Originally Posted By: Stan
Originally Posted By: 2-piper
Believe what you want, but a detonation is an entirely different thing than excess pressure, which is quite easy to see occurring under the circumstances you mention. Many, Many times the word Detonation is used incorrectly to describe what is not truly a detonation at all.


Miller, the word that has been used in reloading literature for decades, when referring to a reduced charge of slow burning powder in a large capacity case that causes damage, is detonation. You may not agree with the terminology, but that is the term that has been used to describe it for ages. It may be an incorrect usage of the word, but it is what has been used for as long as I can remember to describe the event.

So, your issue should be not as much with our usage of it as much as with the original writers who coined the phrase. We're just ignorant enough to continue with it.

SRH


Stan, the Army originally trained me as a Combat Engineer. Specifically, a Combat Demolition Specialist. But that was over 50 years ago, and I had to dredge up very old memories and then confirm them with a bit of research (and a big hint from Miller when he used the term "deflagration"). Because ammunition doesn't use a high explosive as a propellant--which is a very good thing for all of us!--it never really detonates. But used in ways it was never intended to be used--like in a pipe bomb--smokeless powder will certainly explode. That term applies accurately to powder just as much as it does to TNT, dynamite, C-4, Composition B, etc--all of which have explosive properties. We don't normally talk about an explosion in reference to ammunition fired in a gun, but in fact--smokeless powder being a low explosive--that would be a more accurate term than detonation, which is a term that differentiates high explosives from low explosives.

But I doubt we're going to end up using English more accurately regarding ammunition, because we've all been using it inaccurately for far too long.