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Powder not completely burning?

jammer300

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
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Location
Idaho
I pulled the stock off my 6.5 Creedmoor today to put a Boyd's stock on it and in doing so I noticed what appears to be a small amount of unburnt powder in the groove where the recoil lug sits. It's in the threads and I'm not sure how it ended up there. The only spherical powder I use is BLC-2 so that's what I'm assuming it is. Has anyone else seen this before? Im running under Max charge but obviously it's not burning all the powder.
 

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I saw that years ago with H-450 in my 270. Didn't know why it was happening but switched to magnum primers thinking it wasn't getting lit well enough. Never did pursue it much after that since the powder was discontinued and I found similar results with IMR7828 in that rifle. Thought too it might have been case lube, lube from my press or some other contamination. It's only recently that I've started playing with ball powder again - MagPro in my 300WM and have not seen it there yet.

No help, I know....
 
Is it the first time you have pulled it apart? It could be blasting media that was in the threads and worked its way out during shooting. Savage is notorious for this, I know of people that find a similar substance when they switch barrels and take the nut off the for the first time. If you are sure it is powder, I don't know how it got there unless you spilled some on it.
 
It is the second or third time I have had it apart and I had not thought of it being blasting media. I hadn't noticed this in the past so it makes sense it could just be working it's way out with recoil.
 
Do you notice unburned powder in the barrel? After you fire the cartridge, does the empty case have unburned powder?? Tap the open mouth of the case on a piece of paper to see if any unburned powder comes out.
I have unburned powder in my .45-70 reloads using 4198 powder, and some in my revolver using slow burning powder, but have never noticed it in a rifle (other than the .45-70).
What about running a couple over a chronograph to see if you have any extreme deviation in velocity?
 
No unburnt powder in the barrel and none in the cases. As far as velocities I've only seen about a 75fps difference on some occasions
 
If you haven't cleaned it yet hold a lighter to it. That will tell you pretty quick if it's powder. I don't think it is. The only way I can see powder getting in there is if a bullet got stuck in the lands and pulled apart dumping the powder in the action. Even then that's a long way for it to migrate from the mag well to the recoil lug.
 
Ball powder needs a mag primer and good neck tension of .002" minimum. Check the neck diameter , before and after seating a bullet.

H450- Reminds me of a 22-250 with CCI mag primer. On firing the powder started burning , then just quit. The bullets didnt move of firing. When pulled, clumps of powder stopped buring in more than a few cartridges. I then stopped using H450 and H380. No longer use ball in rifles, only IMR now.
 
I just pulled a barrel from a brand new Savage and this stuff was in the nut and action. I am pretty sure it's in all the new ones and have read about it also. Nothing to worry about.
 

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Thanks everyone. I did clean out what I could get but I didn't save any to see if it would ignite. I'm pretty sure now that it is just left over blasting media from the factory and nothing to worry about.
 
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