Shotgun Eject Mystery

We have been seeing a rash of shotguns at KELTEC Systems over the last year or two wherein the spent shell sticks in the chamber. We suspect you have seen similar symptoms, based on the quantity we’ve seen. We wanted to provide an update on that symptom and what we’ve done so far. And as you’ll see, it’s still a bit of a mystery.

The basic symptoms are, after firing the gun, either the slide will not open (in the case of a pump), the gun will not cycle (in the case of an auto) or the shell won’t extractor eject (in the case of break type guns.) In all cases, the spent shell is still stuck in the chamber. It is my expectation that the gun "naturally" eject the shell—that is, to do it without the aid of a ramrod, pry bar or a swift rap on the chamber.

We have always seen the occasional gun with these symptoms and found most were fixed with a good cleaning. In some cases it took a lot of work with some solvent (the venerable Hoppe’s #9) and a bore brush on a drill. You wouldn’t believe the crud that gets caked in some chambers over the years. Even after this we’d have a few that were clean but the spent shell still stuck and wouldn’t "naturally" eject.

One way to assist in diagnosing this problem is to coat a shotshell with Dykem layout fluid and, when dry, fire it in the chamber. After forcibly popping it out, you can occasionally see scratch marks where the shell is being scratched by something in the chamber. Multiple tests of this type may indicate the location of the chamber that is causing I needed to replace the right extractor to re-cut it with the chamber reamer to ensure it was fit properly. the trouble, such as a burr in the extractor area.

After burr removal (if necessary), if the shell was still sticking, we’d hone the chamber, either with a brake cylinder or bottle brush type. This polishing would usually take care of the problem. Over the last couple years though, we’ve seen many that, even after a thorough cleaning, deburring, a good polishing and a dab of oil or grease to lube the chamber, the spent shell would still stick. Based on the data from our shop, there seems to be two basic causes of this type of failure.

The first is one that is more based on the manufacturing of the gun than the hygiene. We saw this problem with a many Remington 870s and a few 1100s re-

The right chamber appears much smoother than the left yet it still causes shells to stick. cently. We correlated the serial number range and in a quiet conversation with Remington service found out that there was apparently a batch that had this problem. We had tried our usual process on the gun and it still didn’t work. We would then send the gun to Remington and usually get it back with anew barrel. Occasionally it was the same barrel so we figured they had some process we didn’t. More on this later.

Remington was always very good about not charging for the repair and had good turnaround time, most likely because they realized there was some problem they had at some point and it truly was a manufacturing defect. On at least one occasion we had polished the chamber with a brake cylinder hone that has hard stones. It was very clear that there was a bulge in the chamber because the hone marks were in front of and behind the bulge but not inside it.

There was no corresponding bulge on the outside indicating an overpressure problem. We suspect that during the chamber reaming process there was some problem that allowed for a buildup of chips in the reamer, thus causing the bulge. Regardless, Remington treated us well on all occasions. We now see less of these, so it appears that problem is less prevalent than it was.

I don’t know how big the installed base of guns that might exhibit this failure is but with the production volumes of Big Green, there could still be a few out there. If you get a Remington gun in for this symptom, have already done the cleaning, and if you have a brake cylinder type hone, you might look for the bulge.

Please note that when honing a forcing cone, a chamber or a choke (or the cylinder on an internal combustion engine for that matter) you want to cycle the hone into and out of the cylinder fairly rapidly, relative to the RPM of the hone, and create a crosshatch pattern. Do not let the hone simply spin in one location. It messes up the stones and gives you a poorly shaped profile or bulge.

The optimum crosshatch pattern is something like 20-45 degree angle, depending on the material, the coarseness of the stone and purpose of the cylinder. I used to be an engineer at a (yellow) chain saw factory decades ago and we had big Sunnen hones that would cycle exactly the right angle on the cylinder and the pattern was evident.

The other thing to note with hones is that you don’t let the stones exit the cylinder more than about 10-20% of the length of the stone, and only then if you are trying to change the shape of the cylinder, such as creating a "lead-in" or micro-chamfer. For instance, if your stone is about 1/2" long, you should not let more than 0.050" to 0.100" of the stone out on the end of the cylinder, Generally, always try to keep the stone in the cylinder. Make sure you use some good honing oil. Lots of it.

You don’t want the stones to clog or gouge. This chamber work, observations, discussion with Remington tech folks, and trial and error helped in trying to identify the problem with the other guns that came in. The other symptom we saw were similar but were not manufacturer specific. Again, most problems were fixed with cleaning or some polishing but we had some stubborn ones that we could just not make work. On some, we used a chamber reamer to check the chamber and found the chamber was under size.

