Thread: Close call!

This thread has stayed in the back of my mind since I first saw the picture. Have been in touch with Kudu and lau lau to try and find out more, they were very helpful.

I showed the picture in passing to a mate and he in turn showed it to his gunsmith. The smith said 'no way' to the suggested cause, the .270 into a .25-06. Last week he showed us how unbelievably hard you'd have to force the bolt to get a .270 neck to swage into the .25 chamber. Like piece of pipe on the bolt handle hard. I've seen enough to believe that it wasn't a .270 Winchester that went into the .25-06.

What will fit into a .25-06 is a .308, according to the SAAMI Unsafe Arms and Ammunition tech document: https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads...d-5-7-2018.pdf

We checked that out and the bolt was tight before closing and we were very very reluctant to push it in case we got the cartridge jammed in the chamber, but the demo suggested that yup, it would fit.

The .308 of course has "Winchester" stamped on it, and Kudu mentioned that only the "Winchester" part was still visible. So maybe there's been a leap of logic and assumption, to the .270 when it was something else.

A barrel blockage will cause the barrel to explode. We can discount that. A .308 would cause the action to explode, quite violently, as the bullet would block the escape of gas down the bore and the pressure would blow back into the action due to absence of a seal at the shoulder.

Whatever it was, you'd assume that if the bullet was oversize, it would still be in the chamber, stuck on the lands.

The only other explanation we can think of is a poorly formed .25-06 case from .270 brass, one that wasn't trimmed to the correct length for the rifle. That would cause blow back you'd think, but the bullet would exit the bore.

It's not something you'd want to see happen to anyone. Would love to know exactly what happened but accept that probably isn't going to be possible.