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Posted: 5/3/2008 11:02:01 AM EDT
| I hear if a live round ever gets stuck in the chamber its best to point the rifle downrange and let it cool down for 10 minutes before attempting to remove it. This I assume in case the round gets too hot and goes off. But after shotting, say 100 rounds there will be a chambered round... do you run the same risk from the heat? |
Cook offs are very rare to begin with. The main reason why some say to let the weapon to cool, is that if all else fails when extracting the live round, you may have to tap it out from the business end. Letting it cool is probably another safety precaution before doing so. |
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A chambered round that goes off because of weapon heat is called a "cookoff". They are rare in the AR design. The design cools well enough, especially for semi-auto rates of fire. However, the advice to wait to remove a round that fails to fire is not because of cookoff risk. It is because there is a possibility that the round that failed to fire has a primer / powder charge that is smoldering and may go off delayed. It used to be far more common with aged ammunition of dubious storage and wartime manufacturing standards. It is pretty rare these days but not impossible. The only instances I've had experience with were .22 rimfire. So one waits with the muzzle pointed downrange for a period of time before trying to clear the weapon. Some ranges have pipes half buried in the ground for disposing of that sort of round once its been cleared. |
+1...after a minute or so I would be assessing from the ejection port...if all looked safe I'd remove the bolt and take action from there. I cant think of a reason to be in front of the barrel to service the weapon |
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