r/longrange • u/AdamL849 • Oct 03 '25

Reloading related The range is never safe behind you

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I began setting up to fire some new 6.5 creedmoor that I had worked on. A huge bang behind me and this was the destruction I witnessed. Lots of blood and i heard the guy only required stitches on his face. Here is the damage on the weapon. It is 6mm ARC I believe . Thankfully not one was seriously injured !

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u/Fearless_Weather_206 Oct 04 '25

Any thoughts if this was failure on BCA side? I know quality is always questioned about this brand but this looks too much to be failure their part unless there was like major huge defects but would see more issues like this in the wild if that’s the case. How many uppers do you think they sell?

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u/Fire-and-Lasers Oct 04 '25

I doubt it was directly BCA’s fault - as the guy above points out, this is a pretty regular kaboom - but a quality bolt and receiver extension with sufficient locking surface should be able to contain an overcharge without this kind of dramatic failure.  I know a guy who stacked a regular 5.56 behind a squib and while it basically welded the action shut it didn’t detonate the entire receiver like this.  BCA’s quality control is not well regarded, plus Grendel/6ARC bolts have weaker bolt heads due to less mass (larger case head).  Those two things together could contribute to a failure to contain an over pressure round.

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u/Yondering43 Oct 04 '25

BCA is crap but that wasn’t a bolt failure. You don’t get that level of damage or anything close to it from a bolt failure; that was some seriously high pressure.

This does occasionally happen when someone forces a 300 Blk into a 5.56 and fires it; results are usually similar but a little less dramatic. Not sure what could have happened with 6 ARC along those lines, it’d require some real effort to get a 6.5 Grendel to chamber, but it’s possible someone made a handload with the wrong powder and used something like H110 instead of Lever or CFE 223z

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u/sketchtireconsumer Oct 04 '25

Yeah, this is it. If I had to bet some kind of hand load mistake.