Do .22 rimfire ever hangfire?

10x

10x

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
38   0   0
Location
Peace River
In all my years of shooting .22 rimfire I have gotten the occasional dud but I have yet to get a hangfire.
Has anyone ever had a hang fire from .22 rimfire ammo?
 
yes
I have heard that in some of the older types the primer did not get embedded into the rim in one or two places but I have never experienced it esp in modern ammo
 
Yes...I've heard of it happening once or twice to people around here. Not very often though, I think it's a pretty rare occurrence.
 
Yes they do. A guy I hunt with had it happen to him out Snowshoe hunting. Pulled the trigger and got click. Gave it a bit of time then ejected the shell and was looking at in his palm when it went off. The brass gave him a nice cut on the hand.
 
if you get a ftf, wait like 60 seconds and eject the case, whats a good thing to do with it to insure you don't get hurt from a possible hangfire? i'm abit afraid of just leaving the ejected case around only to have it go off next to me. maybe get a wooden box to eject them into? sure its not common, but neither is getting hit by a bus, but i dont want to take that chance.
 
22 round going off outside the barrel is fairly safe, neither bullet nor case carry enough energy to penetrate anything. Sure you can get cuts or even loose your eye if you are stupid enough to examine dud up close. Ejected on the ground it will do nothing more than noise.
 
didn't they throw some .50cal rounds into a fire on mythbusters? then they stood behind some BP glass that would probably never stop a .50cal round. I think even those weren't that dangerous.
 
22lr said:
22 round going off outside the barrel is fairly safe, neither bullet nor case carry enough energy to penetrate anything. Sure you can get cuts or even loose your eye if you are stupid enough to examine dud up close. Ejected on the ground it will do nothing more than noise.
Click to expand...

Worse case is it going off with the bolt open while in the chamber.
 
SSJChar said:
if you get a ftf, wait like 60 seconds and eject the case, whats a good thing to do with it to insure you don't get hurt from a possible hangfire? i'm abit afraid of just leaving the ejected case around only to have it go off next to me. maybe get a wooden box to eject them into? sure its not common, but neither is getting hit by a bus, but i dont want to take that chance.
Click to expand...

A .22 going off on its own is like a little brass firecracker. No real danger to anyone unless you're holding it in your hand.

A cartridge needs to be placed in a chamber in order to shoot the bullet with any velocity. More often than not a cartridge that is set off on the ground or whatever will blow the case apart rather than shoot the bullet at someone.
 
When it happened to me last month at -10C with some DynaPoint .22 mag, I just re-cocked the bolt and let her have it again ... and off they went. Three shells in 25 though. Was it temperature, the batch of bullets, or the gun (firing pin assembly) ... dunno yet, more to test.
 
Never had a "hangfire" in my life with the 22 rimfire. That is through at least 150,000 rounds of ammo. Not saying it doesn't happen, just hasn't happened to me. Had a friend when I was young who rescued some old 22 rimfire ammo from a can in a shed. a couple of those were "poof!" and bullet lodged in the barrel. Relatively easy to remove in a 22, though. Regards, Eagleye.
 
Never had a hangfire on a 22, just misfires.

On the subject of danger of an unchambered 22 going off, on mythbusters they fired some off by putting them in the fuse holder of a vehicle and running enough amps through it. The dents and holes they discovered were certainly significant enough to cause serious damage to soft tissue, like one's eyes. Probably would have gone through Buster's scrotum if he had one.

All grounds for not abandoning caution should one encounter an actual hangfire out of chamber.
 
Grizzlypeg said:
Never had a hangfire on a 22, just misfires.

On the subject of danger of an unchambered 22 going off, on mythbusters they fired some off by putting them in the fuse holder of a vehicle and running enough amps through it. The dents and holes they discovered were certainly significant enough to cause serious damage to soft tissue, like one's eyes. Probably would have gone through Buster's scrotum if he had one.

All grounds for not abandoning caution should one encounter an actual hangfire out of chamber.
Click to expand...

Really. I have cooked off .22 long rifle rimfire on a hotplate covered by a cardboard box when I was a teenager. The interior of the box had the fired bullet and the brass in it but only small dents and marks in the cardboard.
Modern .22 rimfire ammo must be more powerful these days.
Or maybe the fuse holder held the bullet in place and caused enough pressure for the brass to let loose???

Not to mention my childhood neigbors, Delmar and Jimmy, would place .22 rimfire on an anvil and hit it with a carpenter hammer to make it go bang. These guys went through several bricks before Jimmie got a shard of something, possibly brass, in his eye. The doctor couldn't find anything so it couldn't have been that serious. Their mother put a stop to it by not buying any more .22 rimfire.

This is an easy enough experiment to do with a cardboard box in side a wooden box and a hotplate if you would like to try it.
 
Grizzlypeg said:
Next outdoor bbq. :eek::runaway:
Click to expand...

Just make sure the BBQ is cold when you place the cartridges in and the lid is closed before you light it. It is very likely the cardboard box will catch fire and burn before the bullets detonate.
I would also have some serious concerns about lead from the bullets in your BBQ. Lead and food don't mix well in the human body.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom