Ruger 556C KABOOM!!!..now what?

[zulu5oscar]

I will try and make this quick, me and buddy went to range and while i was on my phone he came up to me and said "your gun just blew up in my face" i immediatly asked if he was ok and did a initial exam, he had some minor lacerations on his left arm.

we slowly walked to the gun bench(was at a range) and was praying to the AR gods that something on my gun was salvagable.
10 feet away i saw the PMAG in 4 pieces..shit. the bolt carrier was broken underneath, bulges in upper and lower recievers. but you know what, my friend was ok so fuck it, i will go buy another. but here is my dilema, seems i had a case head separation which caused the gun to explode, i WAS shooting reloads that i made myself(3 years and thousands of .223 pumped out) not sure if it was a case head malfucnction, but the case was sheared of afew milimmeters from the head. i was using RP brass with H335(25G) 55g hornady FMJ with CCI primers. all rounds were gauged, trimmed to lenght and prepped before reloading(took me 1 week to do).

So the weekend before this i reloaded 2k rounds!! now im not sure what to do, if there is even a .01% chance of another case head thats weak i will pull and toss brass...but damn. my brass was fired 5 times. i really dont know if the 2K im sitting on is worth shooting tossing... smart thing would be to toss but 2K is a lot of ammo. i guess what I'm asking and swallowing my pride, what did i do wrong, what could have prevented this. i have never had a issue with reloading till this day, and it left a real bad taste in my mouth, I dont even want to touch my gun bench. my best friend could have died or been permenatly injured. looking back at the reloading process.....i wouldnt have changed a thing or done anything different...i am a lot more anal about seprating my bullets by times reloaded, and triple triple triple checking my powder(dillion 550 if your curious) all brass that day was examined and found to be ok, no red flags at all. sooooo how do i avoid this again, does this just randomely happen, what did i fuck up and how can i correct it. any info helps, i feel like i just lost a hobbyt that i spent most of my time doing...play with fire and you get burned. I'm in a bad place right now and this forum always cheers me up. time to get back into the fight, get knocked down, get back up. i want to make this a positive learning experience. thank you for your time

[majorhavoc]

First of all, sorry about your Ruger 556 and glad no one was seriously hurt.

Funny you should mention this. I also reload for my AR and I had also been batting a thousand with ammo reliability until today. Today I had a failure to go into battery and when I cleared the bolt I saw a round hung up on the feedlips of the PMag and what looked like powder all over the chamber. WTF? I broke down the gun and found the jammed round with a crushed neck and powder everywhere. If that round had gone fully into battery and discharged with the powder everywhere.... I don't even want to know what would of happened. It took my almost three minutes looking before I found the missing bullet - It was still in the cartridge: it had been pushed all the way back through the neck into the body of the casing (see picture, below).

After cleaning the gun, it worked fine firing those hand loads for another mag or so and then nearly the same thing happened. At that point I cleared and cleaned the jam and switched to a different batch of reloads, which performed flawlessly for the rest of the day at the range.

When I got home, I noticed a lot of cannelure was showing on the suspect rounds so I checked overall cartridge length. Sure enough, several of the rounds from that batch were out of spec: the overall case length was over 2.26" on about one in ten.

The thing is, I make a point to check every round with a digital caliper as soon as it comes off the press. I know that none of those cartridges were too long when I first made them. But I do kind of recall dropping a case full of a hundred reloaded rounds onto the floor one time last year and wondering if that was anything to worry about. I decided it wasn't. This could be that batch.

My theory is I somehow forgot to crimp, or properly crimp those cartridges and that, combined with the accidental fall, accomplished the same thing a bullet puller does: apply inertia to pull the bullet out of the brass casing. An overly long cartridge got hung up while being swept forward by the bolt, rammed the uncrimped bullet completely back into the casing and partially crushed the neck, spilling explosive propellant everywhere inside the gun.

Note the bullet is still in the cartridge, but pushed all the way back, allowing powder to spill everywhere.


Is it possible this is what happened to you?

[Dasho101]

ive had that happen due to mag being tiped forward, bolt drives the round in to the reciver (in my dr200) and will do a sillilar thing... it only dose that with one usgi mag. so id test out all your mags and see if that happened with you.... if not i have no clue

[MacAttack]

I don't know about but I suspect you do the same as I do.

One you get things rolling you tend to work all the way through powder load before rechecking everything. I do this with 9mm all the time. I'll run 500 plus rounds before rechecking powder loads and total length.

I have to start working on smaller 100 round batches. I feel for you and hope you friend is OK.


I wonder if more than one round went off? Maybe a round in the mag had its bullet shoved back into its case, exposing powder, and the ruptured case shot a jet of flame out and down into the mag setting off the damaged round.

What did the rounds that didn't go off look like after they flew out of the damaged mag?

Or a round didn't get a primer? Ruptured case sets it off.

Squib?

Its all a long shot but I'm just tossing ideas out. I just can't see a single ruptured case casing so much catastrophic damage. The bolt would have to open of be open as the powder was burning. I don't see that happening unless the bolt moved back before the pressure dropped in the chamber and the bullet moved passed the gas port. It is a delayed system not a true blowback setup.

I don't know though I'm just an idiot.

[burn rate]

I really don't come around or post anymore, but i was browsing and saw your post and it got to me.

Take a deep breath, no one died and you don't have to loose your hobby.

there are only a couple of things that you an do to produce the kind of pressure that would break a bcg, bulge an upper and lower.

