Glock 23 KaBoom w/Wolf ammo

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I would make two observations ... :scrutiny:

Glock pistols, particularly in .40 caliber, are among the most popular guns around these days. They may seem to have more KA-BOOMS because of the total numbers that are in use. Simple math tells me the potential is there.

A barrel obstruction (bullet jacket or even a previously fired bullet) that was stuck in the bore could have played a part in this.

Before drawing any conclusions a lot more information is needed.
 
Glock pistols, particularly in .40 caliber, are among the most popular guns around these days. They may seem to have more KA-BOOMS because of the total numbers that are in use. Simple math tells me the potential is there
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This is the normal response.

Problem I have with it, is two things. One, what about the large PD's, that carry other than Glocks, and have never seen a Kaboom?

Two, those of us who've been shooting for 35 or more years, and have never seen a Kaboom with factory ammo in any other gun.

When I say Kaboom, I don't mean a blown primer, split grips, or cracked frame rail. I mean a catastrophic failure like I have only seen in a Glock.

I think if you check the numbers, Ruger has sold close to as many P series pistols as Glock has sold. Ever seen one blown up with a factory load?

Before the attacks start from Gaston's minions, why can't we just get some answers to these questions?
 
I have seen Kabooms in guns shooting factory ammo.

I've seen them in guns other than Glocks shooting handloads.

I've seen Kabooms in other guns, and I've only been shooting 10 years or so, with any regularity.

I wonder who's luckier -- you or me?

(And by KBs I mean damage to the gun such that it no longer functions. A bulged barrel is a Kaboom, as far as I'm concerned, if its in a semi-auto...)

Federal ammo was one culprit. The guns in question were those used by a local university's police department (who are full LEO, with the powers of other LEOs.) They were using SIGs, if I remember correctly. The Federal people replaced the guns and paid for the medical bills, which were minor. Apparently a lot of badly "hot" rounds were in that lot of ammo.

I almost had one in one of mine a couple of years ago, shooting CCI/Blazer.

I had what turned out to be a squib load that seemed somewhat "mild" but not noticeably different. Racked the slide and found all kinds of junk inside. Looked and saw that the barrel was blocked, with the bullet was lodged in the barrel about half-way. Had I been trying to do some fast shots (like double-taps), I might've had a problem. This was in a S&W 669. I had five other squibs in that same ammo lot, shooting it very carefully. I laid off CCI for several years after that, and returned half of the case to the place I bought it. (The range where I shoot used CCI as their range ammo, and they reported, at the time, a lot of quality control issues with CCI; that has not been the case for several years, now, and I've been using it a lot for the last couple of years.)

I've seen a Kaboom in a S&W 945, but the owner was new to handloading, and apparently did it wrong. His loading error. S&W had to replace the barrel. Cost the guy $200+. Bulged the barrel so badly, he couldnt disassemble gun.

I almost saw a kaboom in my Witness Sport Long Slide (.45), shooting CCI/Blazer factory ammo, recently. One round fired properly but I felt something on my face. Opened the slide, checked the barrel for obstruction, found nothing. Thought that maybe it had fired without the slide being fully closed. The spent casing seemed OK. Chambered another round and started to fire again, and had second thoughts. Disassembled the gun and found a BIG CRACK in the barrel around the underlug. Learned an important lesson from that. I don't know if that was ammo related, or just a defect in the barrel -- but I had shot that gun many, many times without problems.

The next shot may have been ugly. It might have been MORE UGLY had it been a high-pressure round like a .40.

I have no reason to think that the Glock kbs are disproportionately higher or lower than other guns. I have no way to assess, but know that problems get reported a lot more readily that successful experiences on forums like this. And I know, too, that a lot of folks have an emotional dislike of Glock guns and do everything they can to make them look bad.

I've seen a couple of Glock KBs. One Glock KB, was a gun owned by a friend had a Glock 22. He used reloads bought at a gun show (something I would never do), and he ended up with a destroyed gun and a badly stunned hand, but little other problems. What didn't kill him made him stronger, and made him especially sensitive to the questionable practice of buying reloads at a gun show from someone you don't know.

Kabooms happen. They happen with factory ammo. They happen with guns other than Glocks.
 
Well I have been shooting for well over a half-century ..., and am occasionally employed as a researcher within the industry as well.

Nope, I'm not particularly fond of Glock pistols either. Ruger does make a good pistol, but I don't think it's sold in anything close to Glock numbers.

I am aware of KA-BOOM's happening to Beretta's and Smith & Wesson's among others. This does not necessarily mean the pistols were at fault. Also they're have been cases of Police Department owned Glocks, as well as other makes being involved in similar incidents.

I am not defending Glock, except to point out that these incidents are very rare, given the number of guns that are in circulation, and the same can be said for other makes and models. In this instance I think too many are drawing conclusions without enough hard evidence or information to support them. Admittedly, the pistol could have been at fault, but how do we know?
 
Well, Fluff,

Everyone here likes to quote incidents by "a local PD", or a "large city agency", in the Massad Ayoob style. Let's get specific.

Since you're in Arizona, ask your DPS, the largest agency in AZ I believe, if they've ever seen a catastrophic failure in the Sigs they've been using for close to 20 years, before any agency in the state owned a Glock. Not a cracked rail, I mean hand grenade like blow up. Hint...I know the answer. If you need a name and contact number, PM me.

Meanwhile I can name several much smaller agencies in AZ that have seen it in their Glocks.

I'm really getting tired of all the internet commando BS on this subject. There's some kind of issue, and we'll never get to the bottom of it until we look at it.
 
Two, those of us who've been shooting for 35 or more years, and have never seen a Kaboom with factory ammo in any other gun.
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I fall into that "been shooting for 35+ years" category, and have never seen, first-hand, a catastrophic failure of ANY handgun. And I've fired about everything known to man, at some point or the other, both military and civilian.

Have seen some rather ugly pictures of Colts, Smith & Wessons, Rugers, Glocks, CZ's.... well, you get the idea.

All I can really say is that if I've just been lucky....may my luck continue to hold out.



J.C.
 
Nope, I'm not particularly fond of Glock pistols either. Ruger does make a good pistol, but I don't think it's sold in anything close to Glock numbers.
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And if Ruger hasn't sold at least 2/3rd's as many as Glock has, I'll buy you lunch. Those of us that are into guns forget that Ruger is the largest seller of sporting guns in the world, not to us "experts" but to Joe Average.
 
Let's put it this way. There has certainly been enough Rugers sold over the years that if they had Kaboom problems we would certainly have the stories posted here by someone. It does seem to come down to the vast majority of Kabooms being on Glock guns. Why? I dunno? But it's not just because they have sold more.

Example: Lets say we heard about 1 Ruger Kaboom to ever 8 Glock Kabooms. If Glock sold 8 times more guns than Ruger, then I could buy it being equal. The problem is, we don't hear about Ruger kabooms at all and, Glock hasn't sold 8 times more semi-auto's than Ruger.

So what's the deal? What are the other comparable factors between the two that could account for this phenomena?

Could it be the difference in intelligence of the average owner of each brand? I doubt Glock owners will say so. So if it's not because there are more Glocks and it's not the intelligence of their owners, what is left besides it being the gun itself?

Could it be that Glock owners actually shoot their guns more than Ruger owners? It's possible but, I doubt that's going to stick.

It seems you have to ask yourself, "what's the deal?"
 
Elmer:

Statistical information on Ruger's handgun production is relative easy to find. If you go to www.atf.com and its Statistical Section you will find production quantities listed by manufacturer, quantity and caliber through 2003, which is the last year information is posted.

An examination of the records provided therein show that Ruger produced between 36,041 or 36,021 center fire semi-automatic pistols that year, depending on how you compile the numbers. I don't think that 20 guns matter, but you can take your pick of the two totals.

