Witnessed a shooter at the range today shoot 5 300 win mags. in a rifle chambered for 300 weatherby mag. it shortened the necks quite a bit.He could not hit the paper but I thought he was fortunate something did'nt go terribly wrong.

It could have been a lot worse. I once accidently fired one of my wife's .270 rounds through my 7MM Rem.Mag. The cartridge couldn't expand enough to fill the chamber and split & shattered. I picked brass out of my face for 3 weeks. I gave the cartridge--what was left of it--to a local hunter safety instructor to use as a teaching aid.

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"Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreaming."

I mixed a .40 s&w into a stack of .45 acp once. Heard a different sound, and found the case expanded in my brass catcher. That makes you a bit nervous...

Scout

One of the hunting guide wannabes shot and shot and... his 308 from the bench without hitting anything. It turned out that he shot 243Win in it. As I understood it the cases came out as good looking 308Win with a 243Win head stamp, just slightly smoked...

An other fellow had bad luck on the running paper moose. No hits. A friend asked what bigbore he was shooting, because the cases were straight. "My 308, ofcourse" was the selfevident answer. Yes, he shot 308Win�s, in his 30-06... Saw the case, a nice looking 416/308Winchester.

I guess we just wont hear anyone who have tried to squeeze out a bullet larger than the bore. Take care. AKI

Plainview, I did the exact same thing. Fortunately, the good folks at Savage designed the 110 bolt action with double gas baffles. Only felt a little gas brushing my face (had shooting glasses on). Still have the case above my scale.

Safe design has moved a whole lot higher on my list of important things to consider when purchasing a firearm, since then. FWIW, Dutch.

I've got a 309 JDJ that I have to fireform 444 marlin brass in. At one point, I had a 7x444 T/C barrel that I had to do the same in. I sold the 7x444, moved and a couple of weeks ago, tried to fireform some of my 309JDJ's. Hmmmm Very mild load..nice, but nthe cases weren't fireformed. I fired about 10 of them into the backstop. I figured maybe I need to increase the powder charge, so I was pulling some bullets...hmmmm they looked a little small, so I weigh one. 120 grs...NOT the 125 30 cal bullets I usu. use, so I measure a bullet. .284. Ooops. At least the barrel looked OK.

[This message has been edited by old4x4 (edited 01-07-2002).]

This is another shocker, a friend of my father lent is Sako .270 to someone for the weekend to go hunting. Knowing that the chaps other rifle was a .308 he said to him to be careful with the ammo as he was not too experienced. Well as luck would have it he managed to chamber a .308 round into the .270, with the .308 being shorter it chambered perfectly. The results being that it blew the magazine plate open and put hairline cracks in the locking lugs and damaged the bolt face with all the heat and pressure. The .308 bullet exited the barrel of the .270. could you imagine the pressures. Plus he had hearing problems for about 2 weeks.

In the late 20's Winchester stoped making the model 95 in 30/06 after someone shot a 8mm Mauser mill catridge and killed them self

I "fireformed" a 7MM Rem Mag into a .300 Weatherby Mag. Gun sounded different when I shot it, more of a "pop" instead of the usual report. When I pulled the case out, it had the nice Weatherby double radius, but no neck. Bad part was that I was shooting with all the guys I went elk hunting with, and we all work in the same plant!

When I was a teenager I bought an 1873 Springfield at a gun show, a full rifle, a Trapdoor model. My local gun EXPERT told me it was a .45-70 but man I couldn't hit anything with it plus it split the cases badly, it was a .50-70. The .45-70 mixup luckily didn't hurt it.

Recently saw a cop shoot an errant .357 SIG out of his SIG 226 in .40 S&W. It sounded funny , but extracted and ejected fine. He even hit the target but the hole was a bit smaller than the rest. The case split part way back, but didn't hurt the pistol.

FN

My dad fired a 7mm mauser round through his 270 win .We were at the range at the time ,i mentioned that second shot had a different sound,he check the brass, yep 7mm mauser.He still has 270win,still a shooter and that was 15 years ago.

Read an article in the American Rifleman a few years back about a gentleman who bought a sporterized Japanese Model 38. He was told the rifle had been rechambered to .30-'06. He took the rifle home and was wondering why it kicked so much when he shot it, plus a few other difficulties. He mailed it to the NRA and had them look at it. They found that the previous owner had run a .30-'06 reamer through the chamber, but left the bore at it's original 6.5 diameter. So, those .308 bullets were being swaged down to .264.

The amazing thing was that the rifle showed no signs of damage.

Robert
There's at least one poster on these boards that has admitted doing that to an Arisaka. And he's still able to post here.

I have a friend who reached into his ammo box (without looking) and loaded a .308 into his .25-06 (without looking). He has a box of assorted pieces to remind him not to do that again. Receiver ring split and barrel was blown forward several feet, magazine well bowed, etc. He was fortunate to have only gotten a few specks of brass in his face. The bullet swaged down and hit the target!

In fact I did that to a 6.5mm Arisaka in 1965 when I was 16. The gun fired 30-06 bullets at least 500 times with NO and I mean NO evidence of a problem. Kicked like hell but would shoot a 2 inch group at 50 yrds! I tried to blow up an Arisaka once with a case full of unique and the action held although the brass was vaporized and the extractor was blown off. Those actions are incredibly strong. I'm in no way recomending this stupid stunt to anyone just recounting the facts!

Was BS'n at the gunshop last week when the owner said some g'moke had fired a 7.62x39 in a Savage 7mm mag, a steel jacketed, steel cased mil-surp shell. It destroyed the extractor but otherwise no other damage.

The casing had to be pulled by drilling, tapping and useing a threaded rod to pull it similar to removeing a stuck case in a fl die. A lot of things had to go wrong , (or just right depends on your point of view), for the shell to line up enough to even fire.
His take was that the savage action is the strongest around, or they wouldn't be chambering the lazeroni line in them.

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if you run, you just die tired

Saw a totally wrecked Ruger Varminter in 220 Swift. A guy reached into his ammo-box (with out looking!) and grabbed a bullet to shoot at a coyote. It was a 7.62X39 that he picked up. He was really mad about the 'sorry Ruger piece of junk'till I hammered the bolt open and you could read the head-stamp on the bolt face!

I sighted in my .308 then switched to my .280 but my FRIEND thru a .308 he'd been looking at into my .280's I'd got out to shoot. It went of with a diff sound, but other than sticking the bolt, did no other damage. I now look at EVERY bullet that goes into my gun.

Though not quite as bad as some of these stories, I once found a bunch of .303 Savage cases at the range that had apparently been fired in a .303 British. Some held up well to that puffing up, others split badly. From the number found, the guy never gave it a second thought!

Telly