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1 Mystery Bullet

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floydthecat View Drop Down
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Joined: Oct 13 2016
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote floydthecat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: 1 Mystery Bullet
    Posted: Dec 22 2019 at 3:20pm
We read about sticky issues and action problems that are hard to isolate. I just finished-up a lengthy hunt for a problem that had me cornered. I was fitting a spare bolt to a shooter and loaded-up a mag full of live ammo. Took it outside and cycled them thru by hand just to see how things felt. Upon cycling a mag, the bolt locked-up on the last round. I reloaded the mag, tried again and the bolt locked up about 5-down. Head-scratching commences. I grab a few more magazines and the problem randomly persisted on any mag. I change bolts which did not solve the problem. The light bulb came on in my head and I started considering the ammo. I was able to identify one round that was causing the problem. Every time it chambered, it would lock the bolt and required a serious karate-chop on the slide to rotate and unlock. No matter how hard I looked or measured, I could not detect any issue with it. This is exactly the sort of thing that can cause a cracked bolt. The round would feed, chamber, rotate and lock, but would not rotate and extract by hand.

I just wanted to mention that ammo really can be a contributor to problems and can be overlooked if you keep your head in that dark place like I did for much too long. 
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GotSnlB28 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GotSnlB28 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Dec 22 2019 at 6:14pm
Was it a factory load, if so who manufactured the ammo?
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blackfish View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blackfish Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Dec 22 2019 at 6:41pm
Maybe your odd round is out-of-round in some way? Try measuring both the minimum and maximum diameter of the cartridge at a couple of different points along its length. Perhaps it got stepped on at some point in its life
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floydthecat View Drop Down
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Joined: Oct 13 2016
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote floydthecat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Dec 22 2019 at 6:41pm
Reload in Armscor brass, same as the handful I was trying. All were trimmed and went thru the same dies. It chambers fine and locks-up fine. Something about the base is obviously placing the bolt in some sort of a bind.

My point was to only mention that ammo should never be ignored when chasing a problem as much as what is wrong with the round. The thing would likely have fired and extracted perfectly once it self-sized itself to the chamber and bolt-face during firing. The only way I noticed it was under manual cycling. As for me, if a round won’t cycle manually, I don’t want to shoot it.
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