My neighbor came by with a bullet stuck in his barrel.  He has a .40 handgun (didnt ask the brand) and was shooting blazer ammo.  One round most have been out of spec because when he fired it, the bullet got lodged in the barrel.  

Surprised the barrel wasnt damaged.  He tried to bang it out with a punch and hammer which was a pretty bad idea but didnt work none the less.

I heated the barrel, all the lead melted out and the copper jacket then wiggled freely out.  

Just a heads up.  Never seen that before.

Thread title is a bit sensational

Avoid an entire brand because of one round in one caliber?

Also I'm pretty sure their pistol ammo is made at Speer/ATK along with some FC and, obviously, Speer

Two questions:

1.  Why is punching out a stuck bullet a bad thing?  Did he use a steel punch?  35,000psi is a pretty big hammer.


2.  Can you heat a barrel to 621.5°F without altering the temper or distorting the barrel?

No kidding.  I've shot thousands of both Blazer lines and never had a single hiccup.

Beware of bullets.

Oh and pit bulls

Bad rounds happen with all manufacturers.

I've shot thousands upon thousands of blazer 9mm, 38, and 45.

I wouldn't shoot that barrel now.

This. How did you control the heating of the barrel to melt the lead? If you used a torch, you probably got it too hot.

ETA: and clickbait title is overly sensational.

It's called a squib when a round doesn't have enough power to propel the bullet out of the barrel.

Many competitive shooters carry a brass rod to tap out the obstructing bullet.

The barrel isn't normally harmed, unless the following round is fired, or a steel rod is used in a ham-handed fashion to remove the bullet.

Heating steel can screw up the heat treat, I would contact the manufacturer of the barrel before shooting it again.

If you shoot enough you will eventually find all kinds of defects in factory ammo.  Primers seated backwards, bullets seated backwards, case dents, case cracks, squib rounds and duds.  These are only concerning if it happens more than once in a blue moon, and contacting the manufacturer will often get the problem ammo replaced.

Next time, you might want to ask for advice on handling a gun problem before jumping directly to hack-fu and hyperbole.

Beware of Blazer Ammo!

Yeah next time just use an appropriate  punch on a squib.


And to continue to beat the horse, all Mads produced ammo has the potential for bad rounds here and there.

I always have terrible luck with certain brands.

You do know Blazer is made by CCI?  It is good ammo.

Shoot... What to do with all my pistol ammo now? Guess I'll just have to through it away.

Blazer Brass is one of my favorites.

Your tale sounds odd...

Well, it is now.

ETA - does anyone make clearing charges for small arms?

The Indians used to melt out stuck pacthed balls in trade guns ,the barrels burst . Sure things are different  now .... but still .

Had the same thing happen with a blazer .44 mag round. Back in 1986.  No problems since.

"Beware of neighbors with gas torches"

FIFY

ITT OP shows us his lack of knowledge in metallurgy.

Buy your neighbor a new barrel since you did far more damage with your torch, than the steel rod and squib load did before you touched it.

And you can use a wood dowel or a brass rod to pound out bullets in the future. or better yet, tell the neighbor to take the gun to a gunsmith and have them fix it, it will be far cheaper in the long run...

Blazer is GTG. I've shot thousands of Blazers witout a hiccup. Got a squib Federal Hydroshok once in a P229.


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This can happen with any manufacturer.

Same here.

That's one way to get the bullet out. How did it shoot after that?

Federal replaced all that same lot # ammo and asked for the 229 barrel. They overnighted a new barrel then sent the old barrel back as a paperweight.

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The old barrel is a good conversation piece.

My 380 did not run well with Blazer ammo. I got about 5% failure of some kind last I tried it. I stopped buying Blazer 380. I still use Blazer 9 and 45 though.
I also had a box of 380 HornadyXTP with several rounds with folded over cases. That was stuck very solidly. I check all of my EDC and all SD ammo one round at a time these days.

never had an issue with blazer, multiple calibers.

How hot do you need to get a barrel to permanently attach a flashhider per the atf?

Im guessing its hotter than op got his neighbors barrel.

its 1100 degrees

Applying enough heat to melt the lead from the center of the bullet caused more long term damage to that barrel than any squib load ever could.

I have had two squibs in my lifetime. I soaked the bore with Kroil overnight and drove the bullet out with a punch and hammer. Lead bullets leave a ring of lead in the bore where the bullet stopped. Serious elbow grease is needed sometimes to get it out.

You should have just bought a new barrel.

