Hi:

I watched a piece on you tube that demonstrated a guy shooting a 12 gage shotgun that had a 20 gage shell placed in the barrel. No damage to gun or shooter. The gun was a Remington 870.

Check it out on You Tube and kindly post your thoughts. Food for thought!

Best to all,

Franchi

My thought is it proved nothing and that we should work mightily to make the world safer from fools.

It proved that it was an accident that it didn't cause an accident.

I have tried to blow up guns for my hunter safety students to see. A Noble pump 12 ga and a cheap sxs Belgian Damascus hammer 12 ga
Each gun had a live 20 ga shell dropped in and a 12 ga target load and fired, repeated 3 times with no damage to the guns. Perhaps compressed air blew the 20 ga shell out and it did not fire?
I cannot really explain why the barrels did not let go.
Jamming some mud into the muzzles of the sxs produced a satisfying result, however, opened up a big flap of barrel/
Guns were tied to a round bale of hay with a long length of baler twine and me hiding behind another big bale.
Mike

Thats the same technique I suggested to Barack, when he wanted to come hunting at our place...

Jim

Mike, were you able to retrieve the 20 shell, whole and unharmed, anywhere in the vicinity?

Were you able to ascertain if the 20 indeed detonated?

Seemd odd.

I apologize for commenting again but wonder what kind of a lesson we're providing by the above examples: nothing happens with 20ga and mud, kerboom? I wouldn't think of cutting my leg with a chainsaw to demonstrate if my first aid kit was any good!

I rolled a '69 Camaro and then crashed throught Guard Rails and hit some Oak Trees and walked away only shaken but unharmed, I wouldn't recommend the pratice.

Would anyone on this forum like to take 100 different 12 ga shotguns drop a 20 ga shell in and then put in a 12 ga shell and pull the trigger? One incident or even two or three incidents statistically tells you nothing . That's one of the reasons I've never agreed with the conclusions of Sherman Bell's damascus vs. fluid steel testing as it was far too limited(sample size wise)in scope to have any real validity
Jim

I did not pull the triggers on either gun, I said I had a very long length of baler twine.
I'm just saying I tried to blow up 2 very different guns, a sturdy Noble pump, and a ratty old JABC with, wait for it, twist barrels, and neither let go. I was unable to find any of the 20 ga shells, but now you have me curious, I'll try again, from safety, and shoot a 20 ga shell into a bale and dig it out. All this tells nobody anything, I'm just relating my findings, for Heaven's sake. Mud worked magnificently, opend up a big flap on the muzzle, but nothing happened to the damn barrels!
Mike

I don't know what that proves or doesn't prove, but there's this fact. Before Soviet-made guns known as Baikals were admitted to the US market, they had to pass through all sorts of endurance tests, including the 12-ga-fired-with-a-20-ga-shell-in-barrel one. There were no apparent damage to the guns.

Mike, although not at all scientific, that experiment has great value when shown to young people who may be handling firearms. Real life scenarios that can get real people injured terribly or killed are indeed needed. Young folks think they are invincible and immortal and first hand obvious and unsubtle demonstrations are often the only thing that can change their minds. They need to hear the sound and see the light and the damage that inattention can cause. It is one of the roads to safe gun handling.

I recall reading a test done by I believe it was Guns & Ammo once on a particular model of .50cal muzzleloader. They tried different amounts of increasing powder charges & number of balls. Finally they filled the barrel half full of powder& then filled the remaining half with balls. Upon firing everything was blown out the barrel with no apparent damage.
As a last resort they dropped "1" regular powder charge & settled it in the breech & then pushed "1" ball half way down the bore. Firing this gave them two short bbls rather than one, blew it half in two.

Essentially no shotgun chamber made could stand the strain of even an ordinary powder charge as a "Closed Cell" pressure. What allows them to be safely fired is the movement of the shot charge increases the volume of the combustion chamber, thus preventing the pressure to "Max" out. This 12/20 combo obviously has a lot more weight to move so pressures increase dramatically. In your case they just didn't reach the bursting point. Whether or not the 20ga shell fires also has an affect on the pressure.

An obstruction is a totaly different circumstance. The sudden checking of the moving powder gases creates a localized high pressure point at the obstruction. If the obstruction has suficient weight to check the charge it matters not if it seals the bore.

