454 Casull Squib Load

[JayCee]

Had a squib recently while shooting my Freedom Arms Model 83. The load I was using was a 255 grain X-Treme plated bullet, 22 grains of Alliant 2400 and a CCI 400 primer in a 454 case. This load is about four or five grains over a “Ruger only” 45 Colt load, but about 3 grains under the starting load for 454 Casull in most of the reloading manuals. I’ve used the load for ages, and I’m not aware that 2400 is squib-prone like H110/Win 296.

When I pulled the trigger, I got a “click” instead of a bang, so I held the muzzle downrange for 30 seconds in case it was a hangfire. When I tried to move the cylinder, I found it to be locked up tight. What I first thought was a mechanical problem turned out to be the bullet lodged just inside the barrel locking up the cylinder. I drove the bullet back into the chamber with a brass rod and thus was able to get the cylinder loose. When I pulled the bullet from the defective round, the powder appeared blackened but unburned (see attached pic).

I pulled apart several of the unfired rounds in that batch, but couldn’t find any issues. All charges weighed exactly 22 grains and I found no evidence of any contamination in the case or the powder. All charges were visually inspected prior to bullet seating, and all were at the same level in the case. Since there seemed to be no issues with the load, I proceeded to fire the remaining rounds in the batch with no issues.

I’m puzzled about what happened here. I’m thinking maybe an underpowered primer ignited a few grains of powder near the flash hole which provided enough pressure to push the bullet into the barrel without igniting the entire powder charge. But I’ve never had a weak primer in over thirty years of reloading.

Any ideas?

[ballardw]

What did the primer pocket look like?

A partial hole or an obstruction like tumbling media lodged in the hole may have severely restricted the primer flash. So the powder wasn't ignited and just the gas from the primer was moving the bullet.

[Scorch]

If your charge does not fill the case up to the flash hole, you can get misfires. Big case/small powder charge is famous for squibs.

[expendable]

The powder looks like it has a clump in it.
Could it be contaminated?

[JayCee]

Case fill is around 80 percent, so there shouldn't be an issue with big case/small charge I wouldn't think.

Primer pocket looked normal...no obstructions.

Powder wasn't contaminated in any of the other rounds I pulled, and all the remaining rounds in that batch fired without any problem, so I don't see how that particular round could have had any contamination. Powder container is tightly capped and kept in a room with relatively constant temperature/humidity so there shouldn't have been any degradation of the powder.

This is the first time I've had an issue like this in over 30 years of reloading, so I'm genuinely puzzled...

[Targa]

I think I would have to chalk that one up to a bad primer.

[Pathfinder45]

If you are 3 grains below the starting load, that could be the problem right there. Maybe it's just so marginal that it is unlikely to happen twice in your life, but it happened once; it can happen again. Maybe you should use a different powder for your light loads and raise the powder charge when using that powder.

[RC20]

Low powder seems to be a high possibility.

Possibly a primer but the only ones I ever had fail were not powder in the case and you clearly did (did yo weight the mess to see if it matched the load - undercharged?)

I have sent bullets into a semi auto with just a primer and it has all the hallmarks of the primer did the push and not the powder (haven't done a revolver the same so others may have experience with how far a primer drives a bullets.

Rifle, it does not go very far and come right out. I acualy have gotten to like a no powder load there as it tests for a flinch (I shoot a lot of 06, 308, 7.5 Swiss and know I can get twitchy at the end of a days shooting)

[Unclenick]

Take some of the powder and an equal quantity of fresh powder and put a match to them to see if the squib powder burns normally in air. If a drop of oil or something like that got into the case, it could cause the problem. Ballardw's suggestion is still a possibility, as the obstruction could have blown out in the end.

[44 AMP]

The load I was using was a 255 grain X-Treme plated bullet, 22 grains of Alliant 2400 and a CCI 400 primer in a 454 case.

Enlighten me, as I don't load the .454 Casull, but is CCI 400 the right primer? Small rifle??

22gr of 2400 is not a "light" or low density load, even in the Casull case, which is .1 longer but not significantly larger than .45 Colt case.

Powder didn't get properly lit, that's obvious. Plugged/partially flashole? bad primer? contaminated primer or powder??

