Smokeless Powder ML Failure
 

Did you guys see this? The guy really messed up his hand. I don't know much about this gun or the reccommended charge but he claims to have been shooting 42.5 grains of IMR 4759 with 250 grain barnes bullet when it happened.



Check out more pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/tfprocte...11921237988674

From the location of the bulge it appears the bullet was not seated or there was an obstruction...that is well forward of where the seated bullet would sit in the barrel. Under normal conditions the pressure would be well on its way down by the time the bullet got that far down the barrel. It's really hard to tell in these cases with limited information.

MTA: Possibly he had a misfire and re-primed without making sure the bullet was still seated firmly on the powder. Elsewhere they have information that this individual was a relative newbie to smokeless (under 100 shots). We'll never know what happened, if he double-charged the gun or otherwise screwed up he'd admit it about as freely as any man would admit to a cop that they were doing 30mph over the speed limit when an accident occurred.

Looks like a the guy failed to properly seat the sabot/bullet.

Not 100% positive but I believe that is a Savage. In fact I believe they are the only ones who allow the use of smokeless powder. Adn that load - if correct - was not all that much.
Probable causes are like the guys above said.

Or he double loaded and never realized it.

It this was a stock savage, which it appears to be, it is .50cal. Which means he was shooting with a sabot.

For those of you who don't know smokeless MLing, the sabot is a "safety valve". If you are using an appropriate powder (which he claims to have been) you will blow the sabot long before you endanger blowing the barrel. The sabot is the weak point, not the barrel.

This guy screwed something up and I think the location of the burst gives us a hint, as discussed previously.

savage is supposedly supposed to be built to handle a double load.

like all guns that blow up, You'll NEVER know the true story behind it.

spaniel
Have you thought about the possibility of a detonation? We really can not get enough information from what they gave us to determine anything, but you can not help noticing the equal split of both sides, if it was a barrel failure it would be very unusual for it to fail that way. An obstructed barrel or a detonation would fit that pattern though. Lee

Spaniel, Thanks for mentioning the possibility of not checking to see if the bullet moved forward after a misfire. That is one thing I never thought of. Don't remember ever seeing it in print either, but now that you get me thinking, I remember years ago when I served as a range officer on a pistol line, we would always try to stop a shooter after a misfire for this very reason.

Thanks again for a great safety tip.

My question is how can that scope look so good after that? I mean it looks brand new:happy0157:.

Definitely looks like it was short started and if misfired the load have moved as well.

You will never know unless you were there. There are so many programs like photoshop etc.. that can make things seem real as well.