Well I'd think a 20 ga shell in a 12 barrel might be classified as an obstruction.

Bob, yes I really did need to blow up a shotgun barrel with the 12/20 trick for the Hunter Ed students. I was given a Browning 300 Win Mag rifle barrel split into a "y" right back to the front of the chamber, snow in the muzzle.
I might try to blow up the JABC twist barrel with a 3" slug and a 20 ga shell.
Mike

Mike, almost 40 yrs. ago another Warden and I tried this with about 4 old H&R single barrels. We wanted to have some for demonstrating what would happen for our Hunter Safety Students. Wound up just explaing to them what would happen, cause the old H&Rs withstood the experiments, some several tries. The experiments were carried out by securing the shotguns in an old tire, cord to pull the trigger while we stood behind the target house.

Hi Again:

The footage of shooting a 12 gage with a 20 gage shell lodged ahead of it proves very little to me other than it was done once.

Italiansxs is correct! One must use a much larger sample to gain any useful data. One gun is no much of a test.

The program Mythbusters attempted to blow up a shootgun by pluggging the barrel. They did not blow up the brrel! Would I try this? No!

When I was a bit yonger, I read about the new Remington 721-722 rifles being tested for strength, The guns were loaded with 5 bullets driven into the barrel and having a full power cartridge fired in the rifle. No damage was done! About 10 years later, Weatherby did the same thing with their new Mark V gun, Again, no damage to gun.

Perhaps the 12-20 thing is a old wive's tale or a myth that will not die!

Sincerely,

Franchi

If you want to try it, I'll film.

From a distance.

The whole idea of it being an old wive's tale that need not be heeded carries with it the sound of people who think bright-line safety rules are bullshit because some guy they know knew some guy who did it once and nothing happened.

Safety rules are written in blood. This is one of them.

Google "Phoenix" steel barrel failures
You should find how Fabbri was cursed with a bad run of steel, and it nearly put them out of business. SSM did an article wherein the people at Fabbri showed how with their new vacuum arc purified steel, they could routinely place an unfired 20 in the barrel of a 12, and fire the 12 with a heavy load, with no damage to their barrels.
The SSM article also showed the stupid engravings requested by Millius for the Jurassic Park producers. Fabbri's decorated with dinosaurs, Yuck.

Oddly, while I care little for the actions of the super wealthy, I am always bothered when articles imply that patrons get all they want as fast as they want, and the single buyer can wait years, and get a poorly finished gun. One guy gives a years production away as unwanted toys, and another waits 2 years for something that doesn't even work when delivered. I guess it's who you know.
I hate that.

I must confess , several years ago hunting quail and pheasants
conditions were cold, driving sleet ,miserable, birds were holding tight and alot of them, dogs were working well,
there was alot of shooting. at the end of the day I noticed my gun had a bulge in the right barrel just forward of the chamber, I remembered a point in time when I pulled up on a bird and the right barrel clicked so I fired the left barrel,
dropped in two more shells and kept hunting but did remember acquiring a major head ache at about the same time.
I had a 20 ga shell in my vest and in all the excitement not taking my eyes off the dogs on point I dropped a 20 ga shell in the gun and then after the misfire thinking in all the excitement I forgot to drop a shell in the right chamber I dropped in a 12 ga on top of it.
I did not go back to try and find the 20 ga shell but what I believe happened was the 12 ga shell fired and detonated the primer on the 20 ga and the whole business left the barrel.
The gun was a 12 ga DHE high condition Parker with fluid steel barrels , she held together , but I had to have it sleeved, Kirk Merrington did the work and it balanced the same and you could not see the seem.
and Yes a lesson was learnt. Insure your vest has only one gauge shell in it EVERY time you head out.

And if Joe shows up to comment on this, thats fine,
I deserve it !

Because I hunt every day of the bird season, and change guns almost every day, I have seperate identical vests clearly labeled with the guage....Aint I smart?

Sherman Bell's sample size has been increased exponentially by all of us shooting twist and damascus barrel guns. I haven't read of too many failures, have you?

