New to reloading. I mistakenly loaded 49gr of IMR 4064 in 25-06 with Nosler 115gr Balistic tip. BAM!! A little smoke came out the end of bolt, I had a hell of a time lifting the bolt handle, and had to tap the round out of the reciever to extract the casing. Also, the primer came out of the casing. Not good huh?
Nosler recommends 36 - 40gr.
Have I done irreputable damage? Is it OK to shoot? I think I'll try a light load and shoot from the hip!
Also, can I use a bullet puller and re-use these bullets?
Break the rifle down, including taking the bolt apart. Inspect it. After you haven't found anything, consider having a 'smith look. I have never seen what happened to a gun overloaded that much. If you had a malfunction a few grains over, I'd be much more confident in saying go ahead and use it. There is potential for damage that you cannot see though. The gun is probably okay, but if it was me, I'd have it checked before I risked my eyeballs. This is a bad lesson to learn, but I'm betting it won't happen again.
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yep, your bolt is now full of carbon and that lil bitty circle that the firing pin punches is in there to and it will give ya trouble down the road. also the primer (all of it) must be removed from your action, and good cleaning and it'll prolly be ok, but be careful, it can be a dangerous game.
RR
Worth mentioning that the rifle is brand new. I had just finished breaking in the barrel (45 rounds of store boughts) and thought I'd try some of my loads. Just one that is.
It is a Savage Axis.
Just be glad that with that much of an overload that you were able to get on here and ask questions! Even if the gun was damaged beyond use, you have all your parts and not a scratch on you, so thank the good Lord and figure out what caused that kind of a major mistake and don't repeat it.
Contact Savage. Tell them what happened and thank them for making a good strong rifle. They may want you to return it to them for inspection. They build the gun, so they would be best at knowing what needs to be checked.
For the record, some older manuals show 46.0 grains as max with a 100 grain bullet, so you probably aren't as far over as you thought.
You are only at about 85,000 psi. to get the primers to blow like that. It takes a lot more than that to hurt the gun. Disassemble the bolt, clean everything out real good and you should be just fine.
The most that likely may have happened is the escaping gasses pitted and/or cut the metal of the bolt face and/or firing pin hole a little.
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Local smith looked at it, basically said if you didn't blow body parts with that one round you're gun is O.K.
I shot it a couple days later (first 2 from the hip!), and ended up with a load producing .5" at 100 yards! Alls well.
What have I done to my 25-06?
