Range trip

[Filroy77]

Went out yesterday to teach my girl gun safety and shooting. After the safety lesson I started her out on the single shot .22 to familiarize her with function, sights, proper technique etc. About a half box later she was ready to move on to the next. Got out the SKS, went over all the particulars and proceeded to fire a round on single fire (M59/66). Went to cycle the action but it was resistant. Got a heavy ammo box and used it to gently tap the charging handle and it freed up. Inspected the spent round to find the primer had been pierced. Two light strikes after that and I put it away for further inspection. In the past, debris from the pierced primer found its way into the trigger group and caused the light strikes. Is this just cheap Russian steel cased ammo using inferior primers (not military grade) or is there too much pressure at the firing pin? The last time I fired the Yugo I used ammo that I produced with CCI no. 34 primers and had no trouble at all. Thoughts?
 
A bit disappointing outing for her but she did enjoy the .22. Was going to introduce the pistols to her after rifle fire but a bunch of people showed up about the time of the SKS debacle and she became uncomfortable so we wrapped it up and vowed to try again on a week day over a Sunday afternoon. She has Mon, tues, wed off and I?m retired since April (Yay!) so I?m thinking next Wednesday we?ll give it a try. 

[Rocketvapor]

Congrats on the retirement.

Pull firing pin and clean bolt.  Inspect end of pin.

[murray]

It's the primers. And your empty did not have a primer that was pierced. A piece of primer was blown rearward through the firing pin hole on the Bolt face by spikes in the peak chamber pressure. Here's our 25+ year old page on the subject. https://murraysguns.com/popped-primer-problems/

But more importantly, here's our much newer page with the 100% guaranteed cure for this problem with Russian imported Berdan primed ammo.
https://murraysguns.com/sks-neck-throat/

[JimmyJamesKY]

What brand of ammo were you using Filroy? Enquirjng minds want to know.  I had pretty rotten luck with TULAMMO to the point that I won't shoot it.

Weird thing is I never had issues with their 154gr x39.  The regular (122gr) TULAMMO once blew my firing pin completely out of the bolt. 

[Filroy77]

What brand of ammo were you using Filroy? Enquirjng minds want to know.  I had pretty rotten luck with TULAMMO to the point that I won't shoot it.

Weird thing is I never had issues with their 154gr x39.  The regular (122gr) TULAMMO once blew my firing pin completely out of the bolt.

Most likely Golden Tiger but I did purchase some Wolf poly performance. These were pre loaded on strippers so not sure as to which.
  I remember when that happened to you. I got rid of any Tulammo long ago. The fp here tried to get past the retaining pin also. The spring was missing but may have dropped out when I wrestled the fp out. I looked around for it but no luck.

[Filroy77]

Congrats on the retirement.

Pull firing pin and clean bolt.  Inspect end of pin.

Thanks RV.

Gonna need a new pin I?m afraid.

[murray]

The Spring is still inside the Bolt, fully annealed, collapsed and ruined. Kind of hard to get out sometimes but by pushing it to the rear with a 1/16" pin punch we've managed to get them all out. And we thought for a while that Golden Tiger was exempt from the list that were prone to these primer failures, but then a guy came along with multiples from one box of 20.

But the good news is, if you send your Barreled Receiver to us for the Neck & Throat service, we allow a $20.00 discount on the new FP Kit you need. And this will never happen again, no matter what ammo you feed it. 100% guaranteed. And including the Bolt would allow us to remove the burr that was created inside the FP Hole, when the Firing Pin was blown so violently rearward. (burr inhibits free movement of any firing pin installed) Let us know if we can help.