Only one round from the batch....I'd bet bad or contaminated primer. Rare, but it happens sometimes.

Possible poorly seated primer, not going off with full force? Did the primer strike look normal? (not that it will tell us anything if it does, )

[big al hunter]

Enlighten me, as I don't load the .454 Casull, but is CCI 400 the right primer? Small rifle??

Yes, the Casull cases are small primer pocket, and most load data calls for small rifle primers.

I may be remembering wrong, but I think Dick Casull experimented with large pistol and small rifle. And the most consistent performance with the high pressure 454 loads was in small rifle primers.

[RC20]

Only thing I know about the 454 C was a local outdoors writer wrote a hoot of a story.

More or less, he was an idiot. But, as he wrote publicly he was our idiot.

So, he is out in the boonies getting chased by a mad moose (probably a female)

So he figures he will shoot it with his 454 (judgment call, usually best to hide behind a tree and they will go away but....)

One dud after another. Damned near gets stomped as he is not behind his tree to shoot. And of course he wound up behind a tree after all safe and sound.

Why? Well for practice he shot once or twice and then loaded her up again. So log many months latter, most of the rounds had been in the gun for a number of shoots.

The powder was seriously over compressed. No of course he did not take the bullets out of the gun when he went intot he boonies, you know, that just to check thing? Nah!

I think he admitted he was not crimping or not crimping heavy as well.

Sadly he is now gone, he was a wonderful how not to do it example.

[ballisticxlr]

Powder looks like it got wet.

[T. O'Heir]

Like ballisticxlr says, the powder looks wet. Any oil or the like flying around?
Plated bullets are NOT jacketed and do not use jacketed data. Where'd you get the 22 grains? 22 grains of 2400 with a 250 grain jacketed is a tick below minimum. 5.5 grains below minimum with H110 and a Barnes 250.
Highly unlikely to be the low powder load. Under minimum loads can be dangerous and cause a detonation vs a burn. Not with clumpy powder though.
X-treme of course wants you to buy their manual. Mind you, it's on sale for $5. No online data.

[big al hunter]

Plated bullets are NOT jacketed and do not use jacketed data. Where'd you get the 22 grains? 22 grains of 2400 with a 250 grain jacketed is a tick below minimum. 5.5 grains below minimum with H110 and a Barnes 250.

Just wondering if you realized that you are comparing very different powders and complete opposite bullets? And correlating them to one another?

2400 doesn't have the same tendency toward detonation that H110 has. In 454 the load range for 2400 is a few grains from min to max. H110 min to max is 1 grain, in some loads less than 1 grain.

A plated bullet, as was stated, is not jacketed. It is softer than a jacketed bullet, and more susceptible to problems from high pressure/velocity. (Probably why the OP was loading down) Barnes bullets are solid copper, and must be propelled to high velocity to perform. And they are not soft.

The OP load at 22 grains is half way between the 45 Colt load for a lead bullet and full power 454 jacketed data. Seems a reasonable place to start for a plated bullet. I would suspect a primer issue. It seems that something burned inside the case, just not the powder. A question for the OP, what media do you clean your brass with?

[RC20]

All loads the same and the rest worked, so one load got wet?

And it is part burned, how can you tell (vapor out the end!)

[big al hunter]

And it is part burned, how can you tell (vapor out the end!

That is based on the OP commenting that the powder appears to be blackened. That is either soot or wet. As that is the only round with issues, I doubt powder contamination. If the OP weights the bad charge and confirms that it is heavier than the original charge, I would agree with wet powder. But with current information I will stick with tumbling media stuck in the primer hole or a bad primer.

[JayCee]

Unfortunately, I didn't save the powder from the squib. However, I did pour it out of the case onto the scale pan, and it poured just like normal powder - no clumping or sticking to the case wall which might have indicated that the powder was damp. It looked to me like it was covered in soot. That's why I conjectured that the primer was weak and had ignited only a few grains of powder at the back of the case. That might account for the sooty appearance of the powder.

[Old 454]

Load of slow burning magnum powders use a small rifle magnum primer.
I had the same problems switched to a small rifle magnum primer and problem went away

[jjavedas]

I find it hard to believe you had 22 gr. of powder in that charge, in other words primer only. I have no idea how experienced you may be at reloading( not judging) but we all make mistakes, fortunately no harm no foul. just visually inspect each round before passing it to the next station.

