Out at Altus Saturday, a buddy of mine with a nice BCM had it blow up (literally) Cracked the barrel at the chamber, cracked the upper receiver, blew apart the bolt catch mechanism, turned the extractor into a weird U shape, Enlarged the Magwell and turned a Pmag into shrapnel. He tore it down, found nothing in the bore but then realized the ammo he was running was a batch where the batteries got low on the sensors on his loading equipment (or something to that affect) and he may have had a squib that got past him in that batch. What we suspect happened was a squib left a bullet in the bore, the next cycle just clicked, he slap and racked it thinking bad primer, clicked again, slap and racked again, hit the bolt assist and BOOM! Good thing he had eyes on, he took a bit of shrapnel to the face...
We can't connect all the dots with any other scenario except a squib left an obstruction in the barrel and resulted in catastrophic failure. The explosion blew the back of the bullet out and I guess the Magwell was the closest way out for the pressure. We found nothing in the bore, we think the last rd cleared out the bore, but we are guessing as to what happened. The squib did not sound any different as far as he can remember, he is a very well versed shooter and would have likely noticed it.
We have had squibs in pistols and the sound is very different as you would expect, you clear it and get on with it. In AR's you can certainly have a failure to fire, you slap, rack and try to get the gun back in the fight, but this time that ended very badly. Nothing against BCM, its a very well made weapon that runs like a cheetah, we are convinced the failure was due to an ammo issue, but he never loads hot in AR rds, so it really only leaves a squib (?)
Anyone run into this??
Just trying to nail this down...
Thanks
We can't connect all the dots with any other scenario except a squib left an obstruction in the barrel and resulted in catastrophic failure. The explosion blew the back of the bullet out and I guess the Magwell was the closest way out for the pressure. We found nothing in the bore, we think the last rd cleared out the bore, but we are guessing as to what happened. The squib did not sound any different as far as he can remember, he is a very well versed shooter and would have likely noticed it.
We have had squibs in pistols and the sound is very different as you would expect, you clear it and get on with it. In AR's you can certainly have a failure to fire, you slap, rack and try to get the gun back in the fight, but this time that ended very badly. Nothing against BCM, its a very well made weapon that runs like a cheetah, we are convinced the failure was due to an ammo issue, but he never loads hot in AR rds, so it really only leaves a squib (?)
Anyone run into this??
Just trying to nail this down...
Thanks