Ammo Maker: Our Bullets Blew Up Guns

[funnybone]

Ammo Maker: Our Bullets Blew Up Guns
By Merissa Green
The Ledger
Write an email to Merissa GreenMerissa Green
Winter Haven/Lake Alfred Reporter
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WINTER HAVEN | The company that manufactures the ammunition for the .45-caliber GAP Glock Model 37 is taking responsibility for guns exploding during two separate training incidents, slightly injuring a Winter Haven police officer and a former police cadet.

A spokesman for Speer Gold Dot, the manufacturer of the ammunition, said Thursday that a batch of bullets sent to the Winter Haven department was defective.

Speer Gold Dot said after the first incident in January 2007 it recalled the bullets sent to Winter Haven but that some of the ammunition remained at the department and was used when the second incident occurred earlier this year.

Winter Haven Police Chief Mark LeVine confirmed Thursday that Speer Gold Dot had recalled the bullets after the first failure. He said some of the ammunition was kept unknowingly and a bullet from that batch was involved in the second explosion.

LeVine said he's not convinced that the ammunition was the only problem and he still has concerns about the Glock handguns.

LeVine told The Ledger on Wednesday that the department was discontinuing use of the GAP Glock Model 37 because of concerns about safety.

A Glock spokesman on Wednesday said the company stood by the quality of its products, but that it hadn't been able to examine the firearms in the Winter Haven incidents and could not say whether there were any problems with them.

Glock has said that any problems with its firearms are the result of the ammunition in use or poor maintenance of the weapons.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Speer Gold Dot said the bullets, not the guns, caused the Winter Haven explosions.

"I made 500 bad cartridges and I shipped them to the Winter Haven Police Department," said Ernest Durnham, cartridge engineer for Speer.

"If I had a problem with my product, then I'll be completely honest with my customer," he said. "And I think that's why Speer Gold is the No. 1 market leader."

Durham said he reviewed quality-control records and concluded the batch the Winter Haven Police Department received should not have been sent.

The Winter Haven Police Department was the only law enforcement agency to receive the bad ammunition, he said.

"The goal of any factory is to have zero defects," Durham said. "My ammunition defect rate is less than 1 in 50 million."

In the Winter Haven incidents, police Officer Frank Scianimanico, 32, and Rodrique Jean-Louis, 20, a former cadet at the Polk Community College Kenneth C. Thompson Institute of Public Safety, suffered bruised fingers. The first occurred in January 2007 and the second in January this year.

LeVine sent a memo in February to his officers saying they could use their own weapons, as long as they met the department's requirements, until the agency buys replacements.

The Police Department will test other weapons next week.

Some agencies have reported problems with Glock products and others have said they have not encountered any problems.

The Portland, Ore., Police Department was once involved in litigation with Glock after two .45-caliber Glock Model 21 pistols exploded in the hands of two officers, Portland Police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said.

City officials there spent a lot of money to investigate the matter but have since resolved the issue with Glock and the department now uses a 9mm Glock.

"Our training division was satisfied with the transition," he said. "(Glock) accepted no liability for what occurred so we moved on."

In a separate litigation, one of the injured Portland police officers filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Glock and the ammunition manufacturer. The lawsuit hasn't been resolved.

The Polk County Sheriff's Office switched to a Glock .40-caliber Model 22 pistol, and there haven't been any incidents with it, said spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers.


http://www.theledger.com/article/20080314/NEWS/803140389/1134

 

[.cheese.]

The company that manufactures the ammunition for the .45-caliber GAP Glock Model 37

Funny, I didn't know there was only one. CCI/Speer developed it along with Glock, but to date, you can buy Winchester Ranger .45 GAP, Corbon JHP as well as PowRBall in .45 GAP, and there are multiple companies making it in FMJ.

Speer Gold Dot, the manufacturer of the ammunition,

Somebody send me the memo when these companies change names. Until now I was operating under the erroneous impression that CCI/Speer Ammunition was the name of the company and that Gold Dot is the product. Actually, to be honest, I was so off base that I thought CCI/Speer was a subdivision of ATK, which would really be the actual company, just like how Dr. Pepper/Seven up has the Sunkist subdivision.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Speer Gold Dot said the bullets, not the guns, caused the Winter Haven explosions.

"I made 500 bad cartridges and I shipped them to the Winter Haven Police Department," said Ernest Durnham, cartridge engineer for Speer.

I tend to doubt that the "bullets" had anything to do with this. It would have been better to refer to it as "ammunition".

