What happens when you fire a .45 with a bullet stuck in the barrel?

Surprisingly, not very much! HS Arms tested their .45 HS-45 pistol by firing a under-loaded round that did not exit the barrel then firing a factory round.
Picture 4-8

“precisely measuring of the pistol parts showed only a small up bulging of the barrel, resulting from the extremely high pressure loads.”.

Bullets getting stuck in barrels is not uncommon when shooting .22 Long and .22 Short rounds in a rifle due to their very low velocity and energy. I did think that in a pistol the pressure would cause more than marginal bulging.

Read the article here.

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Steve Jan 30th 2008 handguns Tags: , , , 4 Comments

4 Responses to “What happens when you fire a .45 with a bullet stuck in the barrel?”

  1. TDon 30 Jan 2008 at 2:21 pm link comment

    Counterintuitive as it seems, the .45 ACP is actually a lower-pressure round than the .22 LR!

    SAAMI specs allow a max average pressure of 24,000 PSI in the .22 LR vs. 21,000 PSI in the .45 ACP.

  2. Steveon 30 Jan 2008 at 2:47 pm link comment

    Hi TD. I did not know that! Thats very interesting. And it makes sense in retrospect, considering the slight damage the 2nd round did!

  3. DoubleTapperon 31 Jan 2008 at 9:00 am link comment

    Don’t try this one at home folks!

  4. Kevinon 04 Feb 2008 at 3:11 pm link comment

    Some days things don’t work out so well. I had this guy in my 449 class… It was a $1500 Les Baer IIRC.

    http://www.thegunzone.com/colt45-40.html

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