I would be very surprised if you were able to get enough oil in the cartridge to clump the powder just by putting it in an over-oiled weapon. That would take a lot of oil…
The rounds I’ve seen that were impacted by the oil in the weapon had their primers deactivated, but the powder still worked. The primers are pretty sensitive to solvents, and penetrating oils can get to unsealed primers pretty easily.
Since the round was halfway down the barrel, I assume the primer went off, but at best only some of the powder ignited.
At first glance it sounds like the manufacturer had a quality problem…
I’m with Charles on the dowel rod. When I first started out with progressive loaders, the Dillon powder measure would periodically stick and not drop a charge. It was a design flaw in the measure, and it only happened ~1 out of every 500 rounds. Dillon fixed the issue, but not before I had reloaded over 5,000 rounds.
When I came across that bad round, it would put the bullet around half way down the barrel. I would take down the pistol, get out my dowel, put it in the barrel, and rap it on a hard surface. A couple of hits, and the bullet would drop out. Reassemble the weapon, and go back to shooting.
If all that happened is you had a squib, which is what it sounds like, and you didn’t fire another round with the squib stuck in the barrel, there won’t be any damage to your weapon. The pressure in the barrel would have been way lower then with a normal round.
By the way, if you had of fired another round, we would be having a different discussion about a destroyed handgun, and probable damage to you!
