I bought a brass rod assortment from Amazon. It was pretty cheap.
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I was dicking around with making a .223 subsonic for an AR and stuck a bullet in my barrel. Ruined a brass cleaning Rod but I got it out.
Stick to .22lr for subsonic.
.223 subsonic is just dumb
Just a long shot here... If you ever have to change the guts on an frost free spigot, the brass stem is just short of a foot long and is perfect for lodged bullet removal in pistol calibers.
I did it long ago and have carried it along with a small hammer ever since. I had to polish off some hard water "corrosion" but that was all I had to do.
Fits well from .38 and larger. Obviously not useful on rifles.
Never had a squib but helped folks on the next bench a couple times over the years. That makes someone's day.
Edit: 9mm and larger.
I have a very hard plastic rod I keep in my range bag for pistol squibs. I had that 9mm squib out in about a minute and back to shooting. I removed the barrel, put the rod in the muzzle end, and banged the rod on a hard surface until the bullet popped out. Strong hard smacks always do it.
When it happened I knew it immediately. The gun made a dull pop instead of a bang and no recoil. No case ejected. So it was pretty obvious. Its the robots who go into a *tap rack bang* procedure that get in trouble. Anytime my gun doesnt function properly and I*m not in a life or death scenario I*m going to proceed with caution and curiosity.
I too made some .224 squibs when experimenting with subsonic 5.56. That was more difficult to remove. I ended up using 55gr bullets with some trailboss to make something fun and quiet that goes down range (no AR action cycling of course). Pretty much never touched that again after playing with it a few times as .22 LR is about the same thing.
HAH! Someone had to do it. I called a local ffl/smith, he wouldn't go near it because the bullet was a incendiary.
It was the beginning of the weekend also, didn't want to be done with shooting it so we improvised.:D
The bullet came out sideways and took half a 10" diameter tree out.
Make sure your brass has primers in before adding powder :(
There is actually a lot to be read on barrel obstructions in Hatcher's Notebook. He performed a lot of experiments. One of his conclusions (page 190) is that a bullet stuck anywhere in a barrel could be safely shot out with a full standard charge of powder with no harm to the gun (probably done with a 1903 Springfield). You can find a copy of this really interesting book on amazon or find a free PDF by googling it.
I am curious how a blow back pistol caliber gun would respond to this same experiment.
I would not attempt this with a large bore gun, like 20mm+ (hell I would probably exhaust all other options before attempting this with even a 50 BMG). The risk of the powder detonating in the increased volume of space would be too great for my tolerance. There are funny things that can happen when an accelerating pressure wave encounters a large stuck mass in its path that I don't even want to try and wrap my brain around. Luckily it seems to be a safe practice with small bore guns.