Never again.....
Never again will I fire handloads made by somebody else.
Yesterday I decided to take the rifle for a walk in the woods and get the receiver sight roughly adjusted so it would be close when I take it to the range.
Ok, Ok, - I admit it, I just wanted to shoot the darn thing! It was just sitting there saying 'try me out'.
When I was given the box of parts with no stock years ago it came with a partial box of handloads. The box even has a label that says '140 bullet, 40 grains 4831'. It doesn't specify which 4831 but after consulting my Nosler manual I saw that the starting load for a 140gn bullet with IMR 4831 is 40.5gn and for H4831 it is 43.0gn, so 40 grains of either should be safe enough.
Now I know it's not wise to fire somebody else's loads, especially an unknown person. You have no control whatsoever of what you are loading into that chamber and pulling the trigger on. I've never done it in the past. I've gotten handloads that came with another gun that I bought and I disassembled them.
In this case however, since the box was labeled with a safe load, there were only 7 rounds left in the box (no empties though) and the gun was in one piece (and I was really keen to fire this thing) I presumed that these loads were likely safe enough. So I pulled a bullet, made sure it was 140 grains and weighed the powder - yep, 40.0 grains right on. The powder looked more or less like IMR 4831 to me. So I was convinced that I had six remaining very mild 6.5x55 rounds to try out.
So on with the snow shoes and up the mountain I go. Fired a shot at a dark spot on a big old dead maple. Bolt lift was a little stiff but no problem. For some reason I didn't examine the fired case, which is something I almost always do. Fired a second shot and the bolt lift was 'quite' stiff.
With both fired cases the primers were gone (later found in the magazine), the primer pockets were enlarged, case head metal had extruded into the ejector slot and the headstamp was partially flattened out.
I don't know what was in those loads for powder but it was 40.0 grains of something other than 4831...
...and who says an M94 can't handle a hot load....no gas escaped, no ill effects. Those are the hottest loads I've ever fired by far.
Later that afternoon I loaded 43.0 grains of H4831 and got normal looking cases and easy extraction so I'm sure it's not a problem with the gun.
Never again.
Here it is bedded into the stock that Striker gave to me.
If it shoots well enough as is I'll pretty it up and keep it. If not, well then I guess I'll have to decide what to do.
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