie mistake. That made it real easy to grab a case and forget to put powder in it. From that point on, I loaded all cases with powder, then checked all cases to make sure they had powder in them, then I seated the bullets. I guess I thought I knew better than the books and videos. That has never happened again.
I got a bad box of blazer brass 115 grain last year. A lot of weak rounds, a few failures to feed, and 2(!) squibs. Primers went off, failed to ignite powder both times. Both times only got a partial extraction, and when i forced the slide open a bunch of un burnt powder fell out.
I've destroyed 2 .22lr barrels with squibs. One was a Mark IV, which Ruger fixed for free (awesome customer service), and the other was a 22 AR. I was rapid-firing the AR, so I didn't have time to react to the squib.
Had many squib loads but as cz has a very short freebore it would not chamber another round behind so no boom.
But saw many of those and in open guns and major loads guns always got totalled. Most of the time was all scrap including the red dot.
Yes! I learned a lot from that equation and the explanation.
Thank you friend!!
This past winter i unfortunately had my first squib in 20+ years of shooting and reloading. Bulged the barrel on my taylor 32-20 revolver. It was the 6th round in the cylinder and i didnt catch it because i thought i just miscounted shots. Reloaded and saw a flame around the forcing cone on the next shot. Still pissed at myself for not catching it.
I literally yelled "focus you fack!!!!" at the same time as you. It did work. Thanks @AvE