It was my turn to get bitten by residual titanium dust syndrome. I was at the range dialing two new scopes and doing a few ladder tests and I had a major failure to function on my first test round. I'd shot about 20 rounds prior dialing in the scopes. The FTF round fired just fine but the case stayed put in the chamber. I've never had that happen in any of my rifles ever. It was a 169 grain projectile which registered at 2490fps out of a 16" barrel so not anywhere close to being hot.
Getting the rifle home, I used an alignment rod and pushed the case out. Came out very, very easily, literally no effort. 1/3 of the rim was gone, ripped off and the primer was sucked in (cratered in but not like we normally think of cratering of the primer) which I've never seen either.
The BCG was pretty dirty as it'd been a bit since I cleaned it. The last time I pulled it, I'd noticed a bit more wear on the surface coating so I lubed it up a bit more. Pulling it this time, I noticed that the gunk felt like emery paste, like a really fine grit. After cleaning off the carrier, the accelerated wear was obvious. I had at least 4K rounds on the BCG with limited wear marks prior to switching over to, you guessed it, a new titanium 3-D printed can.
I cleaned off the carrier and bolt and my carrier definitely showed a significant amount of wear from about 500 rounds with the new suppressor. I don't think it's toast but I'll probably purchase another here soon. The bolt is new and didn't show any wear.
I cleaned the sh*t out of the BCG and upper receiver, barrel extension as well as the barrel. The barrel looks ok to me but I had been having issues dialing in hand loads lately but thought it came down to LC brass from different years.
I took the suppressor, plugged the end, and filled it with CLR. I let that sit for a bit and dumped it out. I then dropped the suppressor into an ultrasonic cleaner filled with nothing but water and ran it for an hour. A LOT of crap came out including residual titanium material. It feels different from carbon so it's obvious. I have another suppressor, same manufacturer, made with inconel and out of an abundance of caution, I cleaned it in the ultrasonic with M-Pro 7. The BCG in that rifle looked fine although I noticed a bit of wear on the underside where it interfaces with the trigger hammer. On the other rifle, that area was polished to an almost mirror-like finish.
I'd suggest anyone purchasing a similar suppressor in titanium, no matter who makes it, flush it out, clean it in an ultrasonic cleaner and otherwise be quite aggressive in trying to remove any residual material. Clean it, shoot a few rounds, and clean it again.
I'm hoping I dodged a bullet. The upper receiver looked ok as did the barrel but I realize I may need to purchase a new barrel along with a carrier sooner than later. I'm going to reach out to the manufacturer but I'm sure they'll tell me to pound dirt. And no, it wasn't CGS.
On the caved in primer, I know the case headspace was set correctly. Like no question. I measured each at least three times before loading them up. None of the previous 20+ rounds had issues. I do know initially the chamber was on the tight side as it'd be a bit hard to extract a loaded round. Fired rounds were always ejected until the aforementioned round with the broken rim.
A few pics of the carrier and case.
One thing I did notice, is the dimple in the primer looks slight off center. Those are factory-loaded Winchester rounds. The swipe marks on the center case are "normal" for my rifle. The one on the left shows none as it's completely random when it happens but it happens more frequently than not.
Getting the rifle home, I used an alignment rod and pushed the case out. Came out very, very easily, literally no effort. 1/3 of the rim was gone, ripped off and the primer was sucked in (cratered in but not like we normally think of cratering of the primer) which I've never seen either.
The BCG was pretty dirty as it'd been a bit since I cleaned it. The last time I pulled it, I'd noticed a bit more wear on the surface coating so I lubed it up a bit more. Pulling it this time, I noticed that the gunk felt like emery paste, like a really fine grit. After cleaning off the carrier, the accelerated wear was obvious. I had at least 4K rounds on the BCG with limited wear marks prior to switching over to, you guessed it, a new titanium 3-D printed can.
I cleaned off the carrier and bolt and my carrier definitely showed a significant amount of wear from about 500 rounds with the new suppressor. I don't think it's toast but I'll probably purchase another here soon. The bolt is new and didn't show any wear.
I cleaned the sh*t out of the BCG and upper receiver, barrel extension as well as the barrel. The barrel looks ok to me but I had been having issues dialing in hand loads lately but thought it came down to LC brass from different years.
I took the suppressor, plugged the end, and filled it with CLR. I let that sit for a bit and dumped it out. I then dropped the suppressor into an ultrasonic cleaner filled with nothing but water and ran it for an hour. A LOT of crap came out including residual titanium material. It feels different from carbon so it's obvious. I have another suppressor, same manufacturer, made with inconel and out of an abundance of caution, I cleaned it in the ultrasonic with M-Pro 7. The BCG in that rifle looked fine although I noticed a bit of wear on the underside where it interfaces with the trigger hammer. On the other rifle, that area was polished to an almost mirror-like finish.
I'd suggest anyone purchasing a similar suppressor in titanium, no matter who makes it, flush it out, clean it in an ultrasonic cleaner and otherwise be quite aggressive in trying to remove any residual material. Clean it, shoot a few rounds, and clean it again.
I'm hoping I dodged a bullet. The upper receiver looked ok as did the barrel but I realize I may need to purchase a new barrel along with a carrier sooner than later. I'm going to reach out to the manufacturer but I'm sure they'll tell me to pound dirt. And no, it wasn't CGS.
On the caved in primer, I know the case headspace was set correctly. Like no question. I measured each at least three times before loading them up. None of the previous 20+ rounds had issues. I do know initially the chamber was on the tight side as it'd be a bit hard to extract a loaded round. Fired rounds were always ejected until the aforementioned round with the broken rim.
A few pics of the carrier and case.
One thing I did notice, is the dimple in the primer looks slight off center. Those are factory-loaded Winchester rounds. The swipe marks on the center case are "normal" for my rifle. The one on the left shows none as it's completely random when it happens but it happens more frequently than not.