Finding information on Glock is harder because ATF&E doesn't offer specific information on imports, and Glock pistols are imported.

However the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) offers Research & Statistics on imports by country. They show that Austria exported a total of 245,949 pistols and revolvers to the United States during 2003. Austrian companies, other then Glock (and to a much lesser degree, possibly Steyr-Mannlicher) exporting handguns from Austria to the United States would have been negligible at the time. I am unaware of any meaningful numbers of revolvers of any kind that were imported from Austria during 2003. So I feel safe in saying that the 245,949 figure is predominately Glock products.

So we have:

Imported into the United States from Austria = 245,949
Manufactured by Ruger = 36,041

Oh, and I usually get paid for looking up this sort of stuff. :D

I'm not saying that Glock's pistols, as well as others, haven't gone KA-BOOM! What I am saying is that we don't have enough specific evidence to say exactly why these incidents happened, or even if they were caused by the same circumstances. I'm not ready to jump to conclusions until I know a lot more then I do now.
 
It doesn't appear the polymer frame has anything to do with it.
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Probably not with the original KB, but with the failure of the polymer to contain the KB.
 
Ka-Booms

I bought a pair of G-23s in the couse of developing some high performance loads for customers, 135s@1500fps - 200s@1050 etc.
I soon noted the rapid wear of the recoil springs from the factory and insatlled #22lb Wolffs.
I believe the Glocks fire out of battery easily once the recoil spring softens and with the added crud build up in the barrels chamber...kaboom!
I've seen several g-23s that you could watch the slide move rearward slightly while pulling the trigger slowly.
 
Lunaslide,

I did a lot of research on KBs a couple years ago and although I can't provide yu with specific examples I remember finding examples of SIGs, Smiths, Rugers etc. KBing. Glock KBs were more prevelent but could be due to the massive number of Glocks being sold combined with that unsupported chamber.

Chris
 
It seems to me that we started hearing about KaBooms shortly after the .40 S&W cartridge became popular.

Has anyone besides me considered the possibility that putting a .40 S&W chamber in firearms designed around the parameters of the 9mm Luger cartridge may be a large factor in the KaBoom equation?

I realize that there have been many KaBooms in other calibers, but it seems that the .40 is out of porportion common.

Now before you say that there are more .40 caliber guns sold in a certain year think about the millions of other guns, sold in pervious years that are still going strong.

It doesnt matter that Glock sold a ginormous amount of guns in 199X.
You have to factor in the total amount of handguns out there that are in regular use.

For example the newest Handgun I own is my Colt Government made in 1994.
The next oldest is my S&W 544 made in 1986.

Why aren't we hearing about all of those old clunkers out there blowing up?
Why does it seem to be the modern designs and recent production guns that Kaboom more often?

It's more than just one gun manufacturer or ammunition company causing failures.
We may never know why they happen.

Every instance of a Kaboom MUST be judged on it's own merits.
Until more facts are gathered, untill more questions are asked and answered, we can only base our opinions on speculation.
We need to stop thinking what if and concentrate on what did.








ginormous jI-'nor-mus (adj-sniglet):
bigger than gigantic and larger than enormous
 
Well, Fluff, your documentation of the Glock numbers is a little weak, but I'm willing to concede that Glock imports quite a few more centerfire pistols than Ruger manufactured in the last few years.

However, Ruger's big days were the 80's and 90's for their P series. Even going back a couple of years in the stats shows Ruger manufacturing several times more than they did in 03. And Glock was not the powerhouse they are now back in the 80's.

But I'm still willing to concede that Glock obviously sells more far centerfire pistols in the US than Ruger does, and probably has for a number of years. But the difference is not as great as the skewed example you showed.

The point was, there's a ton of Rugers out there, and we don't see the Kaboom problem with them. Nor do we with the other popular pistols, in anywhere close to the numbers we see in Glock.
 
