longdayjake
Member
Blew up a Kahr UPDATED WITH PICS AND A SEMI FUNCTIONAL FIREARM!!!
I will get pictures soon, but for now I will just tell you the story. Yesterday, an experienced reloader and friend of mine loaded up a bunch of .40 on my press but before he did I warned him that it is possible to double charge a casing on a progressive press if you don't make full strokes. The dies that he brought had the primers sticking to the decapping pin and it was binding up the press. I mentioned to him that he should be really careful when that happens as you tend to focus more on the stage that is binding then on any of the other stages. My guess is that he was activating the powder drop too many times as he was trying to get a primer out. Well, you can see where this is going.
So, he tells me that he wants to shoot a couple hundred through his Khar to break it in because he knew that it had some feeding issues and he wanted to be able to depend on it for concealed carry. He said he just felt uneasy about carrying it and not having it work properly. So, after he loaded about 200 rounds, he started shooting his Kahr. He was having some ejection and feeding issues so he decided to try them through his glock 22. The glock cycled perfectly well and all of them were accurate and consistent. Except for the last one in the mag. I was watching him shoot it and noticed that there was a considerably louder bang and the casing flew about 15 feet behind him and almost hit me. I picked up the casing and noticed that it had almost failed where the chamber was unsupported. I told him that he definately had an overcharge and that he had just dodged a bullet. He decided that the odds of another overcharge was unlikely and decided to switch over to the Kahr. I should have known better and told him to pull the bullets, but I figured that since he was older and more experienced than me, he knew what he was doing. Well, after a few mags his luck ran out. Let me just say that I got chills when I heard the boom and then heard him swear really loud.
The Kahr actually held up really really well. There was a case head separation in which we think the case head flew up and hit him just under his eyebrow (like half an inch from his eye ball). He now has a black eye this morning. The gun itself has most of a casing stuck in the chamber and other brass pieces stuck in the mag well. We couldn't get the slide off, but by all appearances it is not cracked. There is a side plate on the Kahr frame that popped off and hit him in the hand. No blood. Just bruises. The extractor is gone -who knows where. Once we can get the slide off and I get the gun in my possession I will take some pictures and post them.
Anyway, the load that he was using was 180 grain flat points loaded with 4.8 grains of w231. The problem that I keep running through my mind is that a double charge of w231 should have blown up the glock right? Is it possible that the powder measure only dumped an extra grain or two and not an entire 4.8 more grains? I guess if he was only pulling the lever part way it may not have dumped the whole charge. But I would like to know what you guys think in relation to how much damage a double charge of w231 would do.
UPDATE: I was able to get it apart and it looks as though the gun held together VERY well. The only damage that I could find was the scratching in the polymer frame from the brass. It seems to function perfectly! He is sending it into Kahr to have them look it over and if it is all good he will have them put a new extractor in it.
Here are the pictures of it after I put it back together. Looks fine except for a missing extractor.
I will get pictures soon, but for now I will just tell you the story. Yesterday, an experienced reloader and friend of mine loaded up a bunch of .40 on my press but before he did I warned him that it is possible to double charge a casing on a progressive press if you don't make full strokes. The dies that he brought had the primers sticking to the decapping pin and it was binding up the press. I mentioned to him that he should be really careful when that happens as you tend to focus more on the stage that is binding then on any of the other stages. My guess is that he was activating the powder drop too many times as he was trying to get a primer out. Well, you can see where this is going.
So, he tells me that he wants to shoot a couple hundred through his Khar to break it in because he knew that it had some feeding issues and he wanted to be able to depend on it for concealed carry. He said he just felt uneasy about carrying it and not having it work properly. So, after he loaded about 200 rounds, he started shooting his Kahr. He was having some ejection and feeding issues so he decided to try them through his glock 22. The glock cycled perfectly well and all of them were accurate and consistent. Except for the last one in the mag. I was watching him shoot it and noticed that there was a considerably louder bang and the casing flew about 15 feet behind him and almost hit me. I picked up the casing and noticed that it had almost failed where the chamber was unsupported. I told him that he definately had an overcharge and that he had just dodged a bullet. He decided that the odds of another overcharge was unlikely and decided to switch over to the Kahr. I should have known better and told him to pull the bullets, but I figured that since he was older and more experienced than me, he knew what he was doing. Well, after a few mags his luck ran out. Let me just say that I got chills when I heard the boom and then heard him swear really loud.
The Kahr actually held up really really well. There was a case head separation in which we think the case head flew up and hit him just under his eyebrow (like half an inch from his eye ball). He now has a black eye this morning. The gun itself has most of a casing stuck in the chamber and other brass pieces stuck in the mag well. We couldn't get the slide off, but by all appearances it is not cracked. There is a side plate on the Kahr frame that popped off and hit him in the hand. No blood. Just bruises. The extractor is gone -who knows where. Once we can get the slide off and I get the gun in my possession I will take some pictures and post them.
Anyway, the load that he was using was 180 grain flat points loaded with 4.8 grains of w231. The problem that I keep running through my mind is that a double charge of w231 should have blown up the glock right? Is it possible that the powder measure only dumped an extra grain or two and not an entire 4.8 more grains? I guess if he was only pulling the lever part way it may not have dumped the whole charge. But I would like to know what you guys think in relation to how much damage a double charge of w231 would do.
UPDATE: I was able to get it apart and it looks as though the gun held together VERY well. The only damage that I could find was the scratching in the polymer frame from the brass. It seems to function perfectly! He is sending it into Kahr to have them look it over and if it is all good he will have them put a new extractor in it.
Here are the pictures of it after I put it back together. Looks fine except for a missing extractor.
Last edited:
