Stupid gun tricks.
Or “mistakes”, as it were.
I mentioned yesterday that Tam helped me out via email with an issue I had with my S&W 60-7 snubby .38. TD guessed that the ejection rod had come unscrewed. Close, but not quite.
It DID have to do with the ejection system, and the chamber, but the ejection rod sticking was only the means by which I discovered something was wrong.
Friday night, I’d just brought home my new Neos, and was preparing to take photos (albeit with my Elph, not my Rebel), and figured hey, why not take pictures with all four of my guns, since I had them all together in preparation for going to the meetup? So I unloaded the XD (backup gun) and prepared to unload the S&W, which I’ve been carrying with me in my handbag.
I pushed out the chamber and pressed the ejection rod. It firmly resisted. Uh, okay. I tried again. I twisted it, my first thought being that if the rod itself was frozen somehow, it wouldn’t even turn. It did. The chamber advanced. Everything was moving fine, except the rod itself wouldn’t push in.
Cue frustration.
It was kind of late, so I decided to just send an email to Tam to see what she had to say, and then go to bed. The gun being loaded, any more inexperienced futzing around might have led to bad things. Then again, I’m slightly paranoid, so perhaps I was just being silly. Better to be careful, though.
I got up yesterday and checked my email, and Tam advised me to turn the rod to make sure it wasn’t loose. I let her know that it wasn’t, and that it seemed as though the cartridges were causing the stick - like they were stuck in the chambers. She advised tapping the rod with the edge of a sneaker to dislodge them. Okie dokey, then - if Tam advises it, it must be fine, right? I mean, I wasn’t going to hurt anything with a sneaker.
So I tried it. And after nearly a full minute of tapping, I’d only gotten about a micrometer of movement out of the rod. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t going to be easy to fix, at least not without me directly manipulating the rounds. Shit.
I dug my thumbnail under the edge of one of the cartridges in the back of the chamber, and gently tried to pry it out. It budged. Heartened, I pulled harder. The round slowly slid out.
Y’all, it was GREEN.
Holy shit.
About 5 minutes later, and employing the help of a small tool, I got the rest of the rounds out. During this mess, I’d put some oil to work its way into the chambers to help the rounds come out, so not only were they all green, but they were slimy.
And after I’d realized what in the hell had happened, I was seriously embarrassed.
I guess I mentioned on here that Jesse and I had sat out on my back porch cleaning our guns a few weeks ago. My oldest sister was out there with us - this was the day my grandfather died (so I guess it was more than a month ago), and because it’d been a bit since either of my pistols had received a thorough cleaning, I spent longer than usual scrubbing at them with a Q-tip and making sure the crevices came up as clear as possible.
I finished up just about the time the sun was setting and mosquitoes were beginning to come out in force. I’d cleaned my XD second, and the S&W had been sitting out on a towel for about 30 minutes, the rounds sitting next to it. In order to decrease the number of items I had to carry into the house with me (and to prevent myself from dropping anything), I went ahead and re-loaded the S&W and stuck it back in the holster for transport.
Then, as I do, I got distracted, and just never checked to make sure everything was as it should be, or that there wasn’t excess oil or anything on the gun.
Of course, after a month of marinating, the rounds started to corrode and stick, giving me the problem I dealt with yesterday.
Luckily, the gun sustained no damage. The rounds, however, had to be disposed of.
Lesson learned. I’m going to have to make sure I don’t have guests over, or am not in the middle of a personal crisis, when I clean my guns in the future. That could have turned out VERY badly if I’d had to actually use my gun for self-defense, and would have required more than 5 shots. Re-loading just wouldn’t have happened.
So there’s your Stupid Squeaky Trick of the day.
Oh yeah, I’ve had green rounds in my S&W 638. Thankfully it hadn’t gotten to the point yours did. Now, I make sure I wipe it down, ammo and all, at the end of the day, just to keep things working well. Especially in the summer when the St. Louis wet blanket make sure everything is soggy.
Glad you didn’t find out the hard way…..
Could be worse. When I was first carrying I carried my Glock 23 without a round in the chamber for a week because I’d forgotten to do the top-it-off ritual. At the time I didn’t believe in the “press check” because I’d taken to heart advice to do the bare minimum of administrative gun handling. Now, I check the gun every time it changes holsters to make sure I can see brass.
Oh, and a friend once confided in me that he’d been interrupted during the top-it-off procedure, and had carried his H&K P2000 (because you suck, and we hate you) for a day with a round in the chamber but no magazine. *facepalm*
Something else to consider. Keep oil, etc away from the primer, as it will creep past the seal and kill the primer.
Which brings up the Massad Ayoob’s story of the NYC detective whose idea of “maintenance” was to wipe down his carry revolver every six months or so with WD-40 or whatever came to hand.
All okay until the day he had some goblin with evil intent coming at him. He pulled the (t)rusty revolver and pulled the trigger. And was rewarded with a resounding *click*. The only thing that saved him was the perp, convinced he was DRT, fainted dead away as the hammer fell.
The detective said that the *click* was the loudest sound he’d ever heard.
Aside from checking/cleaning your carry gun more regularly, you might also want to get carry ammo that comes in nickel-plated cases, like Speer’s Short Barrel Gold Dots.
Hmm, wordpress ate the link. Here it is:
http://www.speer-ammo.com/ballistics/detail.aspx?loadNo=23921
*cringes*
Repeat after me: “Please go away and don’t bother me until I tell you that you can come back. I am about to do maintenance on my personal weapons, which is, of course, serious business.”
The Ayoob story reminds me of an Eric Engstrom quote on my blog:
Reliability in a handgun is extremely important. If you point it at someone and all it does is go CLICK when you pull the trigger you don’t have much leeway in talking your way out of the situation. I mean, what are you going to say? “I wasn’t serious when I pulled the trigger?”
WD-40 is “penetrating” oil and can be useful in these situations. “Liquid Wrench” is super penetrating oil and probably would have freed up those cartridges.
But you must remove every last trace of it or it will find your primer caps and eat the primer.
Also, I never unload all of the guns at the same time. One is always “on duty”.