How to handle misfires?

[mojoe]

I experience a lot of misfires using Rem golden bullets in both my 10/22 LTR's.  Just wondering what is the best way to deal with this situation, as it always seems to happen when shooting an AQT.  Is it allowable to have an extra mag with a couple of rounds at the ready?  I would try to find a more reliable brand of ammo, except I have about 5,000 rounds and it is quite accurate in both my rifles.

[V]

It is indeed permissable and I advise people to always have an extra mag with some rounds in on their mat in addtion to the the 2&8 or 10 required for the COF. You have time to clear malfunctions and this is a skill which people should develop.

If they lose count and fire too many rounds you discard the n highest scoring where n is the number of extra shots fired. Also if they forget where they were after the malfunction clearing, eg 2,2 2 on the fourth stage requiring 1 more on the third then three on the last but they've forgotten then go to the end and shoot backwards till you run out of ammo, ie 3 on the last then 1 on the third to find an empy mag (assuming they didn't have to resort to the spare mag)

[gunville]

This isn't a problem, it's a valuable training opportunity.

I keep a few rounds loose on the mat. If I get a dud I manually cycle and continue where I am; that way you keep NPOA, and you know you're makeup will be on the last target of that stage.

When the mag's empty I drop it and put in a loose round with my trigger hand (keeping my left under the rifle), reinsert the mag, and finish that stage. A dud doesn't take but a few extra seconds.

Stovepipes (especially squashed ones) are more challenging than duds as they may require tilting and slapping the rifle to get it out. 

Sometimes (with a 10/22) after a stovepipe the next round is misfeed - you can't even manually cycle without dropping fixing it and reinserting the mag.

From the RSO/LB perspective muzzle control of the shooter has to be monitored in these situations. A frustrated shooter on a clock looses track of the business end.

One thought I've had is that misfires often get shucked out pretty quickly... What happens if that misfire wasn't a dud, but a hang-fire?  That could be bad. (granted I've never experienced a rimfire hangfire.)

BTW: Save those Rem GB's duds for ball and dummy - they work well because you don't know if they'll go off the second or third time they're struck!

You'll find some boxes of Rem GB's with 20 duds, others with none. Remington quality I guess (see 597 posts...)

[TOMINCT]

 FWIW you might want to save some of those misfired 22 rounds and send them with a short letter with the lot number to the manufacturer as they usually take customer complaints pretty seriously and will usually send an enticement or they may request the entire batch, in your possession, be returned. They have been known to replace your returned ammo + 50% for your trouble when it's a known bad batch. Contact their customer service first. It's definitely worth a try. Regards, Tom.

[SamD]

Don't know about you but I brief people about handling misfires.  If they follow the instruction given, they don't have the time to grab a spare mag. reload and complet the stage.

You do not automatically eject a misfire, you 'sposed to wait a little bit in case they is a hangfar, I tell them 15 seconds jus like my uncle Sam raised me to.  That puts them out of the running on any Rapid Fire stage.
Then again I don't have any qualms about doing the stage over for 1 person. If I can't manage to recover 1 minute during the day to let someone do a stage over, someone else needs to be there.

Safety first, dud maybe, maybe hangfire.

Sam

[gunville]

The youth safety class at my range shows shooters a handgun round that was an ejected hangfire (40SW I think it was) - the case looks like it unraveled when it went off. (nobody hurt, but I imagine stained shorts.) They emphasize 30 seconds minimum.

The hunter safety course in NY I seem to recall says wait 60 seconds (though I'm not sure bambi will cooperate that long.)

I didn't think it was so much a problem with rimfire, but a quick google shows otherwise.

[hawkeye]

I have agree with Sam a misfire needs to stay in the chamber with the barrel on target for about 15 seconds. The shooter or the person next to them might be hurt . I've seen a M-60 hang fire , the bad round ejected and then go off. I was standing behind the gun , the gunner had a wound on his right arm. Even a little .22 may though a piece of brass into an eye.

[Francis Marion]

If you've seen the photo of the shooter who ejected a Pakistani 303 cartridge which detonated at t=20 seconds, his thumb was badly evulsed (torn to shreds) and rifle was fractured.   (This shooter was a gun owner engaging in informal target practice, NOT an AS attendee, at the time of this incident.)

I tell shooters to wait a minute with the misfired shell locked in battery, rifle pointed safely downrange, before ejecting it.

A 22 rimfire detonating out of battery is less exciting than a 303 shell, but poses nevertheless a significant safety issue; it's far better to offer shooters a 'dud call' after the string to incentivize them to leave the misfire in battery for sufficient time. 

We want to avoid, mitigate, minimize injury potential, and I think Sam mentioned a great idea to satisfy our safety needs in today's dud-laden 22 environment. 

 

[Chainsaw]

FWIW

NRA recommendation is 30 seconds for a misfire.

[CortJestir]

I experience a lot of misfires using Rem golden bullets in both my 10/22 LTR's.  Just wondering what is the best way to deal with this situation, as it always seems to happen when shooting an AQT.  Is it allowable to have an extra mag with a couple of rounds at the ready?  I would try to find a more reliable brand of ammo, except I have about 5,000 rounds and it is quite accurate in both my rifles.