I've got 2 3rd gen Glocks. A 19 and a 23. When the 23 was introduced the only thing changed to accommodate the .40 cal was an additional pin to hold the gun together (correct me if I'm mistaken). So either the 19 was "over engineered" or the 23 is "under engineered". Consider other manufacturers that took steps to modify their 9mm platforms to except .40 cal.. Exp: Browning and Sig.

The recent frame exchanges concern me more than KB's. It seems like Glock considers important safety issues so frivilous as to not issue recalls.
 
I could be wrong with this but I have to think that too many people get the idea that they don't have to clean glocks/ak's/ ect. Like Ultima-ratio stated your recoil spring starts to weaken, cruded up chamber, firing out of battery, kb. Thats just my thought on it. I've been shooting a long time and never blown up a gun, I've seen it happen, wasn't a glock, but it dose happen.
 
It seems like Glock considers important safety issues so frivilous as to not issue recalls.
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Bite your tongue!

Glock doesn't have recalls.

They have "product updates".

:scrutiny:
 
The limited amount I've read says:

- Military surplus/remanufactured/handloaded ammunition is more prone (in general) to case failure
- Glocks, having a polymer frame, might not 'contain' a failure as well as other metal-framed firearms (steel surrounding steel being better protection for your hands and face than polymer surrounding steel)
- Glocks chambered for 9mm are more likely to 'contain' the failure than those chambered for higher calibers (.40 S&W, .45 ACP)

The unfortunate person in this thread was using a Glock 23 with Wolf ammo. I will venture a guess that Wolf is not manufactured to as high a standard as some US factory ammo.

I've also read something about 'unsupported barrels' in Glock pistols that might make already suspect ammo even more prone to case failure. I might be off base on that one, though.

None of this is going to keep me from purchasing a Glock 17 when funds are available. I don't shoot milsurp/remanufactured/handloaded 9mm ammo. US factory-made is plenty cheap already. Perhaps I'll regret the decision and be typing one-handed in the future. If so, you lot will be the first to know.

jmm
 
I remember one KB of a Browning Hi Power a guy post on FNhipower.com. He had a double charge which blew the magazine out and cracked the wood grips, but was shootable afterwards.
 
Speaking of Rugers, and the number of them made....

Saw a Ruger GP-100 on "CSI:Miami", last night.

Almost choked to death on my coffee when somebody there called it a "rare gun". :eek: :rolleyes:

Anyway...sorry for the brief side-track.

J.C.
 
Double charges in factory ammo from the big guys would be very unusual, to next to impossible. The machinery they use pretty much precludes it. Note.... I didn't say impossible, l but I haven't heard of a "documented" example in many years. The case capacity of many of the cartridges won't even hold a double charge of the powders they use.

And again, how many 1911's have you seen blown up with factory ammo? I've seen several Glock 21's.

You, know, there's a lot to like about the Glock. If it had a manual safety, or a trigger with a little more travel, (not just weight, travel), and the Kaboom mystery could be solved, I would have one in my holster.

Unfortunately, it's not going to be solved on boards like this one, with all the he said she said stuff, not to mention the out and out fabrications.
 
I shoot more than 2K rounds of Wolf ammo in various calibers every year, and have done so for almost a decade. Conservatively, I figure I've put somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 rounds of Wolf downrange. Can't recall a single problem with it, other than the distinctive smell.

A catastrophic failure (i.e. complete destruction of the gun) is usually one of three things - a double charge, an obstructed barrel, or a bullet that has been pushed back too far into the case. This was an atypical failure. Steel barrels don't just peel back like a banana unless there is a metallugical flaw or a serious overpressure issue. Something else was going on.

Brad
 
This was an atypical failure. Steel barrels don't just peel back like a banana unless there is a metallugical flaw
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Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding..........


When the Ruger P-85 came out, Ruger screwed a plug into the barrel of one, then fired several rounds.

The extractor blew out. No measureable damage to slide or frame.

The barrel and extractor were replaced. Gun worked fine.

BTW, I own no centerfire Ruger pistols.
 
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