Specs: Wilson 20" varmint barrel, ff handguard, only about 150 rounds through it.  Rilfe has functioned flawlessly to this point.  Rifle was not dirty, and this was about the 15th round fired today.  Ammo used today was handloaded (by me) Winchester cases, Federal BR primers, 60gr. V-Max bullets over 27.5 grs. of H335 powder.  Cases were thrice fired.  

At the range today, my AR-15 (varmint upper with round free float handguard) failed to fire when the hammer dropped, and I could not open the bolt using the charging handle.  The live round was stuck in the chamber.  I have had rims ripped off cases before, but never had a live round stuck like this.  I (carefully) boxed up the rifle and brought it home to work on it.  Once home, I put the rifle in the vise and tried to extract the live round by tugging on the charging handle, but no luck.  I was a little nervous because of the live round, but I also knew the hammer had already fallen so it was unlikely it would fire again until the bolt carrier came backwards to cock the trigger again.  Anyway, I removed the firing pin as a precaution, then I removed the freefloat handguard and lockring and tried to remove the barrel, but the round was still stuck and the barrel t would not come off the upper reciever.  I then put the barrel in a barrel vise and used a block of wood and hammer to drive the reciever, bolt and all, off the barrel.  The extractor finally gave way and slipped off the rim of the unfired case, leaving the live round still in the barrel chamber.  The case still has a partial rim.  Now that the barrel was free, I tried needle-nose pliers to remove the stuck case, but no dice.  The case rim is buggered a little, but I cannot get a good bite with the pliers because of the lugs in the chamber.  

This problem would be a no-brainer if the round was fired.  

Anybody have any ideas on how I can get the stuck, live round out of the chamber/barrel now that the barrel is completely off the rifle??????

Quoted: I would hose down the round with WD 40 then drive the round out from the muzzle with a cleaning rod.

+1


i did this to a .22 long rifle once but i used two wooden chopsticks and got one chopstick stuck.   a .22 blank got it out.            

I ruined two good Dewey cleaning rods trying to drive the live round out.  I finally got it out by soaking it all night in WD40, and then inserted a 3/16 brass rod in the muzzle, and drove the case out of the chamber.  After it was out, I was disappointed to find the brass was not deformed and the chamber looked normal.  

Maybe the chamber is rough??????I am going to polish the chamber with Flitz in hopes to never have to deal with this again.    

Thanks guys for the suggestions!!

Mike,

Where'd you get your reloading data.  I just looked on the Hodgdon website.  They max H-335 out with a 55 gr head at 25.3 gr.  

Sam

My Bad.  I said 55s, but I was using 50gr V-MAX bullets, which according to my Speer book was at max with 27.5 gr of H-335.  

Thats what I like about this board.  Some very knowlegable (and observant) people.  

maybe you missed resizing it.

My guess it that you crimp the bullet too much and flaired the neck of the case to cause the bind.

That or you haven't trimmed the cases and it wedging past the last chamber cut.


Evey now and agian, I get a case mixed in the batch that is a tad longer than the rest.  When using a single stage press i can feel the add tension, but on a progressive press, you never will feel it.  Either way, a loaded round gauge may be in order to do a random check of the reloaded rounds.