The link on the Birmingham Proof House website to this research report doesn't work but I found it on a British website "Pigeonshooter" absent the artwork. The wildly varying pressures in these tests tells me that sometimes the gun would be unhurt, sometimes bulge a barrel and sometimes suffer catastrophic failure. The odds look poor enough that I'll do all I can to prevent a 20 gauge shell getting into a 12 gauge gun or a 28 gauge shell getting into a 20 gauge gun.

http://pigeonshooterhomepage.webs.com/safteyandthelaw.htm

Shhhhhh, don't tell anyone of this study. In the US today we risk having the federal government through OSHA mandate an outright ban of 20ga shells to protect against an accident from occuring.

fifty odd years ago olin had a film of a shooting accident a 20 gauge shell in 12 ga. berral the shooter lost a few fingers. I believe it was a safety film.

I was thinking the same thing...his tests proved nothing.

Experts on Guns and Shooting George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell 1900
http://books.google.com/books?id=4xRmHkr7Lp8C

On the subject of steel v. Damascus, Mr Stephen Grant is very clear, and much prefers Damascus for hard working guns. He related an anecdote of one of his patrons, whose keeper stupidly put a 12-bore cartridge into his master’s gun without knowing that he had previously inserted a 20-case, which had stuffed up the barrel. Fortunately, no burst occurred, but a big bulge, which, however, Mr Grant hammered down, and the gun is now as good as ever.

There are so many variations in shotgun barrels, especially older ones I don't believe you could ever get enough similar to each other in construction and condition to have a Statisticly valid test - you probably could on later Barrels but that is not the area of interest.

Bell provided antecdotal evidence which is better than none, IMO.

I have a 20ga barrel off a Beretta Semi Auto which was fired with a 28ga shell lodge forward of the chamber. The barrel didn't fail catastrophically but there is a slight bulge and that is at a relatively thick area just ahead of the forcing cone. It was donated by a member of this board to my Hunter Education classes and is now sectioned so the students can see just where the smaller case lodges and what can happen. Will the barrel rupture or bulge every time - probably not. We are not worried about everytime, only those which do fail and can cause injury to the shooter. Homeless showed you photos of an o/u which blew right at the chamber. That was either a really gross over charge with perhaps the wrong powder or with an obstruction just at the forcing cone. Now what could lodge just at the forcing cone and go unnoticed. Squib loads normally clear the shot and leave the wad about half way down the bore which is where a squib rupture would show up. I suspect it was a smaller gauge shell.

They should have tried with English gun with long string from behind solid cover. I heard the "blow up" nicely. I would not test this but I suspect most resistant to damage SxS would be Russian IZH.

IMO the main accomplishment made by Mr. Bell was to educate everyone about the need to severely limit pressure when shooting damascus barrelled guns and this to me is probably the primary reason there haven't been a lot of failures. This fact coupled with most prudent shooters recognition that barrel thicknes should be measured prior to using an older gun and that anything resembling a weak spot(occlusion)should be viewed with wariness.
Jim

Prior to the work and articles by Sherman Bell far fewer people shot twist and damascus guns. His efforts caused more shooters to try shooting them and in turn created greater demand for and increased the price of composite barreled guns.

He educated us to severely limit pressures? Was that the test and article where he tried to blow up a damascus barrel gun and a fluid steel gun, both Parkers, and reported there was no statistical difference and both types of barrels ruptured around 32,000 psi?

Ross Seyfried was writing of using Damascus & lauding the use of 7625 powder for low pressure loads at least as far back as the mid to late 1970's. This was I believe much earlier than any of Bell's work. I was already loading & shooting smokeless powder in damascus guns even prior to this in loads in the 7K-8k pressure range, so acquired a small lot of 7625 to try. My first impressions were very favorable but then I carried some loads of it Duck hunting which were taken directly from the still then DuPont handloaders guide in a 7K psi range. They completely let me down in lower 20° temps, so I went back to Green Dot & never looked back.
Bell brought several things to the attention of his readers, BUT, in all honesty I can't think of 1 single thing he actually Discovered, which was not already available to those who had sought it out. Look at the catalogs of makers such as Smith, Baker, Lefever, Parker etc, they all warrented their damascus gunns for use with smokeless loads & these loads weren't the "Super-Low" pressure ones we use today. Of course the guns were new then. Pressure curves have been around showing the similarites between black & smokeless pressures since at least the early 1920s etc, etc.

C. 1895 and posted before