Ringed Barrel

ken1989

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I was speaking to friend of mine recently who told me he ringed his 45-70 barrel. I asked him how, he said he thinks there was some moisture in the brass after wet tumbling the brass. Allot of reloaders wet tumble brass nowadays. Anyways just a heads up to ensure your brass is perfectly dry before reloading.
 
I was speaking to friend of mine recently who told me he ringed his 45-70 barrel. I asked him how, he said he thinks there was some moisture in the brass after wet tumbling the brass. Allot of reloaders wet tumble brass nowadays. Anyways just a heads up to ensure your brass is perfectly dry before reloading.

This doesn't make any sense. How can moisture in the brass ring the barrel? Most likely Your friend had a squib due to wet powder and he fired another round, which caused the ring in the barrel. Is that it?
 
Moisture in the brass could have got the powder wet leading to a squib. You would still have to load and fire another to produce the ring though.
 
Moisture in the brass could have got the powder wet leading to a squib. You would still have to load and fire another to produce the ring though.

in a word...nope.... it may very well be wet powder from the cleaning process and what happens is when the primer fires the bullet is "jumped' down the bore a ways and stops...then the contaminated powder fires (commonly called a "hang fire") and the bullet that is partially down the bore acts as a bore restriction (the distance between the bullet and powder when it does ignite allows for a large area to build significantly more pressure than a small space will allow) before it can get mobile again,causing the ringed barrel. Usually a ring from a card wad in the shell as a powder block will cause a ring in the chamber.
 
in a word...nope.... it may very well be wet powder from the cleaning process and what happens is when the primer fires the bullet is "jumped' down the bore a ways and stops...then the contaminated powder fires (commonly called a "hang fire") and the bullet that is partially down the bore acts as a bore restriction (the distance between the bullet and powder when it does ignite allows for a large area to build significantly more pressure than a small space will allow) before it can get mobile again,causing the ringed barrel. Usually a ring from a card wad in the shell as a powder block will cause a ring in the chamber.

I don't believe this.

if a bullet is down the bore, the "Chamber" becomes bigger and pressure will drop. a bullet down the bore cannot be an obstruction to pressure! MILLIONS of rounds of bore seated bullets have been fired in thousands of rifles for over 100 years, and NO ONE has ever once worried about an over pressure "obstruction"

your comment: "the distance between the bullet and powder when it does ignite allows for a large area to build significantly more pressure than a small space will allow" makes absolutely no sense.

Think about what you are saying..... a 300WinMag builds far more pressure than a 30Carbine using the same powder charge because the chamber is BIGGER?????


A "RING" cannot be caused by the larger chamber... a ring can ONLY be caused by an increase in pressure in that TINY area behind the bullet... and that can only come from TWO objects coming together in the bore (for a ring in the bore)

otherwise the "RING" would be HUGE and damage the whole chamber area, and that was not what I inferred from the OP.
 
Depending on the type of powder and the space in the bore/chamber area before the obstruction the shock wave from the powder ignition becomes equivalent to a solid projectile.
This is how demolition experts cut steel beems with explosives. And under the right conditions the wave front hitting an obstruction can ring a barrel.
Fun with fluid dynamics!

A grisly finding from the space shuttle that broke up on reentry was that the crew was cut up as though with ultra sharp swords. This was found to be caused by the shock waves from tumbling debris at supersonic speeds.
 
Ring can only come from obstruction. Barrel has to have blockage in the rifling like wad or slug or cleaning patch. Then if shooter fires new round with full power, this round's slug if, restriction is bad enough stops suddenly and all pressure is transfered to surrounding area of the barrel producing the ring.
If barrel is thin enough it can be easily visible on the outside as well.
Squibs are main culprits of ringed barrels as well as inatentive shooters who fire next round without thinking or checking their targets.
 
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One of the gents on the ASSRA Forum had managed to produce loads that would consistently ring barrels.

He was working with duplex loads in a Shuetzen type rifle if I recall correctly.

Strange stuff can happen when playing around with high speed fluid dynamics, esp. if you happen upon the right (wrong) tuning of the various events.
 
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