Dirty gun = Pressure issues?

[ddowning]

Ejector marks and flat primers.. and you’re unsure what the cause was?


The problem isn’t “barrel cleaning” as it never is. It’s loading hot as hell and having your bullets near, or touching the lands.

You play on the ragged edge and you will have all kinds of problems. You load smart, and they go away.

You are exactly right. There is a reason guys stopped loading to top pressures in prs. Guys used to blow primers every time it rained. Now most shoot really mild loads to avoid issues. Adding 2 clicks to the scope is a lot easier than dealing with problems with pressure.

 

[eric1115]

So by that line of thinking I would have to load my 6 Creed way down and not see its full potential just in case there’s a slight buildup of carbon, tiny piece of dirt in the bore, etc… no thanks. I’ll spend 10 minutes cleaning every 300 rounds on this particular rifle and keep enjoying my 109s at 2880. It’d take me way longer than that to see how much I have to back off on my powder charge to where I never ever see pressure no matter how many rounds I shoot, and it’s a pretty low powder charge anyways, as much as 2gr lower than book loads I’ve seen for the same combo.

To further expand on this for the newer reloaders,

The problem is that when you load up to pressure under normal conditions and then back off a tiny bit such that not cleaning will show problems, you are setting yourself up with a razor thin margin between "fine" and "problems". Anything that increases pressure like water in the chamber/on your ammo, heat (hot day or a round sitting for a minute in a warm chamber), a round that falls on the ground and then gets chambered with a piece of debris/dirt use up that tiny margin and if you get multiples you get big issues.

It's what I was trying to express with the automotive analogy above. There's a reason GM tuned a 6.0 to make 360 hp in the 3/4T trucks, rather than running it at the 500+ that it regularly (and pretty easily) can make when modified. Stock tune leaves LOTS of margin for bad gas, hot day, heavy load. It leaves some power on the table in order to do that, but unless you're really good at knowing what to watch for you're running some risks and losing reliability.

Edit: And @ddowning expressed what I'm trying to say, with more clarity and 75% fewer words as I was writing this. Well done!

 

[Tanner]

G

To further expand on this for the newer reloaders,

The problem is that when you load up to pressure under normal conditions and then back off a tiny bit such that not cleaning will show problems, you are setting yourself up with a razor thin margin between "fine" and "problems". Anything that increases pressure like water in the chamber/on your ammo, heat (hot day or a round sitting for a minute in a warm chamber), a round that falls on the ground and then gets chambered with a piece of debris/dirt use up that tiny margin and if you get multiples you get big issues.

It's what I was trying to express with the automotive analogy above. There's a reason GM tuned a 6.0 to make 360 hp in the 3/4T trucks, rather than running it at the 500+ that it regularly (and pretty easily) can make when modified. Stock tune leaves LOTS of margin for bad gas, hot day, heavy load. It leaves some power on the table in order to do that, but unless you're really good at knowing what to watch for you're running some risks and losing reliability.

Edit: And @ddowning expressed what I'm trying to say, with more clarity and 75% fewer words as I was writing this. Well done!

Good parallel and point well taken.

 

[Formidilosus]

Yea I’ve seen this too. Despite what people say about cleaning. I think cleaning is important at times and needed. Guns get dirty and can cause issues Especially when using a suppressor. Suppressors hold in a lot of carbon I think.

I mean this as a genuine question:

How are “we” able to shoot and see shot several hundred thousand rounds a year, from a few dozen different shooters, all suppressed- and never have issues?
People want to say BS to me. Ok, there are now over a hundred students that have been through S2H and have seen it. All the school rifles are shot every class for 1,200+ rounds. All suppressed, almost all are over 8,000 rounds now and none have ever been cleaned. Rifles are 223, 6cm, 6.5cm, 308win, 7PRC, 300win mag.

 

[Marbles]

I mean this as a genuine question:

How are “we” able to shoot and see shot several hundred thousand rounds a year, from a few dozen different shooters, all suppressed- and never have issues?
People want to say BS to me. Ok, there are now over a hundred students that have been through S2H and have seen it. All the school rifles are shot every class for 1,200+ rounds. All suppressed, almost all are over 8,000 rounds now and none have ever been cleaned. Rifles are 223, 6cm, 6.5cm, 308win, 7PRC, 300win mag.

Sample size comes into play. I don't have to call BS on either you or on people whosay they need to clean. I'm in the no clean and no hot rodding camp after ruminating on my prior arguments.

If conditions (weather, bullet selection, powder selection, barrel and chamber) conspire to make 1 in every thousand rifles become unsafe without cleaning, the you will have people who shoot a lot and never see it, and have some who do see it.

 

[TOLeary]

How are “we” able to shoot and see shot several hundred thousand rounds a year, from a few dozen different shooters, all suppressed- and never have issues?

If he doesn’t answer, can you give the short answer? Hah. I think I’ve read it - don’t make tolerances so tight to where any small thing can cause an issue.

But to that point, from what I read above from @Tanner , it doesn’t sound like hes doing anything extreme so what would be the guess as to what was causing what he was seeing if cleaning fixed it for him?

@Marbles curious since you responded as well

 

[Tanner]

If he doesn’t answer, can you give the short answer? Hah. I think I’ve read it - don’t make tolerances so tight to where any small thing can cause an issue.

But to that point, from what I read above from @Tanner , it doesn’t sound like hes doing anything extreme so what would be the guess as to what was causing what he was seeing if cleaning fixed it for him?

@Marbles curious since you responded as well

There’s a good chance that even though my load doesn’t seem to be close to pressure, a very dirty bore revealed that it may have been indeed, but there’s a lot of variables at play that I probably shouldn’t just jump to that conclusion. I’m going to monitor it closely over the next 3-500 rounds and see what shakes out, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to give up 50fps by bumping my load down a touch, but I’m not willing to load down to factory ammo speeds either.