Originally Posted By: Der Ami
dearmer,
Just for information, slow powders in rifles can cause blowups. A famous example is the case of 270 Win. loaded with less than the recommended amount of 4831. This is another one I have never seen but has been reported enough that it must have happened. Enough cautions have been given about this that instructions for loading 5.6X61 vom Hofe S.e. make particular mention of it. Also One of the Engineer BNs I was in ran a quarry for training. Military Dynamite was used in blasting( fairly slow) with good success, but when the ran out and used some C4 (much faster)they didn't get dust, the got chunks as large as house trailers, whish had to be blasted again to get them small enough to fit into the crusher. The Dynamite would "heave" it, but the C4 would "shatter" it along fault lines. I don't know if this affects your examples or not.
Mike


I would never be so bold as to say it's impossible but I have more faith in peoples ability to lie after an accident than I do in the ability of a reduced charge of 4831 to blow up a 270. I was just reading about this a few months ago on another forum where someone had an accident and everyone was talking about how this can happen. A week later the individual admitted that he had accidentally loaded the rounds with the wrong powder. He grabbed a can with the same color label and thought if was the correct powder. I believe he is in the minority that either realize they made a mistake or admit to it.
I have never seen a real study that was able to reproduce this. If someone has and can send me a copy I'd be happy to take a look at it.

Your quarrying example makes sense. Like I said, my examples were oversimplifications. Lots of things come into play. The fact that you stated it "shattered" along the fault lines is what I was alluding to. Things will usually break along the weakest part. If that fault was not there it would behave differently. The old pineapple grenades break into large chunks because deep cuts are cast into them. Without them they would break into smaller more random pieces.