Don't Get Blown Up!

going to talk about today high pressure and blowing up rifles i've had a little bit of experience over the years and know people and know of situations that have happened directly with people that i've known people that i worked with and other situations one of the first situations that i knew of firsthand was many years ago when les bowman was still at the ranch on the south fork and still in the outfitting business he had a friend of his call homer from down in texas somebody had somebody had blown blown up one of the ranger rifles they didn't blow the action the action held by the way but it wrecked havoc with the rifle the stock blew the floor plate out splintered the stock all sorts of things the barrel actually burst and split and he wanted somebody that had a lot of experience and understood things to be involved so he asked less to come to texas and do basically a study of what in the world really happened we'll cut right to the short of it somebody was cleaning his rifle barrel from the muzzle left the craning rod in the barrel okay now when the cartridge was touched off i run that cleaning rod up the barrel just a little bit and all of a sudden the cleaning rod stopped created an obstruction in the barrel and the barrel burst and the stock splintered and the magazine box fell out and one thing you know the barrel split you know for for a distance we had something like that you know it opened up like a y you see now almost all blow-ups have happened because of negligence negligence of somebody in this instance i've already said why cleaning rod was in the barrel now over the years i've read of various other things and one thing in another but the next thing that i knew about in the second year going to gunsmithing school in trinidad a man came in one day and he had an fn mauser it was chambered in 257 active magnum which was basically a slightly dif slightly less case capacity case than a 257 weatherby and the barrel was split lengthwise from one end to the other and the one half of the barrel fell off back about a half of an inch ahead of the receiver well he didn't know exactly what in the hell to do and he brought it in visited with with our instructor bill prater and you could see evidently that there was something that extra obstructed the muzzle of the barrel about an inch about an inch from the muzzle and there was an impression of some sort there was nothing there then after the fact but there was something when it happened and we believed it to be a bullet was obstructing the muzzle of the barrel about an inch or so back from the muzzle now how would this be the only way this could really happen is that we had a very mild charge of some kind and it ran the bullet up the barrel to that point and stopped because it ran out of it ran out of go power well anyway bill prater and i took the barrel off the action and you could feel you could feel just ever ever so slightly before we did this you know that there was something going on there the pressure released itself if the pressure could have built higher it would have blown the action there's an fn mouse reaction made in belgium and bill prater built the rifle for the man a number of years before because bill been there for many many years but anyway we checked out this action and we determined by looking down down in the down in the action once we got the barrel out down to locking lugs that there was an ever so slight setback of the bolt now all the fn mauser and mouse reactions are made in a different way and are hardened in a different way they basically have a milder core and a surf and a surface hardening hardening a case hardening type of a situation now both bill and i determined that the action was still safe because it only set that set those lugs back about something a little over a half of a thousand now if it set that back two or three or four thousands we would we would have said no because the actual hardness surface hardness you know would have been would have been you know a condition with that much setback where it would have basically ruined the quality of the action so we re-barreled it we re re-barreled it and did a little bit of lap on the lugs and whatnot because when a when a lug section sets back and you go to open up a bolt the bolts got to kind of jump over that little high spot because it sets back the lug sex back right in the lug so as you turn the turn the bolt handle up you're going to have a little tiny bit of a catch and we worked that off of there so it didn't we we didn't feel a catch and whatnot and i would imagine that the if that rifle still around somewhere the man wouldn't be anymore because he'd be up you know 120 years old by now uh anyway that rifle is probably still in use somewhere now we've got other situations when i first started building 338 by four or four wapiti expresses there was a fellow that i knew we graduated from high school together and he had had somebody it had somebody barrel a mouserax in the 338 winchester and he knew that something was wrong he knew that something was wrong i don't know whether it was a sixth sense or what it was but he knew that something was wrong with that barreling job of that rifle and he came to me with the idea having it rechambered to 338 by 404 wapiti express and in in that in that situation i took the barrel off he says i don't think there's i think there's something wrong with the chamber oh boy did i find something wrong when i took this barrel off a mouse reaction is designed for the barrel to shoulder up against an inner what is described as a headspace ring and the barrel should also shoulder up or if the front of the action isn't totally square should just barely clear the front of the axe in the shoulder of the barrel well that's not what was done folks that barrel lacked one eighth of an inch of coming back and shouldering up against the inner headspace ring now i'm going to tell you what this amounts to this amounts to an unsupported case head and if he'd fired the rifle it would have blown the case would have blown the action probably wouldn't have blown but it would have damaged the rifle somehow who knows exactly nobody would really want to know but anyway i had him take it to the fellow that he'd taken it to and he told him about it oh he says that's not a problem at all the guys didn't have a clue he'd actually sent it to somebody else to have it done i fell in the air you hear this is