Rick Rose and I went to the local public range today to sight in rifles and get some practice with shooting sticks.

The fellow at the end of the line came in with a camo Remington 11-87 and set up a turkey target. We kind of lost track of him.

We noticed that he was getting ready to leave, and remembering that we didn' hear much noise from that end of the line Rick asked the guy how it was going.

He responded that his new gun would not chamber a round at all. So, being curious Rick and I went down to his shooting position to take a look.

Rick had glasses and muffs on. I had glasses but no muffs. The owner of the weapon did not have glasses on ... and I don't remember if he had muffs on.

At any rate ... with Rich on the right side parallel to the owner and me behind, the owner put a 3 1/2" Remington magnum round in the magazine tube. The gun was lying close to flat and was pointed down range. When he closed the bolt ... the gun fired ... OUT OF BATTERY, spraying the owner with brass particles. Its recoil also bashed up his right hand pretty well.

After making sure that no one was seriously injured ... inspection of the weapon demonstrated that it had stuck the firing pin in the bolt with the tip exposed sufficiently to result in a slam fire when the bolt was released.

Let me tell you ... a 3 1/2" 12 gauge magnum slam fire is one hellova bang!!!! The muzzle and action flash from this was truly amazing.

This was the first time this new gun had been fired. Remington is obviously getting this one back.

Several things to learn from this near disaster:

0. <<<PRIME Directive>>> ALWAYS have a weapon pointed in a safe direction when ammunition is near it!

1. ALWAYS have your glasses on when near the line!

2. ALWAYS check for a stuck firing pin when having difficulties closing a bolt on a loaded round!

3. ALWAYS expect the unexpected!

4. Always figure you can learn something new.

It will be very interesting to see what Remington does to remedy this one.

Mstarling---

Since the 11-87 has an interlocked firing pin that's blocked until the locking block is engaged, I'd be VERY interested in finding out what happened there. I can't imagine anyway that could happen with out the firing pin being broken......and even that doesn't make much sense.

I'd never seen anything like it, the owner was a bit upset as Spring gobbler season begins on 4/28 and he'd just dropped $800 on a new gun that didn't work. We later learned that this was a replacement for a previous 11-87 that had given him grief.

When Mike and I asked him how it was jamming he said "the shells won't chamber". He seemed competent as to the workings of an 11-87, correctly thumbing a round into the mag tube and cycling the bolt with his right hand while holding the gun down range with his left.

I can say I've seen and heard a kB!
Big orange ball of fire from the ejection port, shrapnel going everywhere, three guys left standing with jaws at half mast. After acertaining that we were all relatively intact a postmortem on the gun revealed that the bolt was jammed to the rear, the casing was still in the chamber (minus the head which was laying on the ground) and the lifter was blown downward at about a ninety degree angle.

The firing pin was protruding from the breechface while the bolt was fully retracted and there was a firing pin imprint in the primer.

I don't see where the owner did anything wrong and it doesn't give me the warm fuzzies for Remington's QC.

[ 04-27-2003, 19:15: Message edited by: Rick R ]