[cdoc42]

I got my Freedom Arms .454 in 1985. At that time, large pistol primers were recommended, then changed to Small Rifle. I am not aware that magnum primers were ever designated and I have used CCI 400 ever since.

Freedom Arms supplied primer pocket inserts to convert the LPP pockets to SRP size. They had to be swaged, but I didn't have a tool, so I just did my best to install the insert and then prime the pocket. It generally worked but at times, deformed the primer to some degree which didn't become a problem until one day at the range I had a squibb. I was totally perplexed because this never happened and I absolutely knew I had not missed a powder charge because I did everything manually, and I found powder had escaped from the case. I was about to fire another round when I asked myself, "Where did that bullet go?" Well, inspection revealed it was stuck in the barrel. The improper primer seating was enough to discharge the primer but not enough to ignite the H-110 charge. The FA bullet was a 240gr JFP; the barrel is 7-1/2 inches.

My thought is the OP's experience was primer failure, or, as big Al Hunter pointed out, media blocking the primer pocket.

[reddog81]

That powder doesn't look burned at all. I would have guessed any primer spark with enough power to push the bullet into the forcing cone would ignite some of the powder.

I like Unclenick's recommendation of taking an equal amount of fresh powder and comparing how the 2 burn. My guess would be contaminated powder

[JayCee]

I can't unequivocally rule out powder contamination, but I'm at a loss to understand how the contamination could have occurred, since none of the other rounds in the batch were affected, and I've never had a round not fire due to powder contamination in over 30 years of reloading.

This particular batch of 454s was loaded on a single stage press, cases were tumbled in stainless steel media, dried in a Lyman Cyclone case dryer and inspected for defects (split case mouth, obstructed primer pocket, etc.) before being charged with powder. Powder levels in all cases were compared by inspecting them in a loading block before bullets were seated. All rounds fired as expected except the ones I disassembled and the dud. Disassembled rounds showed no anomalies.

I can't come up with anything except a bad primer that ignited enough powder to push the bullet into the barrel but didn't have enough "oomph" to initiate combustion of the entire powder charge.

I haven't experienced a bad primer in over 30 years of reloading, but I can't come up with any other conclusion.

[Unclenick]

The fact the bullet was pushed out suggests the primer was OK. Usually, when you see pictures of powder involved in squibs it is yellow because the graphite has been burned off the surface. However, I do now recall an experiment I did with some very light loads of 2400 in .44 Special back in the '80s, and though the swaged lead bullets I used made it out of the barrel OK, the cylinder gradually jammed up because a lot of unburned 2400 was blowing out of the barrel/cylinder gap and got between it and the frame. So a charge of 2400 with enough space around it can, in fact, burn incompletely, even though the primer is fine. Once the bullet clears the case the pressure drops dramatically and can that can stop the burning, such as it is, at that point. But your charges were not that small and didn't leave that much space. Also, the jamming, in that case, occurred from the accumulation of some of the unburned powder from every round. If you didn't get residue from your other rounds, you were not having that issue. At least, not with your other rounds.

We might never solve the exact mechanism, but my thought is either a low charge (did you weigh the squibbed-out powder to see if it was close to 22 grains?) or a large drop of water that never dried out and was spread around the bottom of the case and not readily visible. A drop of perspiration or a nose drip falling unnoticed into the case maybe. At this point, it will be speculation. I can tell you that after adjusting 2400's model burn rate to match Hodgdon's Gold Dot load, QuickLOAD thinks you will be around 17,500 psi, which is a pressure where Unique and some other somewhat faster powders would be happier.

[JayCee]

Unclenick,

Unfortunately, I didn't think to weigh the squibbed-out powder. That might have given a clue as to what happened. However, I always compare powder levels in a loading block before proceeding with bullet seating, and I think I would have noticed a low level in a case. The recovered powder looked to be a a full or nearly full charge based on the amounts in the scale pan when I was weighing the charges to set the powder measure.

I can't rule out some moisture or other contaminant getting into the case during the reloading process, but I'm at a loss to explain how that could have happened. A squib is a real surprise, and this episode has reminded me that one can't be too careful when reloading.