a very very serious situation this is i'm gonna i'm gonna talk at this on this at length about an unsupported case now we'll abandon that situation will go directly to another situation i learned here just a short time ago just a few weeks ago of a blow up that happened to a friend of mine here in the area that i've done very a considerable amount of work for this happened with a factory a factory winchester model 70. it was a model 70 364 and 270. now if you know anything about a pre-64 model 70s or model 70 control round feeds they've got a cone breech now when you when you chamber a barrel and you fed a barrel up to a model 70 it should clear the end of the bolt that the taper on the bolt that cone should clear the bolt but only around five to eight thousands or so well unbeknownst to this fella somebody somebody at winchester not only cut the tapered cone but cut somewhat of another taper and the case was unsupported and the gun blew up in pieces the guy went to town he had a bloody bloody nose i'm talking about a bloody nose from from fragments he had on shooting glasses primer fragments and all sorts of brass fragments and one thing another came back and peppered his nose and he was bleeding he was bleeding where he had his nose peppered and the doctor dug pieces out pieces of shrapnel out of his nose well anyway this is an unsupported situation we've got a lot of folks out here amateurs that are doing gunsmithing that are paying attention to this aspect the case has to be supported if you ever section the case you find out how thick that head of that case is from the base of the case to the inside of the capacity now that solid what is described as the solid thick portion of the case has to be supported in the chamber if it's not supported in the chamber it clears that then we've got case thin wall part of the case where the bot where the capacity starts in the bottom of the capacity of the case unsupported and this is why that it blows the case that blew was winchester nickel cases i saw the case i saw the case i never got to see the rifle the action was okay a new barrel was put on it a new stock was provided and the man uses this this rifle now you've got to understand here this is a blow up from an unsupported situation not blowing and shattering an action on one thing another many years ago ackley performed tests on all sorts of actions and purposely blew actions up to find out what they would stand in the way of pressure acting knew what he was doing he rested that gun on a tire strapped it on a tire and walked back 30 feet with a string and pulled the trigger determining the strength of actions you can read about these things in acne's volumes acnes volume 1 volume 2 you can read about these aspects done by ackley years ago there have been many situations over the years now it's been something like a couple of months ago all of a sudden i hear from somebody and the guy i could tell right off the bat that the guy was a know-it-all besides being a you know an inexperienced person to do with loading and he wanted to share something very exciting with me that you know you can load you can load with such and such powder a 264 winchester magnum and get 3250 feet a second out of 140 grain bullet well i know better than this and right away what drew my attention was the was the amount of the powder charge and the powder well i checked this all out myself i have a 264 winchester i knew that the powder charge was way over something like eight nine grains over over pressure which would have created at least thirty thousand pounds of pressure and lock the gun up totally would have been taking apart the barrel putting the vice and action taken off of it to even open up to even get the gun open and he was all excited to tell me about this particular load well the reason i'm telling you about this is because we've got people out here on these various forums and whatnot to do with the internet that are talking and that's what they are is just a bunch of talk they don't know what they're doing it's hearsay it's things that haven't been tested and they're suggesting this and they're suggesting that and something else you see that you can do and things that you can load don't accept any load information unless you know it's coming from a reliable source from a reloading manual or somebody that's very experienced such as myself and you know there's really no substitute there's really no substitute for understanding what these things are all about and following proper procedure and paying attention if the velocity sounds considerably high and the powder charge is considerably high it quite likely is check it out for yourself i checked it all out for myself i happened to had some of the powder and i said i've got a 264 rifle i reduced the charge eight grains eight grains and when i fired that charge in my 264 i didn't bother to check any velocity because i knew it wouldn't give the velocity that i was looking for i measured my case before i fired the case measured the case head with my micrometer and i measured my case head with my micrometer afterwards and i got one half a thousandths expansion with a charge eight grains less than what this guy was toting he's just nothing but a bunch of hot air and anyway you need to pay attention what somebody is suggesting to do with loads don't take it for for what they're saying if it doesn't sound right if it looks like a lot it looks like a lot of velocity because it probably is a hell of a lot of velocity and on dial he probably would have got that kind of velocity that he was talking about and probably considerably more but depending on the rifle depending on the rifle it would probably set the lugs back because the pressure had to bend somewhere up there and 90 to 100 000 pounds of a load that he was suggesting now you can't reliably load any rifle any rifle cartridges much over around the 65 65 67 000 pounds and expect there not to be any problems there would have been one hell of a problem and a real real surprise the real surprises that have happened to these people that have had these guns blow where there's no case support because there's a big light that goes off folks there's a great big light that goes off all of a sudden everything lights up and you smell powder and you're surprised to no end yeah you don't need to experience the big light to go off and have a gun blow up or ruin your life or kill you for that matter and for crying