From full house to catastrophic detonation

[WestKentucky]

I have seen and heard plenty stories and pictures over the years from doublecharges to squibs, usually with reloads or plugged barrels. What would happen in various overload scenarios starting from a stiff recoil and no damage load all the way up to a full kablooey? Splitting shells, minor gun damage, and more. Let's keep it at a simple one round issue rather than chase rabbits. Let's stay with handgun and rifle cartridges. Action type is wide open on either.

 

[orionengnr]

Early in my handloading career, I managed to double-charge a .45acp case using W231. At least, that's my theory. Didn't catch it, and fired it in a steel framed Commander-sized 1911.

It was a noticeably stout recoil with report to match. I felt what was probably small pieces of brass and a bit of powder on my face, and was afraid to look at my hand for a second or so. When you were a kid, ever have one of those 1 1/2" salutes blow up in your hand? Felt a bit like that. The cartridge blew out at the base (not really split, more like can-openered) about 1/3 of the diameter--the part facing the ejection port. Blew the mag clean out (destroyed, BTW), split both handgrips (nice wooden ones, grrrr).

After careful disassembly and inspection, there was no other damage (except to my pride, the grips and mag).

Learned a valuable lesson that day.

 

[bldsmith]

Had a squib on some reloads from my father. Who knows were he got them. Luckily it jammed the slide and the bullet was stuck in such a way to prevent a second round from chambering. No damage to the brand new HK 45c I had just bought.

Second one I saw, a Dan Wesson 357 6 or 7" barrel can't recall for sure. It had a bullet stuck in the barrel. He was trying to reduce the powder to a lighter load. We started drilling them out. There were 7 (seven) bullets stuck in the barrel. Yes you read it right. Not only was the guy oblivious shooting and not seeing where the bullet went. He actually reloaded. Well I guess these were a bit too light.

 

[MikeJackmin]

https://www.google.com/search?q=kaboom+ammunition&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=-gQEU5z3LpDvoATi34K4DQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg&biw=1536&bih=676

 

[Double_J]

I wanna play...first one was an overcharge of HP 38 in a 1911 with a 230 grain bullet. That one blew the mag out, warped the chamber, and sent powder and brass into my buddy's face.

My time was a squib load with a 200 grain swc. I had loaded a batch of ammo and did not notice that one round did not get a full powder charge. I was shooting at some empty water bottles and one round was a little "soft." I stopped and stripped the pistol down; and the barrel was plugged with a 200 grain bullet. I drove it out with a long shank screwdriver I had in the back of my truck (don't ask, I still don't know why it was there). I did not have any more issues with the rest of that batch of ammo.

Both my buddy and I changed how we load; now we do a "buddy check" on all ammo before seating the bullet on the charged case, in addition to a final weight check on the scale. Hopefully one of those checks will find a bad round before it gets shot.

 

[AK103K]

I had an M1 fire out of battery during a match and catastrophically fail. Bolt was driven into the rear of the receiver, blowing the back of it off at the serial number and a big chunk out of the stock.

Ammo was factory/issue LC 69.

Lucky for me, it happened during the slow fire prone string and the gun wasnt in my shoulder when it went. If it had happened during the rapid fire strings, I probably would have got that piece of receiver in my head.

Scary thing is, Id got a couple of "doubles" in those rapid fire strings and thought it was just me, as the gun was new (new to me, it was a DCM gun Id just got) and I might have milked the trigger, which isnt uncommon with M1's, although I never really had the issue before. When my brass was recovered later, there were a couple of pieces with the necks blown out, so it was happening prior to it cutting loose.

I walked away with a nice "L" shaped tear and a half dozen stitches in the palm of my hand, the base of the case burned into it as well, and some hearing loss.