I have a hard time saying that a gun that operated properly for 100 years before failing had a design defect. I think at that point you are passed the anticipated life expectancy for the design. That doesn't mean the failure wasn't due to the design I just can't use the word defect.
Well Rigby, unfortunately, it is not considered acceptable here to use the brain God gave you. To question the conclusions reached here simply isn't welcome.
For example, I was roundly criticized in the first thread pertaining to this barrel burst for agreeing with another guys observation, and then elaborating upon that. The inclusion that is finally accepted as the point where the burst was initiated seemed apparent enough to the naked eye. And the corrosion within the braze joint was readily apparent as well.
The defect wasn't a "design" defect in all likelihood, because the vast majority of L.C. Smith guns with this construction have not failed... and most likely won't fail under similar circumstances.
The defect was there hidden within the steel before that steel was ever fabricated into a shotgun barrel. As I said in the earlier thread, steel is not necessarily homogeneous and free of internal flaws. Sometimes internal defects or inclusions are revealed during machining, and sometimes they remain hidden.
To say this steel was "burned" is silly. To burn solid steel without the addition of oxygen (as with a burning torch) usually requires a temperature above the melting point, i.e., roughly 2800 degrees F. At that ridiculously high temperature, all of the zinc would be vaporized out of copper-zinc brazing material. Here's what Prince & Izant, a manufacturer of brazing rod has to say:
Copper-Zinc Brazing Filler Metals
Copper-Zinc brazing alloys are used for their high strength and stress characteristics. These alloys are brazed using torch, furnace or induction heating but be mindful of overheating – doing so can vaporize the zinc and leave voids in the joint.It is apparent that this braze joint was defective. We can never know if the corrosion got worse over time, or if it was this bad all along. Chances are that it got worse over time, or it might have failed decades ago. But we'll never know the chamber pressure when it blew up. The ferrous oxide contamination suggests that there was probably rust on the tube at the time of brazing, and that there was insufficient fluxing. As the cautionary note from Prince & Izant suggests, it seems very possible that there was overheating during the brazing process, leaving a void, but not nearly enough to burn steel. Burning steel is an
EXTREME overheating that actually burns the carbon out of the steel.
Think about this... melting steel in an electric furnace doesn't "burn" the carbon out of it, so why would simple overheating during brazing burn the carbon out of the steel? And think about welding... where base metals and filler rod are fused by melting them together. How strong would those welds be if we "burned" the steel during that process?
Oh wait, scratch that thought... we're not supposed to think here, or question the Preacher.
Despite the thinness of the chamber wall at the point of the burst, this accident probably would never have happened with a good braze joint and barrel steel that did not contain a large inclusion (probably rolled-in scale)in the chamber area. Hundreds of thousands of L.C. Smith guns that didn't blow up are proof of that. The inclusion and its' location, combined with the defective braze joint created a perfect storm. There are still unanswered questions about the load or reload, and it seems strange that the guy who had this gun blow up while he was shooting it won't provide any more information. When I experienced temporary blindness after a complete head separation in a .22-250, I wanted to know why, and left no stone unturned.
