Thread: Rifle stuffed???

Interesting thread.

The customer brought the rifle, a Martini Action 303 into our shop.

He must have realised that the round was hard to chamber and my quess is that it got stuck part way in, and then could extract so applied some large amount of force to finally close the action. In that process the extractor was broken. He tried to fire the case but something was also wrong by this stage with firing pin.

It was obvious that he had tried to push the round out, with some force , including jamming a Lee Loader Decapping rod down the barrel and fully compressing the bullet down onto the powder.

needless to say it is a potentially dangerous action to push a live round out of the barrel. The gunsmith here tried with varying amounts of force, all done quite carefully.

In the end we filled the barrel with oil, to try and make the powder inert and hopefully maybe breakdown what ever was seizing it, and left it for a couple of days.

It was still impossible to shift it by pushing it. As it is a martini action 303 you cannot unscrew the barrel (extractors siting under rim) without completely destroying the extractors, and neither can you get a direct approach to the case, you have to angle down into the chamber .

The final approach was to carefully drill a hole in the case to one side of the primer (remember theres still a chance this was live) , thread the hole and screw in bolt that enables you to get some purchase on the case. With him using leverage to pull, and me tapping a rod from the other end we managed to extract the case.

There were score marks for most of the body of the case, showing that the body had stiuck solid for almost the entire length, owner admitted that the rounds had been fired in another 303 and then neck sized only.

In drilling the hole in the case, the drill bit had touched the inside of the chamber, thus the chamber is wrecked.

However he brought to us a rifle in a very dangerous condition, it was a classic example of "äll care but no responsibility" as we were trying to fix somebody elses stuff up (language here toned down!).

I can only suggest tho all that have posted various comments that before you jump to conclusions that you know the facts.

Interesting how hearing both sides of a story can change your perspective on things.
I've had dealings with both Magnum Imports, and the Upper Hutt Gunshop gun smith, would deal with them both again and FWIW have no
problems in recommending them to others.

I'd say, chalk it up to experience, learn to reload your ammunition properly and be thankful that no one got hurt. Things could always be worse.