doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Anyone know of blown up barrels?

Parker Trojan 20ga.




Muzzle is to the left. Missing section starts about 5 inches from the muzzle.
It came to me this way, I have no idea what caused it.

Wall looks thin, I never bothered to measure it. It's not like it makes a difference at this point.
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Interesting to see two examples above where the rupture is at or near the rib to barrel solder joint. And it is always a shock to see the corrosion accumulated in the dead space between the ribs.

Which reinforces my dislike for ribs, yet again. Ribs are an abomination.

Reloads, you probably won't get much satisfaction from the gun maker. Factory shells, it's legal action time if they don't do something and if there was some material flaw with the gun.

Nothing, when used properly. I would rather reload them than most others. But, when you're trying to build a low pressure load it is just easier to begin with another type, like the ribbed hulls with a fiber base wad, or even paper hulls. Given all the same other components, a compression formed hull will almost always deliver higher pressures.

Knowing his penchant for them, I suggested otherwise but, alas and alack, he did not listen. He may have had a hot enough load to blow up the Boswell even if they had not been in AAs, we'll never know, but they certainly did not help the pressure situation any.

I'm NOT saying you can't build a great low pressure load with compression formed hulls. I sent some to Tom Armbrust this spring loaded in Gold STSs that went 1180 fps at 5100 psi.

SRH

Stan, what was the shot charge in those very low pressure loads?

I can think of just five:

A 12 bore AyA magnum in which someone fired a steel load through the choke barrel; it now has a nice wide trumpet choke!

A single barrel 12 bore Italian made gun that a Farmer kept in the cow shed window for the odd pot shot at vermin. He kept a rag stuffed down the muzzle to stop dirt and spiders going down. Some kid found it and the cartridges and fired it but omitted to remove the rag. The last 12 inches of barrel parted company and spun round and clocked the kid on the head. Gave him a good scare and the Farmer one too!

An Italian over/under (I can't recall the make) where the barrel just blew open about 14 inches from the breech. The metal was so thin it could be bent easily by hand. How it passed Proof in Italy is a mystery.

A Midland Gun Co. side by side that I sent for Proof in Birmingham and then sold on. The new owner had it for a while when the barrel bulged and split. I sent it off to the Proof House for a detailed investigation and report. Their conclusion was that a stuck wad had caused the barrel to bulge and the next shot had been too much and caused the final split. It went just in front of the forend and no injury caused. In fact the firer was unaware until someone at te clay shoot pointed it out.

The fifth involves a German military Mauser rifle. The owner had some war surplus ammo which was dirty. He decided to put it in a case tumbler to clean it up. The rifle was smashed to pieces, stock smashed, bolt blown out and the receiver bent beyond repair. By a miracle there was no injury sustained. My theory is that the case tumbled ammo had the powder inside broken up into a fine powder which increased the burn rate alarmingly. That rifle was one hell of a mess. Lagopus.....

Larry,

Sorry to be so long in replying. Been out all day.

They are 1 oz. loads. P.M. me if you'd like more details.

All my best, SRH

Thanks, Stan. Just wondering about the shot charge. Not much difficulty getting low pressure 7/8 oz or 1 oz loads. A little tougher when you go to 1 1/8 oz.

I'd hope everyone pays attention to what Lagopus has posted about that rifle failure.

I'll relate a similar tale that involved an individual shooting a factory 12 ga. 32 gram shot shell that had been rolling back & forth on the dashboard of a pickup truck for quite a while, a few years in the Texas heat & cold. It was fired at a rattlesnake in a modern pump shotgun w/double action bars & it blew the receiver and the back [chamber] portion of that gun up. It was a catastrophic failure & resulted in destruction of the first order. It did not result in an injury, but could have just as easily, IMHO. It is quite likely that the powder in that cartridge had become 'dust' and as such had zero deterrent and an exponetially increased surface area. In other words, the powder detonated rather than burned. FWIW, The dif in defs between burning and detonation in the simplest of terms is the speed or burning rate, if you will.

I've not ever witnessed a blown barrel per se, but I have two double guns with minor swells or bulges toward the muzzle that were likely the result of some sort of obstruction. In both cases it happened when I'd loaned the guns to others. My bad. Neither of them ruptured, nor did they cause the ribs to become loose. Neither swell is noticable when shooting the guns, but both are when looking inside the barrels or along the affected barrel's outside. Both are before the chokes and neither changed the POI or patterns. I have shot hundreds, if not thousands of rounds through them both since over the years w/zero issues & am not concerned about doing so in the least. Greener addressed that issue w/his thin muzzle [.010" barrel thickness] emperical work long before there was an effective measuring devise. Pressures at the muzzle are simply not great enough to distort thin walls. Bonking them and causing a distortion or dent is another matter altogether.

With apologies for the tangent, but perhaps its within the limits of acceptable thread drift.

I don't know how I got in this mode. I had the top barrel on a Remington 32 blowup. I think there was a powder detonation. I was shooting the low house on Station 3 at skeet. The shell had been recently reloaded. I think there was a short drop of powder and then the loader did not full seat the wad, leaving an air space. The excess air provided oxygen for a detonation. Thee was not an excessive recoil, in fact, I remember no recoil. I still have the barrels and the shell casing.