In a separate litigation, one of the injured Portland police officers filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Glock and the ammunition manufacturer.

How was this Glock's fault?

Look, something happened here. I will give them that. It's worth looking into. However, if there is one thing I hate, it's 5th grader quality reporting.

 

[RyanM]

It's a fact. The national literacy rate is dropping like a stone. Lowered standards in journalism is the inevitable result. Otherwise, over half the population wouldn't be able to read the paper.

In other news, Hostess Twinkies was sued over the wrongful death of some guy.

 

[Wes Janson]

Does anyone else find it really weird that they've got the individual engineer supposedly responsible for 500 "bad cartridges" giving a public apology here? Does anyone even make ammunition in batches of 500 anyways?

This whole apology thing sounds awfully unusual to me...

 

[akodo]

what are the chances Glock leaned heavily on Speer because as of late no one mentions the ammo maker, just the gun maker. A kaBoom paints Glock in a very bad light, if they can get Speer to take the heat, all types of glocks are off the hot seat

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

As much as I think the .45 GAP is a wildcat cartridge that is doomed to failure as an answer to a question nobody asked, I'm very inclined to believe it's an ammo problem. Maybe they had an assembly line that started throwing double charges (or just a grain too much) and QC didn't catch it.

 

[PercyShelley]

I would hate to repeat unsubstantiated rumors, but doesn't the partially unsupported chamber of a glock make it more liable to fly apart in the even of a KB?

 

[Robert Hairless]

PercyShelley:

I would hate to repeat unsubstantiated rumors, but doesn't the partially unsupported chamber of a glock make it more liable to fly apart in the even of a KB?

Don't be so modest. You shouldn't hate to repeat unsubstantiated rumors. You have a talent for it.

There's an unsubstantiated rumor that Percy Bysshe Shelley was the illegitimate son of George Gordon Byron and Ada Lovelace, which led him to change his name to Charles Babbage so he could invent an analytical engine. It's at least as good as your unsubstantiated rumor and much more fun. Pass it on.

 

[230RN]

I don't know. I've always felt that the .45 GAP was loaded too close to some critical loading density.

Sure, you look down a .45 ACP case with a whole 4-5 grains of powder and you could wonder why there's all that extra volume in there, and why can't we shorten the case?

So you do, and maybe to discourage reloading, you use a rebated rim and small primer and I keep hearing stories about the .45 GAP disassembling guns.

Didn't the San Francisco PD have the same problems about a year ago?

Never fired one, never reloaded for it, it just strikes me that it's too heavily loaded for the volume involved. Like, one extra flake of powder or one extra degree Fahrenheit, or one grain too heavy a bullet, or one thousandth too small a chamber, or maybe all four one fine day, and you've got a detonation instead of progressive burning.

If I recall correctly, when it came out, the American Rifleman review of it went on for quite a bit about how they had put in all kinds of extra quality controls and quality feedback mechanisms in loading the cartridges. Maybe because they knew it was too hot a load?

Anyone else think that it's laoded too close to some critical point?

 

[.cheese.]

I would hate to repeat unsubstantiated rumors, but doesn't the partially unsupported chamber of a glock make it more liable to fly apart in the even of a KB?

Glock chambers are now fully supported and have been for some time. They no longer make the cut in the chamber end of the barrel during the manufacturing process. So, yes, that is nothing more than rumor these days.

 

[krimmie]

Here's a couple Glock employees going to discuss things with Speer.

 

[Firethorn]

Does anyone else find it really weird that they've got the individual engineer supposedly responsible for 500 "bad cartridges" giving a public apology here? Does anyone even make ammunition in batches of 500 anyways?

It doesn't seem especially weird to me, especially for a caliber that's not in the top 10. They probably do individual batches for police departments. Limits the number they have to recall if something like this occurs.

Set the equipment up, run off 500+a few, perform all checks(reason for the +a few), label, stamp with a batch number, perform necessary recording.

If you want to keep producing more, verify all equipment is still within tolerances and run off another 'batch'.

Checks I'd see would include visual verification of good round construction and properly placed primer, a length check for proper bullet insertion, weigh each round(using an automated machine) to see if it's in tolerances to catch things like double or light loadings. Destructive tests would be disassembling one and measuring the charge and verify nothing else funky is happening. The second destructive test would be to actually load 1-3 up and test fire them.

Of course, all this would result in premium ammunition. I expect a number of the tests don't happen for cheaper ammunition. And batch sizes would indeed be larger.