Blowup Stories

sheepdip

Found this surfing:

http://www.leverguns.com/articles/taylor/blowups.htm

The Load Room

Very refreshing info for us reloaders!
I took the top chamber out of a 12 gauge Savage O/U 30 years ago with my own reloads, I was dribbling parafin wax over the crimps to keep em dry and ... bad news blew the forarm apart and left hand hit my leg very hard, felt like a baseball bat to my forhead, was seeing stars for 10 minutes or so, couldn't hear my buddy talking to me for about a half day (no burst eardrums luckily)Gods grace is all I can attribute survival to. [:)]



"Yeah but will it hold up in court?" TLR

knucklehead14

I have been looking for the gunblast website for the longest time. Their link is on the page in your post. I forgot their name and have tried everything to remember it. They have a fantastic review on s&w k22 masterpiece guns along with a huge amount more of great info.

Bad spellers of the world

"UNTIE!"

cajunman

I blew up a Savage double barrel when I was 17. I was firing it from the hip and the left barrel exploded at the chamber sending shrapnel through my left wrist and forearm. It was about -5 degrees and I was bleeding profusely. Lucky for me there had been an automobile accident at the entrance to the wildlife area and I was taken to the Hospital by ambulance.

This accident was caused by an overload that I constructed. When I was 15 I purchased a used LEE Loader from a local Sporting Goods Store and it was missing the instructions, unknown to me at the time. The Clerk sold me some powder, Herco, and some Alcan Air wedge wads. He told me to cut open a factory load and pour that powder into the measure supplied and to use the same amount of Herco in my reloads. Years later after purchasing a shotshell manual what I read made me realize just how lucky I was not to have blown up the shotgun earlier. I had fired those reloads for several years before the explosion. I am not a religious person but before the explosion I had never fired a gun form the hip before, something told to to shoot it from the hip that day.

Cajunman

Ray B

a blew-up I am aware of was caused by purchasing powder at a gunshow-It was in a 4831 can and the seller said that was what it was. the reloader was not familiar with what 4831 looks like so didn't know any different. He loaded 20 30-30 cases to the neck, seated 170 gr bullets. Went to the range. On firing the first one the gun, a Marlin 336 looked somewhat like the one in the photo. Turns out the powder was Bullseye and the calculated pressure in the chamber was somewhere around 250K, slightly more than the 45K it was designed for.

1911a1-fan

i have seen two 1911's get ruined with bad hand loads last summer

one was at the Indiana state match, the guy that shot right before me had a double charge in a load, the gun exploded blew the grips off and magazine out, cut the guy pretty good, but the gun appeared to survive

second one was another local match, a friend of mine loaded a squib load for himself, during the course of fire, and under the stress of time, he taped racked banged, right into the bullet lodged in the barrel, all it did was make the barrel inside the slide look like a foot ball, i later teased him he now has that case gauge he wanted

I.Shute

I was pulling into the spot out in the boonies where we shoot and saw one guy shooting an M-1 offhand just as it disintegrated.
The bolt was still all together, but blew back about 2/3 of the way without unlocking, spread the action, blew out the bottom and splintered a lot of wood.
He had some chunks of brass in his upper left arm, but otherwise just shook up.

We asked what ammo he was using and he said he had three partial cans of '06 powder, all different and dumped them together.

I have a 2 quart can of ammo he had loaded and glued a note on top saying "Loaded by Mr.Abcxxx. Pull bullets, dump powder in garden".
(I x-out some names and numbers to be polite)