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Practically Shooting

Another noob checks in


ausfahrt

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I am new to the forum and new to guns in general. My wife and I will soon be empty nesters so since we no longer have any little ones running around the house, she has eased off of her "no guns" stance.

I have been reading and I do have a question right off the bat. What is stovepiping?

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Welcome to the forum.

A "stovepipe" is a misfeed in a semi-auto pistol where either the unfired round doesn't chamber and sticks up like a "stovepipe," or the spent cartridge doesn't eject properly and jams between the slide and chamber throat, again sticking up like a "stovepipe."

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Thanks for the warm welcome.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words and Pablo's video explained it perfectly.

I am happy to be a member of your forum and I look forward to learning a lot from you guys.

Just be forewarned that you may get some more silly and stupid questions from me.

PS- I am bigdreama from BITOG.

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Welcome!

The video shows a stovepipe well, but Glocks actually tend to do it a little differently than what he set up. And yes, contrary to what the guy in the video thinks, Glocks DO malfunction, just like every other mechanical object.

For whatever reason, when a Glock fails to fully eject the case, they will usually, but not always, leave the empty case trapped horizontally, rather than sticking straight up. Sort of like this:

That is a Kahr in the picture because it was what I had handy, but it is close. The case will sit higher in a Glock because the breech and slide are shaped a little differently than the Kahr I used.

Used to be, the common procedure taught for clearing stovepipes was to "sweep" your hand briskly across the top of the slide. The heel of your hand caught the case and flipped it out, running the slide enough to chamber a fresh cartridge.

Pretty quick and slick, but the problem came when the case was trapped horizontally like that.

Look at my picture of the "horizontal stovepipe" again, except imagine the case sitting up a little higher. Now imagine sweeping your hand briskly across the top of the slide. Now try to imagine the semicircle scars I've seen on hands from trying to sweep that clear. You might get the case clear that way, but it could be because it stuck to the hand when it sliced into it.

The sweep move was slick, but it really only worked on that particular malfunction. Luckily, that malf was evident from the case standing up in your sighting plane, but a one-fix-for-all would be better. Now instructors teach the Tap Rack Bang (or Tap Rack Assess or whatever it is this week), and I think that is good because it covers just about anything except a double feed, and it's part of that process.

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