doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com How To Blow Up A High Wall

There have been a couple of recent posts which skirted around this subject. This is a source of great embarassment to me and I debated about posting here, but decided to go ahead, for the "good of the order."

I am probably one of the only people who has had a perfectly good high wall action come apart during the process of firing a cartridge through it.

It happened when I first became interested in accumulating guns, Winchester single shot rifles in particular. I purchased my first high wall, a very nice early plain sporting rifle with an octagon-top receiver in .32-40 caliber, at a gun show in Reno, Nevada. Since I am in the camp which believes in shooting my guns, if only once in a while, I was looking forward to shooting this one.

At that point in time, I had done quite a bit of shotshell reloading, but no metallic cartridge reloading. Data for the .32-40 was non-existent in my loading manuals, so I got on fleabay and bid on a Lyman Reloading Handbook (43rd edition from 1964). I could scarcely wait for it to arrive so I could put some rounds together and run them through my new rifle.

The handbook finally got here and that is where the situation started to go bad. Although it sounds incredible to me now after having loaded many recipes for many calibers, the recommended load of 20 to 24 grains of Unique did not throw up any red flags for me. After all, I had seen 18-20 grains of that powder recommended for some magnum 12 gauge recipes in the past. In any event, I picked a "middle of the road" 22 grains and topped it off with a 170-grain lead bullet for my trial load.

It was raining the day I went out to my friend's ranch to try out my new rifle. He has been a long-time reloader and told me that my load sounded pretty hot. He was going to check out some of his reference books, but started making some lunch first. I was anxious to get started, so went out into his loading room to make it ready. My plan was to set up a target out in the field and shoot from the cover of his loading room after lunch.

We should all have such a place to try out loads. I slid the window open and found that the sill was too high for my sandbags, so I moved an anvil, which was just the right height, from the end of the bench to my position in front of the window. I just couldn't wait until after lunch, so I propped the rifle out the window and slid a cartridge into the chamber. For some reason (probably divine guidance), instead of holding on to the forearm of the rifle, I kept my left arm behind the anvil while I touched off the round with my right hand.

Well, the air turned a gray, foggy color and the barrel disappeared out the window. The forearm was turned into a brownish powder, except for several slivers which were driven into the cabinet next to the bench. The mainspring was bent ninety degrees in the middle and landed over in the corner. The top of the receiver was laying on the bench next to the anvil. My forearms were stinging from myriad small puncture wounds which contained tiny slivers. The whole affair was not pretty.

The following pictures will show what can happen if you load a hand grenade into a high wall action and are self-explanatory. I did not think to take pictures until after I had pounded the barrel and receiver ring pretty much back together and glued the action with JB Weld, but you can see the resulting damage. I have been using the rifle as a parts gun, which I have kept intact with damaged parts from other rifles and keep it as a wall hanger over my loading bench, to remind me to check all my loading data from several sources before trying out new recipes. As I found out much to my chagrin, not all published data is reliable.

I'm at a loss for words. Pretty sad to see such a nice old Wall in pieces. I'm a little puzzled by your reference to bad info in the #43 Lyman manual? I have that same manual and went to look for the error. It lists Unique loads for several bullet weights, and all are between 8.2 and 10.0 grs.????

Oops! Found the error! I was looking at cast load info! I never even thought of using jacketed loads in an old gun, but there the mistake is in the jacketed bullet load!

Yup, I looked it up as well.......they meant 10 grns and 14 grns I think, even Hercules says never to use this powder in rifle cases, some pistol cartridges o.k., but not rifle.....(but even at that, it's a HOT load).....I have all the old Lyman books back to Ideal 1902..... back into the early 40's they show 4198 and 3031 as the preferred powder for the 32-40....at that time those two DuPont IMR's were new to the market....
I've always used 17 grns of 4198 in my 32-40 with cast bullets...I've tried up to 20-21 grains, but the accuracy drops off rapidly..
What did Lyman say when you called them....guessing you did call them....????
Very glad you were not seriously hurt, that's the important part...
Best Regards,

Well, it has been a while, so I'm not sure what my thoughts were at that time, but I know I wanted to try out the rifle in the worst way. I was using a lead bullet, but since I had never seen a Lyman handbook before, I may have just started at the beginning and when I came to ".32-40" I started looking for a load for some powder I had on hand. It happened to be for jacketed bullets, but I was probably thinking that the recipe wouldn't be much different for lead. Pretty sad, I know. I told you it was very embarassing for me to talk about it. Maybe it will save someone else from doing the same thing.

Not the first time I've seen this very error from this exact same Lyman handbook edition cause a catastrophe with a 32-40, and there are other errors in other Lyman editions. I remember loading my S&W 44 Special back in the '60s with 19.0/2400/429244 and then being concerned that the considerable recoil cracked the grips!

The mechanism of the blowup can easily be traced: the pressure first expanded & then cracked the barrel in the 6:00 area and then went on to expand & crack the ring & blow the barrel out the front. The extreme pressure of the overload combined with the soft & weak 19th-century barrel steel was too much for the old rifle. This is the first time I've seen or even heard of this sort of high wall breakage, even with an older weaker barrel.

Thanks for showing the spinal rigidity and testicular mass to tell such an enlightening albeit awkward & just plain sad story!
Regards, Joe

Now Joe, you see exactly why I don't shoot smokeless powder. I know my limitations and the law of large numbers and limiting probabilities. Yup, I'll take mine black every time.

Thanks for the story Dennis. I am sorry to see the old gun busted up like that but it is a fairly large miracle, you didn't look a lot like the gun when it was over.

Brent

The concept of live and learn does not work without an open attitude towards failure - it's the only way we learn. Thanks for sharing. But of course... the rest of us... we've never ever blundered... no... no... the genius is all natural...



Usually it was an exciting thing to discover an error in the olden log tables of our mathematical pasts, but it didn't either involve the blowing up of an adding machine. While I am really sorry for your gun, I am really happy you are still here.

Thanks for the post.

I don't mean to hi-jack this thread and sorry to see such a nice old gun damaged, but being it's about blow up's a question was asked on the Ruger # 1 group about anyone ever seeing a # 1 blow up, there's over 1100 members in the # 1 group and many of them own more than one # 1, but no one reported ever seeing one blown up where the action was damaged, any one here ever seen one and if so do you have pictures.
ST

Thanks for posting, you might have saved someone else from going down that road.

Set-Trigger,

Years ago I visited and stayed with Gerald Kelver at his home in Brighton, Colorado. On one visit I saw a Ruger No.1 with a busted forend, barrel and receive sitting in the corner of his shop. I ask, he said he did not want to talk about it. I never did find out what happened but it was wrecked. He also had a nice Ballard that I noticed had no screw in the forearm, did not need one he had glass bedded the forearm to the barrel.