Clark,
I posted this on another board, but the thread was locked.
Could you respond to it here?
There are a couple of ways a gun can fail.
It can blow up.
It can wear out.
The stronger locking arrangement of the CZ-52 means it should last longer with hotter ammo than the Tokarev as long as one doesn't load the ammo hot enough to rupture the chamber walls.
Furthermore, there is more to safety than simply ensuring the gun doesn't blow up.
If the action opens too quickly, that can cause a dangerous situation. The CZ-52 locking arrangement should ensure that the action stays closed longer than the Tokarev with hot ammo, again assuming that the ammunition isn't loaded so hot that it actually blows the gun into pieces.
In other words, the fact that the yield strength of the CZ-52 chamber is lower than that of the Tok doesn't mean that the Tok is a better pistol. It simply means that it has a thicker chamber wall. The CZ is still safer than the Tok with hot loads (as long as the loads aren't so hot that they can rupture the chamber.)
I guess what I'm saying is that the test doesn't really provide any information that's useful in the real world unless you plan to shoot proof loads.
The pics I've seen of CZ-52 blowups,show the slides fractured at the locking roller cutouts (just what you'd expect). I've not seen a pic of a CZ with a blown out chamber (other than what Clark posted).
Clark,
I'm not sure that the electronic example holds true here. What leads to electronic failure is thermal problems. All the parts get hot, if one gets too hot, it fails before the others. So, if you get them all hotter, the one that gets the hottest still probably fails first, but faster.
When you shoot a gun, it eventually wears out. However, even a heavily used gun isn't likely to blow up from normal pressure ammo. Springs relax, pivots wallow out, levers bend or break, metal wears at friction points and the fit gets sloppy. But, it's EXTREMELY rare to have a gun blow up just because it's been shot a lot.
So, when you overload a round and blow out the chamber, what are you really finding out about the gun? You certainly don't know what's going to wear out first. I think you don't really know a whole lot more about it than you did before...
Here's what you know:
1. If you overload this gun enough, the chamber will blow out. (That's any gun, and you knew that before you started.)
2. You know the pressure (or can estimate the pressure) that it takes to blow out the chamber--ok, but unless you intend to shoot ammo that approaches that pressure that's not going to be an issue.
Here's a consideration that may have been missed in all this. The Tok, when fired with hot loads, is just going to unlock faster which will beat the pistol to death and maybe cause a case blowout. The CZ locking arrangement is going to hold the action closed, preventing a case blowout, but putting extra stress on the chamber by not relieving the pressure by prematurely opening.
What do you think?
John