And it sucked.

I was out there with my recently repaired L1A1 (the gas tube retaining pin somehow disappeared...just replaced it and wanted to make sure it wouldn't walk out again), and started just plinking to test its function. I ran into [b]offctr[/b] at the range, as well, so it was just the two of us. Bought my M1 Carbine up to play with, as well. Bought 12 or so 20 round mags and 5 30 round mags for my L1A1, all loaded with either Portuguese surplus, reloaded lake city, and some Israeli stuff my father had laying around.

So, I'm shooting and yackin away with [b]offctr[/b], and I shoulder the L1A1 to empty off another magazine (4th or 5th 20 rounder, wasn't particularly counting, already went through a couple of 30's), and I heard a pop, a burning sound...then I noticed there was a very very large amount of smoke coming out of the L1A1, and something was burning about an inch from my face, inside the receiver.

I was, shall we say, disagreeably surprised. [B)] It was smoking for a good 5 or so minutes...the bottom of the magazine did NOT pop off or anything. I musta looked like I just swallowed a shit sandwich to [b]offctr[/b], heh. Black soot all over my face, the whole thing. [BD]

And, of course, I was an idiot, [stick] and wasn't wearing any eye protection. I usually wear sunglasses or shooting glasses, but it was starting to get a little dark out, and the only shooting glasses I had on me were pretty messed up....so I wasn't wearing anything. Obviously, that was a really dumb maneuver on my part. I instantly threw on some eyewear when I came to my senses after that.

Here are some pictures from the cartridge that I took after it happened:

This is the headstamp. I was informed by [b]offctr[/b] that this Israeli surplus .308 has been known to do what happened to me, a lot. Obviously, I need to now empty all my mags and weed this crap out...*sigh*:

[img]http://always.misplaced.net/~edward/kB/headstamp-and-crack.jpg[/img]


Here's a shot of the inside of the casing. You can see where it burned through.

[img]http://always.misplaced.net/~edward/kB/inside-crack.jpg[/img]

Here's a shot of the outside of the casing. Look at the lovely cut in it; looks like a blowtorch did it. It's almost surgically precise. Also, if you look up at the top of the case, you'll see a sliver of yellow from the pencil...the top of it also cracked in a couple places from the pressure.

[img]http://always.misplaced.net/~edward/kB/side-shot-with-crack.jpg[/img]


The rifle fared fine, I took a lot of extra time when I cleaned it to go through every little bit and piece and make sure it was still in good condition. I was ok, other than being a little rudely shocked and having a lot of black soot on my face. And, to add insult to injury, I got stung on my face by a damn hornet as I was cleaning out my position and preparing to head back home. Some days, I just can't win.

The real pain in the ass about this thing is that now I need to go through ALL my .308, find ALL the izzy ammo...and find a way to dispose of it without doing my normal ammunition disposal method [>(] (bringing it to the range, and shooting it, of course [;D])

There's probably a good thousand rounds or so...of which more than half will be loaded into magazines. God, my fingers are gonna be hating life when I go through all of those. *sigh* ahh well.

Israeli .308, I think that's the stuff you're not supposed to use at all. I believe there have been a number of threads on this topic over at the FAL files.

Buy yourself a kinetic bullet puller (looks like a hammer) and costs about 16 bucks or so. Us ethat to pull the bullets and powder.

Seperate the bullets from the powder and inspect for damage during pulling.  (Install a little pad in the impact end of the bullet puller to protect the bullet.  Pack the powder in a used powder canister and clearly mark it as coming from israeli surplus ammo.

Place empty cases upright in loading trays.  Spray wd-40 or other penetrating oil into the cases and allow to soak in and contaminate the primer compound. Dispose of as trash.

Reload the bullets and powder.  Before you bulk pack the powder up, weigh the charge extracted from the cartridge.  Reduce the charge by 10% and work up in increments as per standard proceedure.

Or. if you are worried that the powder is seriously out of whack, dig it into your garden or spread it on your lawn.

So do you normally mix and match ammo while you're at the range?  It seems like you said that you have Izzy and other ammo all mixed together in various mags.  Did I get this wrong?

At the moment, yes...stuff my father had laying around and other random .308 I had picked up at random gun shows were intermixed. I had 400 rounds "loose" in an old Radway Green ammocan, and whenever I got more .308 in, I'd debox it all and put it all into that can. A lot easier to just grab one can and go, than it is to sort through whats where and take a couple bags along.

I had just ordered a whole pile of Porteugese .308, and was in the process of shooting out all the other random crap, and refreshing everything with the port stuff...

After all, if I have only 8 rounds of South African left, I'm not going to have a mag that has only 8 rounds in it [:P] I'm going to top it off with whatever I can get my hands on...