First, Large quantity of really fast powder. do you reload multiple calibers using multiple powders. If you do, go over in your head your powder pouring procedure/ caliber change . Is there any way you could have put a pistol or shotgun powder in by mistake.

Second, if your sure of your powder selection(only have one type in the house is probably the only way)Do you visually inspect powder before bullet seating. weigh all of the remaining loads, they should be within a couple of grains of each other. That type of detonation is way more common in large caliber revolvers. the theory goes, you under load a measure of powder, either manually or on an automatic powder drop(which is more common). If the load is perfectly wrong, the primer blow across the entire top of the powder charge eliminating the protection of a slower burn rate (in your case rifle powder). If this type of detonation can completely remove the top of a ruger black hawk, I am sure it can bulge a reciever.

third, I would suspect that where the gun is in terms of lock up, firing the gun could result in a bolt release under pressure which could cause the damage. as would bolt failure. I would have the gun inspected by a smith to make sure the bolt didn't let go.

It takes a lot of pressure to cause the damage you reported. that much pressure is only created in the chamber.

do your research, check your guns , practice safe reloading habits, and you will get this behind you.

-br-

[Sheriff McClelland]

Glad everyone's ok

I have a little experience dealing with firearms industry manufacturers including quite a bit with Ruger . My advice if you're asking , would be to box it up and send it to Ruger with a note assuring them everyone's fine and asking for them to estimate repair .

On several occasions they have offered a new replacement gun at a much discounted price ... sometimes 20% below wholesale . There's an extreme chance they might warranty it .

[raptor]

I would suggest that you pick as random of a sample as possible totaling 200 rounds. Visually examine each round in this batch and re-measure them. Then examine any that fall out of spec. I would then suggest selecting 100 rounds at random and disassemble these and examine each of the components.

This should provide a statistically significant sample. It should also provide you with some additional information to help you determine if the ammo is faulty.

[burn rate]

Every single round should be treated to the same determined safety procedure, If you are not going to pull every bullet and replace the powder.

If the gun did not fire out of battery, (which Is probably the case, but determining if the damage was because of an out of battery det, or resulted from a det. that caused a failure of the bolt , is difficult) It was either a undercharge or a really fast propellant, both of which should flag on the scale. which is why I would start by weighing them.


When dealing with safety, and I cannot stress this enough. sampling is not an option.

sheriff, great idea about the manuf getting a note that everyone is ok.

-br-

[raptor]

Every single round should be treated to the same determined safety procedure, If you are not going to pull every bullet and replace the powder.

Ultimately I agree.

However, my sample advice was to allow the OP to get some quick information that will help to determine what went wrong.

A random sample of 10%/5% of the population total should turn up an issue if the problem lies with the ammo. It should also take only a couple of hours vs. days. Also if it is a powder issue you do not want to recycle the powder. This statistic sample should also turn this up quickly.

[Dave_M]

Any pics? Locking lugs sheared?

[doc66]

I'm not going to try and diagnose your rifle problem on the internet, but I can say I don't reload for 5.56 for a reason. We had reloaded ammo at the last class, and had to yank the ammo off the line due to all the malfunctions. Numerous. 5.56 is a finicky enough without adding the problems that come from reloading. If your crimp is too light, than the rounds will back out during recoil, or sink in the case. I don't know what set up you are using, but it looks like a Lee. Depending on the die you use, it could already be out of spec for the crimp.

If you are going to reload for the 5.56, spend the fucking cash on a Dillon and Dillon dies. There is a reason why competitive shooters use Dillon Presses. For my high volume rounds, I use the Dillon. I've never had a malfunction using my Dillon.

I just saw a 550B on Guns List for $450 with dies. If I had the extra money right now, I'd buy it and have two.

Get a good press and good dies. For single loading, the others are fine--RCBS, Lee, Hornady--for volume loading, Dillon is the shit.

[djblocker88]

Kaboom aside, how does the Ruger 556 compare to other ARs? Doesn't it use a gas piston system? I was considering making it my first AR. Also it comes in 6.8 SPC now. Was just curious about it, I'm really liking Ruger because of the reliability of things and the fact customer service doesn't seem to screw you over.

[Vicarious_Lee]

I'm not going to try and diagnose your rifle problem on the internet, but I can say I don't reload for 5.56 for a reason. We had reloaded ammo at the last class, and had to yank the ammo off the line due to all the malfunctions. Numerous. 5.56 is a finicky enough without adding the problems that come from reloading. If your crimp is too light, than the rounds will back out during recoil, or sink in the case. I don't know what set up you are using, but it looks like a Lee. Depending on the die you use, it could already be out of spec for the crimp.

If you are going to reload for the 5.56, spend the fucking cash on a Dillon and Dillon dies. There is a reason why competitive shooters use Dillon Presses. For my high volume rounds, I use the Dillon. I've never had a malfunction using my Dillon.

I just saw a 550B on Guns List for $450 with dies. If I had the extra money right now, I'd buy it and have two.

Get a good press and good dies. For single loading, the others are fine--RCBS, Lee, Hornady--for volume loading, Dillon is the shit.

To me, it was more unsettling that about every 5th one of those rounds sounded like a .308 when firing than it was when that one bullet just disappeared out of the mag and left a shell spilling powder on the ground at the top.

[Sheriff McClelland]

4 days and no follow up from the op ?

[zulu5oscar]

Sorry guys I'm in process of moving, thanks for all the info and will respond later with answer to your questions