The melting point of lead is well below the point of damage so no damage was done unless he heated the barrel to much

Except the torch was directly heating the lead. the lead was heated by the steel barrel being heated by the torch. so to get the lead to to 1000 degrees, the outer face of the steel was significantly hotter than 1000 degrees.

Plus, the bullet probably wasn't pure lead, even bullets sold as "Lead" bullets aren't 100% pure lead, most likely it was an alloy mix with some tin and maybe some other metal contaminant in the mix, so who knows how hot it had to get to melt.

Bubba at work in this OP.    Industrious but not knowledgeable.  

Helpful Part of Post:  

The correct way to get a stuck bullet out of something as simple as a re-moveable auto pistol barrel is to take a proper diameter steel rod, wrap it every couple inches with electric tape to bring it up to near bore diameter, and hammer the stuck bullet out of the barrel forward.  Chamber to crown so as not to risk hurting the crown.  The tape protects the bore as the rod flexes or wobbles.  Harm proof way.

Wrecked Barrel:  Bubba should buy the friend a new barrel.

A simple propane torch in good condition is making a 1900-2000F degree temperature if the flame is a nice blue color with a pointy tip.

The heat necessary to make the steel and then the jacket and then the lead hot enough to melt is in the 625F degree range for the lead.  The jacket and barrel would have been much hotter.  That temperature is probably enough to anneal the heat treated steel barrel.  (500F-1400F depending on the type of steel and the nature of machining it and its work hardening.)

Put another way, you could not have melted the lead without getting the steel hot enough to F it up.  The .40 S&W is a fairly high pressure pistol cartridge.  Softening the barrel and lowering its strength is not a percentage thing to do.

As much as I hate the Wiki concept, its technical stuff is rather easy to understand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(metallurgy)


"Process annealing  Process annealing, also called intermediate annealing, subcritical annealing, or in-process annealing, is a heat treatment cycle that restores some of the ductility to a product being cold-worked so it can be cold-worked further without breaking.

The temperature range for process annealing ranges from 260 °C (500 °F) to 760 °C (1400 °F), depending on the alloy in question. This process is mainly suited for low-carbon steel. The material is heated up to a temperature just below the lower critical temperature of steel. Cold-worked steel normally tends to possess increased hardness and decreased ductility, making it difficult to work. Process annealing tends to improve these characteristics. This is mainly carried out on cold-rolled steel like wire-drawn steel, etc.

Full anneal Full annealing temperature ranges

A full anneal typically results in the second most ductile state a metal can assume for metal alloy. Its purpose is to originate a uniform and stable microstructure that most closely resembles the metal's phase diagram equilibrium microstructure, thus letting the metal attain relatively low levels of hardness, yield strength and ultimate strength with high plasticity and toughness. To perform a full anneal on a steel for example, steel is heated to slightly above the austenitic temperature and held for sufficient time to allow the material to fully form austenite or austenite-cementite grain structure. The material is then allowed to cool very slowly so that the equilibrium microstructure is obtained. In most cases this means the material is allowed to furnace cool (the furnace is turned off and the steel is let cool down inside) but in some cases it's air cooled. The cooling rate of the steel has to be sufficiently slow so as to not let the austenite transform into bainite or martensite, but rather have it completely transform to pearlite and ferrite or cementite. This means that steels that are very hardenable (i.e. tend to form martensite under moderately low cooling rates) have to be furnace cooled. The details of the process depend on the type of metal and the precise alloy involved. In any case the result is a more ductile material but a lower yield strength and a lower tensile strength. This process is also called LP annealing for lamellar pearlite in the steel industry as opposed to a process anneal, which does not specify a microstructure and only has the goal of softening the material. Often the material to be machined is annealed, and then subject to further heat treatment to achieve the final desired properties."

The graph shows the temperature ranges to fully anneal one sort of steel in C, not F degrees.  (No clue what steel the barrel is or how it was made and processed to harden or temper the machined steel.):





Extra BS:

The worst stuck squib I've experienced was the third round fired from the first box used out of a 1000 round case of Russian Silver Bear 9mm with steel jackets.  Bang, Bang, Woof.  It was fired in a Beretta carbine.  The bullet was half way down the 16" barrel.  The case had ejected and blew gas out the rear but not fed a new round.  Thank you Shooting Gods.  The long rod, tape, and hammer method banged it out the front leaving the carbine undamaged.  997 rounds returned for a refund.

I've had more squib rounds  (3-4) over a lot of years than from a kazillion rounds of reloads (0).  Properly seating the primer and checking every single round for powder seems to prevent squibs.