European chambers and bores are occasionally tighter than ours and we suspect some are at the minimum or below Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (saami.org) specifications. Some older guns built prior to SAAMI may be under size as well. On these, we could re-cut the chamber and bring it to a known good profile. Occasionally, using the reamer would show a bulge, scratch or other irregularity and just rereaming the chamber and a little polishing with the hone fixed the problem.

However, we have had two stinkers that just would not work, no matter what we did. We even replaced the ejector springs with heavier springs to compensate. I am not a believer in

"if it doesn’t work, just use a bigger spring." That is not a sound repair philosophy as opposed to truly diagnosing the problem, which may really be based on bent parts, finish of the parts or other causes. In this case, unfortunately, we were getting desperate. On these two, we tried all of the above and on one even made a custom chamber polishing tool to help fit the area of the base of the shell. The chamber was polished to almost mirror smoothness. The shell still stuck.

Coincidentally, both of these are double barrels. One was a Sarasqueta over and under from Eiber (in the Basque Country of Spain) and the other was a Savage Fox side by side in which one barrel worked and one barrel wouldn’t. Our last attempt to solve this dilemma was to order a "max-spec" reamer. I suspect Remington may have had something similar to this, as I alluded to above, but I can’t say for sure.

Pacific Tool made usa custom reamer that was at the maximum Keltec Systems Gunny’s Red Oil The story of Gunny’s Red Oil is an entertaining blend of fact, fiction, history, myth, and a probably a bit of what is swept off the stable floor. At seventeen years I went away to gun school 700 miles from home. I first heard about "Red Oil" in gun school in the early 70s. Some of the stories there include the idea that back in WWII, the military had to test 1911s for evaluating new components and ammunition.

A team was expected to shoot 10,000 rounds from a single gun as soon as possible. Of course the gun would get filthy and jam up after some time and disassembling the gun and thoroughly cleaning it took too long. After trial and error they came up with an oil that would clean and lubricate under these conditions: Red Oil. As test guns jammed, they would liberally apply (slop on) some Red Oil, hand cycle it a few times and commence firing again. This process dimensions of the SAAMI spec.

Our hope was that, as this reamer should be bigger than the current chamber, we could re-cut the chamber, polish it and we’d be starting with anew chamber that should work. The new chamber helped some but didn’t fully solve the problem. The "good" barrel would work no matter what ammo used, either cheap stuff or high end. The "bad" barrel wouldn’t work except with high base brass or, as we recently found out, Winchester AA, which we just happened to have a box of and thought to try on a whim.

The only thing we’ve been able to determine is the steel based ammunition will be more likely to stick that the brass based ammo. Note that just because it looks like brass, it is most likely brass plated steel. Check it with a magnet. You’ll find that most ammo is steel based nowadays. The Double As are still real brass. There may be other real brass shells out there, but these Winchester shotshells are the only one we’ve found would repeat for the entire test.

The real facts of this story are lost to history, though some of the old farts in the gun school claim to have had firsthand knowledge. Based on some of the other stories they told me, I’m not so sure. They also taught me some words and phrases I hadn’t heard before. Few of them repeatable in front of my mother, I later found out. Experimenting with various blends and formulae, I set up some tests.

On any semi-auto that came in for "failure to cycle", I would first slop on some of my experimental oil and commence firing. If that fixed the problem, I knew it was a "clean and oil" repair. This has led to a much more cost-effective diagnosis process for my customers. I found some additives helped, others did not, and some depended on the design of the gun or failure mode as to its effectiveness. The name "Gunny’s" is inspired by a blend of characters I’ve met over the years. Gunny didn’t have "sayso far.

They work every time in both guns, in both barrels, as do some random brass high based shells we tried. Seems most high base is still brass, but not all! Most folks around here want to use their shotguns for dove season and to use high base is not very practical as BB size shot is just a wee tad overkill for most doves. We don’t like to have to tell the customer his only option is to buy a better quality shell, but at this point that seems to be the only answer we can come up with.

Seems that something about these guns just won’t tolerate anything but brass based ammo. The reason why one barrel exhibits the problem and the other does not is still unsolved. I suspect that some of you have run into this problem. If you have been able to solve it by some other method that we have not tried, please let me know ([email protected], For the rest of you readers, I hope this may help you in the future. AG ings", he had YELLINGS. Ya never had to ask "what?" to Gunny!

We actually use Gunny’s in our shop for lots of tasks. It is a good, general purpose oil. It cleans, lubricates and protects. It can also be a bit messy in Gunny’s quantities, but Gunny never worried about that as "grease is cheaper than parts." We prefer selling this wholesale to gun shops and let them sell it to the customers. AG