Took the Taurus Mod. 85 .38 +P carry pistol out for a test drive and practice today. Decided to shoot up the 140 gr. JHPs and replace with the 125 gr. HPs. Also had a partial box of Rem. 130 gr. Factorys to shoot and get the brass. 30 rounds and not a problem, as where the previous approx. 200 rounds. After the second round of a cylinder.........It wouldn't index. LOCKED UP... First thought, I had a bullet back out of the brass. Tried to drop the cylender....No Go. Looking I saw a WAD of Brass and Lead between the forcing cone and cylender. I had a shaved bullet. Nothing was budging. Took it up to the shop. Had to remove the Ejection rod to get the cylender out. The shaving wasn't very big but was firmly attached to the side of the forcing cone and slightly produding into the cylender. Gently removed the shaving and inspected the cone and cylender. NO apparent damage. Reassembled and returned to the bench. Loaded ONE round...Took aim....Half hartedly I admit...squeezed the trigger. All seemed OK. Put another 14 thru OK. You can see in the Pic where the round went SIDEWAYS thru the target at 2 o'clock in the 8 ring. Still a "center mass hit" but I was out of commission. Yea autos have more "potential" malfunctions than revolvers. BUT the wheel guns can go south also.
What caused the shavng...... 1. The gun, a. cylinder out of alignment. If it were would get more and didn't. b. Bent crane...this will also cause the cylinder to be out of alignment as it indexes. However more rounds were fired and it didn't happen again. c. Forcing cone is damaged, i.e. sharp edge, or worn edge. Did close inspection and didn't see anything. If it were should of happened again. 2. Ammunition, a. Bullet not seated properly, crooked. I inspect each one as its loaded, They are roll crimped and I check that the crimp is uniform. The bullets are Jacketed Hollow Points. Blunt tips and only have to miss the cone by a tiny fraction to shave. All lead bullets mostly go out the sides with igniting powder, flames, ect. (why you don't get any body parts in froT of a revolver cylinder). Probley all revolvers shave a little once in a while. I've had .22s, .357s do it. Colts, Smiths and others. But none have ever locked up before. For the bullet to have made that sideways entry into the target it must have had a pretty good slab shaved off and not stabilized by the lands and groves. there was very little on the side of the cone so most went out the side. ANOTHER REASON TO HAVE A BALLISTIC BARRIER BETWEEN YOU AND ANOTHER SHOOTER ON THE LINE !!!
Hummph...Very Interesting. Makes a good point for the blast shields And if a smart a$$ gets to blowing a lot of wind...hand him a small snubby with hot loads and see how long it takes to end up with trip to the ER for using the other hand to support the small wheel gun and have 18,000psi gases cut into to he weak hand's fingers or thumb! All the 6 (1,8-10) shooters spew molten mayhem out from that little space between cylinder and cone. Nasty, painful jet-cut lacerations with chance of tiny shrapnel scattered throughout the injured area. Seen it happen twice and both guys managed to not drop the weapon. And all I could do was muffle a chuckle about a Darwin candidate. Lord forgive me!
