Chuck;
I do not know for absolute certainty the condition I described can in fact actually occur. It does however seem to have some validity to it & does indeed seem to be a possibility. It does seem to be verified that in the early days of smokeless a goodly number of guns did blow their bbls a few inches down the bore. This led to the statement that smokeless produced its max pressure further down the bbl than did black. This has of course been proven to be totally false. This phenomenon would explain those bursts & that they also had nothing at all to do with the bbls being Damascus.
I do have enough belief in that it can happen I don't want to prove it the hard way. I thus no longer load low pressure loads with slow burning powders & particularly if they are known to be temperature sensitive.
Incidently another member of the board here first mentioned this. I cannot recall now just who or if they still post. I do recall that at the time it was someone of whom I had great respect for their knowledge. I thus sort of put the thoughts into storage in the gray matter, but don't recollect who presented them.