This seems, to me, a solution to a symptom of the problem and not the actual cause. Aside from switching ammo, which I understand is not desirable for you at the moment, how about an extractor upgrade? When I first got my 10/22, it worked great with all kinds of ammo for about 500 rounds. And then, it just stopped functioning reliably. FTFs, FTEs, stovepipes - every 20 rounds or so. The only brand it did work consistently well with was CCI Mini Mags. I replaced the stock extractor with a Volquartsen one and now it's back to feeding everything I can load into it. When I took the stock extractor out, the hook was all bent and had taken a pretty good beating. So, FWIW...

But yeah, it is a good training opportunity as gunville pointed out. However, I think we all know how frustrating a hang-up can be on an AQT, especially a rapid fire AQT. I know they've kept me from going over 210 on more than one occasion.

[dwarven1]

I experience a lot of misfires using Rem golden bullets in both my 10/22 LTR's.  Just wondering what is the best way to deal with this situation, as it always seems to happen when shooting an AQT.  Is it allowable to have an extra mag with a couple of rounds at the ready?  I would try to find a more reliable brand of ammo, except I have about 5,000 rounds and it is quite accurate in both my rifles.

Change ammo - seriously. Use the Golden Garbage up and try something else.

One other suggestion - after 25+ years, my 10/22 started experiencing light strikes - rounds would frequently fire the second time through, though. I replaced the firing pin and voila! No more "misfires".  Examination with a dial caliper revealed that over the years (and, I estimate, about 20K rounds) the hammer had peened over the end of the firing pin and shortened it by .003". Result was that the pin didn't hit hard enough to set off all the rounds.

So if your LTRs are high-mileage rifles, a $4 part might save you a LOT of headaches.

[tdow]

My first thought at reading the original question was to teach clearance drills so shooters learn to quickly overcome the problem and return to addressing their targets.  Type 1 (failure to fire) and type 2 (failure to feed) with a tap, rack, bang drill, and type 3 (double feed) with the look, lock, strip/rip, rackrackrack, load, rack, fire. 

Squibs need their own short course of instruction.

Shooters should know their ammo.  If they pulled it out of a garage (or Pakistan) where it sat for 30 years, maybe they should be thinking hangfire (wait) and not "fix it".

[dean]

Sorry, I think there is too much emphasize on "hang fire".

IMO get the dam thing out of the gun and soldier on. True hang fires are so rare in modern ammo that it can be ignored.

[Old Dog]

I've never had a hang fire.  A few duds in centerfire ammo over the years (factory stuff, not my reloads).  Probably a lot with .22's but not many with the older guns.

It was a practice at home to eject the "dud" .22 into your hand, stick it back in the chamber and let the firing pin hit a different spot on the rim.  They almost always went off the second time.  I can't think of more than one or two I ever carried home to show Dad I had finally found a real "dud".

Applseeds are making me feel like .22 duds are more rifle related than ammo related.  I was at one this summer where an old single shot Remington bolt action went bang all day out of the same brick of .22 ammo that two 10/22's were having quite a few dud rounds from.  I've started picking up duds at Appleseeds and I'm going to dig out my old Winchester model 67 and see how many (modern semi auto) duds fire in the old reliable bolt action.

Based on the above and the design of the 10/22's to stop chamber damage from dry firing, if my 10/22 was a "dudder" I'd be pulling the bolt apart to do a little stoning on that part of the firing pin that hits the stop inside the bolt so as to "lengthen" the firing pin strike a tad, or two.

If you count your rounds you should have any firing pin strikes on the chamber mouth anyway.  There's a guy who comes to the Chesterfield mini Appleseeds who NEVER drops the firing pin on an empty chamber at the end of a stage.  I noticed months ago that every time he shoots the last round (whether its the fifth, the second, the eighth or the tenth) he reaches up and drops the mag.

[V]

Ooooh, rackrackrack, we go to the same places... 

Not trying to start a big argument here but this is going to become one of those mission arguments...

Appleseed is not trying to produce "defensive" or "tactical" shooters but provide "fundamentals" to all shooters by focusing on marksmanship. We want to do this with a 100% safety record. Hence, even my suggestion of spare rounds to enable you to finish a stage after a malfunction, starts to spill into "gaming" for "score" in a "competition" mindset. Learning malfunc drills to "get back in the fight" quickly is beyond even that.

So I think I now understand where SamD was coming from, yes in modern ammo/rifle combos we probably can shave the "hangfire" timeout in favor of "clear the malfunc" without sacrificing too much safety but thats not really the point. We want Appleseeds to focus on fundamental marksmanship skills where the mag changes/timed events are to produce cadence and smoothness - not racing for score or survival.

So 15 secs wait on a misfire in case its a hangfire is the safety briefing "rule."

Not saying you can't teach the look, analyze, clear drills, etc., just don't let them become a race against the clock or imagined adversary.