I must go along with the consensus.
I note a couple of things -
1) gun appears to have been heavily used, and possibly abused.
The surface rust evident on the breech face and the chamber ends suggest that operator maintenance may have been less than stellar.
2) The barrel walls at the rip seem very thin to my uncalibrated eyeball. I realize that as the barrels stretch to failure they will thin out, but this thinness appears greater than usual, compared to other burst barrels I have seen.
It might be interesting to do a barrel wall thickness measurement of both barrels, and compare them to the condition at proof.
One thing to be said for "meaty" American barrels, tube thinness is rarely a problem, although obviously a barrel burst like this, from an obstruction, would likely have occurred no matter what.
Regards
GKT
