doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The Baker Resurrection

Pete that's your opinion of Belgium Damascus not mine.

Stallones. Great job on getting a set of barrels for that action. I kind of wondered if you tossed the action on the bone pile. Twist barrels are a thing of beauty and they look stunning on the Baker. Glad to see the Baker lives on. I really loved the look and feel of the gun for the hour after I opened the package till KaBoom. For the record, An hour after I got the gun, I shot 8 low pressure reloads and handed it off to my brother and on the 13th shot it let go. I was standing off to my brothers right about 8 ft. away and tossing clays with a hand trap. Got stung with bits of metal and Glen got cut a few places but nothing serious. Hats off to bringing the old girl back to life. BTW, The original barrel was a nice patterned damascus but not a neat as Stallones new creation. Randy

Mark:

Pictures on page two of this thread........

While it's easy enough to see that someone did something to the chambers, what's the explanation for the hull having blown out the side? Are we thinking that the damage to the hull occurred because the barrel blew? Personally, I'd be suspicious of something IN FRONT of the shell, resulting in it blowing out the side. In other words, an obstruction. If I recall this case correctly, wasn't there some speculation that perhaps a base wad had lodged in the barrel?

I'd like to hear opinions on what caused the damage to the hull. Since it fractured OUT, why would it damage the shell, which is inside? I'm thinking it's much more likely that an obstruction, which caused the shell to blow out the side, took the barrel with it. Comments?

Larry..........

Could have been an obstruction...?....The damage to the shell casing might have been the result of the exploding metal since the barrel was segmented damascus that was exploding outward, backwards and forwards as evidenced by the curling fractures......?........

At first I thought the split fluid barrel picture was part of the same gun, but they are not the same set of barrels as pointed out by jOe........I also think that the extremely thin wall at the chamber-cone junction accelerated the failure, i.e.- point of least resistance........but I don't think we will ever know conclusively.........?.........Just glad Randy and his brother were not injured to any extent.....

Best,

Pa don't think that's the same gun....

I think you're right jOe....looks like a fluid steel example that Pete posted........?.......Same Baker forearm, but not the same set of barrels...............

Best,

Larry, I agree with your speculation--it is more likely there was some obstruction near the forcing cone. My guess is the shot didn't move up the barrel at all when she went. Incidently, the burst looks almost identical to a muzzleloader I blew up back in the '50's when I just had to try a "little" red dot in it! Ears still ring from that one.....

Why can't you guys believe that the barrel could've 'just let go' for no other reason than it was cheaply made Belgium damascus that was 100+ years old.

Joe, it could indeed have just "let go" . . . but what's left of the hull is an odd bit of evidence, IMO. If you read Sherman Bell's article, in which he and Tom Armbrust blew up a Damascus Parker (with a load that generated in excess of 30,000 psi), the hulls did not begin to show any real abnormalities until they'd started using rounds developing 25,000 psi--which is about 40% above the SAAMI level for PROOF loads. Thus, blown hulls like that in the photo are typically due to a whole lot of pressure. And the two common ways you get a whole lot of pressure are that you either have some sort of obstruction, or else--like in the case of Bell's tests--you have shells that are grossly over pressure standards.

In the above photos, we don't see the piece (or, more likely, pieces) that blew out. However, there's nothing in what remains that's bent inwards. In fact, if you look carefully, it looks as if the blown part of the hull extends back towards the breech, where the barrel isn't blown. That leads me to believe that it's very possible that excessive pressure was involved, not just a weak spot in the barrel exposed to normal pressure.