Gun goes bang, but bullet never leaves the case?

[Rebel Jack]

This may be a little premature as I haven't seen the rifle yet, but a co-worker of mine recently came into a Winchester model 190 and is making the claim to me that the rifle will fire, but the case ejects with the bullet still seated inside?

At this time I'm chalking it up to operator stupidity. Or maybe it's doing something different all together and he just isn't describing it properly.

What I DO know at this point: The gun had been sitting in his girlfriend's, father's safe for a number of years and had a bit of rust over it that he paid Me to clean up. After cleaning it I fired 3 rounds of Remington golden bullets through it. 1 for function, and then 2 in rapid succession to test feeding. No issues. After returning the gun to him he claims to have fired 2 magazines (tube magazine) for a total of 32 rounds into an old speaker that "was pretty close to me." Of those 32 he claims only 15 actually fired and the rest "fired" but ejected the casing with the bullet still seated. Hes also reporting jams and double feeds (typical of this rifle, from what I've read). Ammunition used was Federal Champion he bought at Dunham's, on sale for $20/350rd.

He'll be bringing it back to me along with the "fired" ammo tomorrow for a look-see. I'm not a qualified gunsmith by any stretch of the imagination, so I won't be doing any tinkering with it, but has anyone seen this issue before? Or even heard of it? I would think even if the brass was empty, you'd still get enough force from the primer to push the bullet out...

 

[K_W]

Theory... Barrel is plugged or fowled up right past where the bullet sits in the chamber and it's blowing the cartridge casing out minus the bullet rather than blowing up the barrel.

Theory 2... (most likely). The gun is throwing a live round out with every fired casing which indicates a magazine problem.

Theory 3... When he says fire he means the hammer drops but never goes off and the intact round is ejected When he works the action

 

[Rebel Jack]

Fire both rounds successfully from my 597. No problems.

Of course, that doesn't mean he's actually shooting federal champion. Or maybe federal champion makes a .22 short as well, and that's what he has? I won't know either way till he brings them to me tomorrow. The gun is actually firing, he claims, but the bullet never leaves it's case. The whole thing just ejects in one piece...

Sounds like a unicorn to me.

 

[K_W]

Sounds to me like it's firing a round and ejecting a second round as the casing comes out. That would be a magazine or feeding problem.

 

[Rebel Jack]

I'm wondering if he's double feeding in some bizarre way, and it's ejecting booth the fresh round, and the spent case. He just doesn't notice it.

 

[Rebel Jack]

Right, that's all I can think of at this point.