doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lucky....

Even if he double loaded a shell while reloading would that be enough pressure to burst a chamber of a relatively new shotgun? If it is then that's really scary stuff.

Miller, maybe put that in an operator error category?

There have been several threads over the years over on trapshooters on gun blow ups which usually lead to 200 post threads with no consensus as to what caused it. A barrel obstruction is not going to do catastrophic failure such as this gun experienced. I am one that subscribes to the theory that it is shell detonation that causes this much damage.
Problem with that is that you can not intentionally load a shotshell to detonate to prove it and some say it is impossible for a shotshell to detonate.
However damage looks similar to rifles and pistols that have experienced detonation,looks like a small bomb went off.
John

A friend of mine had his Browning GTI O/U blow up into pieces like that. He was using Factory WInchester trap loads. Fortunately no serious damage, but some embedded pieces into his chest to remove. Neither Browning or Winchester would admit fault,but Winchester paid his medical.

I suspect that 2-Piper may be in the right area of possibility looking at how and where it failed. He is lucky to escape injury. Lagopus.....

I'm aware of a catastophic failure/blow up that occured with a factory round that had been rolling back & forth on a ranch truck's dash for some indeterminate, but lengthy, period of time and had also been repeatedly heated to 'hot to the touch' temps from the same situation during the Texas afternoons. Good chance/probability(?) that the powder had become 'dust' and/or the burning rate deterrents had become negated.

Dif between burn & detonate[VoD] is the speed, ya know; i.e., fuse burns, Primacord detonates.

Not saying that's what happened in the example depicted, rather it is an example of how a loaded cartridge could change.

tw, that's an interesting point too. I know someone who had some rather old and soiled 8mm. Mauser military stuff and put it in a case tumbler to 'shine' up the rounds for a bit. Result was a well blown action and split stock. The reason being that the tumbling had ground up the powder causing it to burn a lot quicker. Very dangerous practice. I should think that it would take quite a bit though to get it that way. Lagopus.....

Another hypothesis. A few years back, I borrowed a few reloaded ammo for my "new" 16 gauge... I know you don't shoot someone else's reloads, but they came from a very competent reloader and it was use these or watch the ducks fly all over. The first shot literally put me down on my butt, the gun jammed close and the hull spoke of a very high pressure. After that, I did a very crazy thing, that can only be explained, but by no means justified, by the thrill of the hunt. I watched one flock of ducks after another pass over my head, and then thought, well, maybe it was just that oddball shell, double loaded or something, and the others were OK? I fired some more of these shells, and they seemed OK, and then I had another KA-BOOM, not so dramatic that time, but still obviously high. That brought me back to my senses, sort of. At home, I disassembled the remaining shells, and they looked absolutely OK, no double charges or anything. And yet two of the batch produced overboard kind of pressures.

It looks like the powder the shells were reloaded with got into some chemical reaction with the residue from the powder originally fired in the shells, or with some outside contaminant. Actualy, the idea is supported by my Dad, who's been 20 years in industrial chemistry, and he says when there's high pressura and temperature involved in a fine chemical reaction, you never know when the most theoretically innocent contamination will act as catalyst for what process and where it can lead.

So......should shells to be reloaded be power washed or otherwise carefully cleaned prior to reloading them to insure there is no possibility of contamination from previously fired loads?

The rest of us, that it hasn't and doesn't happen to, are the luck ones...in my opinion.

The question about the forcing cones is not relavent. This was a super severe overpressure, not a weakness in the forcing cone or any other place on the gun. The pressures must have been something akin to a high intensity rifle cartridge to do that kind of damage.

A good friend's S&W M29 blew up last year with factory(Winchester iirc) ammo. Top 1/2 of the cylinder and the top strap were gone and the frame buckled above the trigger.