out loud don't clean your rifle from the muzzle and leave them leave a cleaning rod in it pay attention to publish loading information reliable information and follow what i've said previously how to measure pressure and check for pressure and use a chronograph simultaneously along with your loads and carefully work up loads and you'll stay out of trouble but you're going to get in trouble if you take some of this misinformation coming out on some of these forms and one thing another as gospel because it's most likely a bunch of bs about 1970 i had a friend that had a blow up he blew his six millimeter ruger 77 an early ruger 77 rifle the action held but it wrecked the rifle it was unusable the guy tried to sue bill ruger well he took on the wrong man he didn't want to take on bill ruger on the situation like that this fella had been loading either 43.50 or hodgson's 4831 in a six millimeter remington and this is what he'd been loading he evidently was kind of scatterbrained the particular day and he inadvertently loaded 40 64. now 4064 is a considerably a lot faster so the change same change same charge of 4064 as you've been using 4831 caused this problem and nearly all these problems are caused by negligence not thinking not paying attention and one thing another another situation that i just learned of here something over a month ago i felt that is a patron just subscriber to our youtube he got a hold of me and he had a rifle blow up quite a serious situation that just wrecked the entire stock the scope one thing another now this fellow did his own kind of investigative work and figured out that he was the cause of it he was shooting at 300 winchester magnum and he'd been loading imr 8133 not imr but but reloader 8133 anyway he was throwing his part of charges and then weighing them on a scale and trinkling you know well previous to this loading of this rifle he loaded some rounds for another gun i don't know what it was with cfe powder now this is a real real fast very very fast burning powder when he finished loading with the cfe powder he evidently didn't get some of the powder 15 grains or something like that out of that powder measure but when he threw a charge with a powder measure along came the cfe along with the other powder it was just one round there was no other rounds it was that one and only round because he went and investigated things and there was nothing else and he thought back and figured out that there when he knew had had no idea how much of that cfe was in the case along with this other powder now he sent me pictures of the gun sent me pictures of the case and he got he got primer fragments and case fragments and one thing another in his face and one thing another lucky didn't get it in an eye but anyway he had to have that attended to at er the emergency room and he figured these things out well and of course there was kind of a big light went off for that guy too when that happened now see there was pressure that was released in this situation because the actual yield of the brass there's a section of the head of the case the very head of the case that's blowing out and this is what set fragments back into the man's face this is a very very very serious situation now here's where i'm headed with this if you're using a powder measure you always make damn damn sure that you get all the powder out of the measure by flipping the handle four or five times and no more powder comes out the next thing you do you always always look down in the tube of the measure to make sure there's not some powder there somewhere make damn good and sure that there's no powder because it could surprise you just like it surprised this fella now here's another aspect to do with this same thing we have people loading ammunition and then they figure out that you know maybe their load is too hot or one thing another and they pull bullets and they dump powder out they dump powder out of these cases or they get ammunition from somebody and they're not sure of the loads and they pull bullets and they dump powder well here's another scenario that's being created that's fine pull your ammunition down but every damn case that you dump powder out of you take a flashlight and you shine it down in the case to make sure that there's no more powder left in the case because if you just simply take those cases and load them from that point forward the primer still in the case you haven't checked a fairly narrow screwdriver that's long enough can be run down in the case and wiggled around and break any of this powder loose there when you're dumping powder charges now there's situations where powder has been loaded in the case and it's loaded compressed well compressed powder charge is okay in of itself is provided it's not an overload it may be a very very accurate but when you're pulling bullets and one thing another you always need to make very sure that all the powder is out of the case and another thing take the case and tap it take the case and tap it on something hard to jar that powder loose run your screwdriver down in there take a a small flashlight and shine down in there and make sure that there's absolutely not one bit of powder that you could mix with some other powder and create a problem all these things are basically all avoidable if you pay attention and you think first but if you don't pay attention and you don't think first one day you're gonna have the big light go off just like it has with people that blow these things up so you know there have been people over the years actually situation where people have been killed and one thing another because of their negligence not paying attention i'm offering this a sage advice for you to understand that you need to pay attention to all these factors don't assume because you turn the case upside down you know that all the powder's gone a friend of mine told this to another friend of ours here not too long ago well when did you start doing that he says well the first time i ever pulled any bullets you know when i started loading 50 60 years ago i just simply ought to just common sense check to see if there was no more powder left in the case you two you need to do the same thing okay you

Channel: The Real Gunsmith

Views: 24,855

Keywords: case malfunction, rifle blow up, safe reloading, clean cases, the real gunsmith, randy selby, gunsmithing, reloading

Id: W4UOSWJ0fcE

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021