Interesting little column in January 2017 American Rifleman
on page 46. Picture of an incident where 5 bullets were stuck
in a barrel; one just peeping out of the muzzle,three more
behind it, and another which jumped partially out through a
crack in the top of the barrel. Someone never heard that you
are supposed to stop shooting when you encounter a squib load.

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In Omnia Paratus

"When it goes POP, STOP!"


One of our club members has destroyed three 1911 barrels by shooting into stuck bullets. It was his reloads, so he's a lousy reloader, too.

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Science plus Art

When I was a kid I remember my dad being a "shade tree gunsmith" and having a .45 ACP revolver that had 5-6 bullets jammed in the barrel. Don't know if it was Colt or S&W. The barrel looked like a snake that had been swallowing eggs. Not sure if he ever got them out.

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Old paratrooper in NC

I have been loading on progressive presses for 25 years. I had a Dillon Square Deal B set up to load 45 GAP hard ball ammo only. About two years ago at a local IDPA match, I was shooting my hand loaded 45 GAP ammo in my S&W Model 22-4. I had a squib in the first of a double tap pair and didn't realize. The RO tried to stop me but I fired the second too fast.

The good news is the second bullet drove both bullets out of the barrel and into the target....2 zero down hits. On top of that luck, the gun was not damaged in any way.

Moral of the story: Squibs can happen to anybody, any time on any press. I still haven't figured how I did it on an automatic indexing press so I sold the press(always blame the machine, not yourself). I have a friend who made a squib on a Dillon 650 and destroyed a new 627. He still insists the gun had a flawed cylinder.

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Bob.
SWCA 1821

Yikes ! Amazed he hasn't been injured ! There was one last year where I shoot and the guy slightly injured his hand .. he was doing double taps with reloads he bought from a friend ..

The two places where even an experienced handgun shooter can especially get bitten by a squib are double taps on the revolver and reflexively doing tap-rack-bang on the semi-auto pistol.

The last sort-of-squib load I had was actually somewhat recently - I was using Hi Skor 700x powder in .38 spl and had one round that must not have metered well. It went off noticeably weak. The first thing I did was open up the cylinder and check the barrel with my light. The bullet did clear, but it was immediately apparent that round had less powder than the others. Have to pay attention, even with routine target shooting.

This S&W M1917 barrel had 6 or 7 bullets in it many years ago. We pried a few out but they've been long since lost.

This is why I weigh every charge. Sure, I could weigh every tenth charge, but just because charge number 10 is right, how do I know charge numbers 1-9 are? Check each case with a flashlight before seating a bullet? Used to do that, until my arm bumped something as I was placing the charged case into the loading block and the powder spilled into the rest of the charged cases, so I had to dump them all and start over. And I don't believe my eyes are going to detect a .4 grain difference in a row of charged cases.

Nah, keep your fast cranking progressive presses. I'll stick with single stage.

Several years ago, my gunsmith got a Service Sis in with the cylinder jammed. The shooter did not realize his forst shot was a squib. There was a little lead sticking out the end of the barrel and the cylinder was blocked by the last round sticking out of the barrel. The gunsmith removed all six rounds without affecting the gun. Final inspection showed the ruger outlasted the stupidity of the shooter.