YouTuber Kentucky Ballistics almost dies from 50 cal explosion

Status
Not open for further replies.
Russell13 said:
Have any of you have a round explode in the chamber?
I’ve heard this happens sometimes with hand loading and being run to hot. I shoot only factory ammo and have never experienced it.
Click to expand...
Ive never had a case head seperation or a detonation. Id guess that USUALLY unless your going way off reservation in component selection (ie a very fast powder for cartridge), or playing loose and fast with your data, its not as simple as an overload that blows up a rifle....again assuming your rifle is set up and capable of handling the ammunition your running thru it.
This is primarily do to the capacity used in most modern rifle cartdidges. A double charge, which is what id guess is rhe most common form of catastrophic reloading failure, will over flow pretty much any bottle necked rifle round ive worked with.

Handgun rounds, especially the bigger case can easily be double and sometimes triple charged when using faster powders.
auto loaders often offer less support to the case, as well as having a balanced firing cycle whos speed of opening increases the heavier your charge is. Which can cause and exacerbate issue with heavy charged reloads

At fhe end of the day you have to remember your working with 10 of thousands of pounds of pressure, and while theres significant safety margins built into the major designs, as a reloader you still have to be aware of what your doing.


Im sorry to hear he was hurt, and glad he wasn't hurt worse! Im also glad hes making a rapid recovery. Ill be supporting his patreon also.

I wached the video all the way thru.
There are a couple key points to take away imo.
Dont shoot stuff your guns not rated for, and quit shooting any ammo that does something wierd!
 
The first time I saw that rifle, I immediately thought "Gosh, that's a baaad idea...". Single failure point system: if the main locking element gives up, there is no backup provision in the design. The "ears" on the receiver are not safety lugs: they're not designed as such, they merely insure that you can't close the rifle if the cap is not screwed in completely.

Blaser R93 rifles have the same fundamental design flaw, and they have maimed quite a number of people - but in destructive tests, the Blaser locking system withstood 140,000 psi.

Glad he got out of it alive, he was lucky!
 
I watched the video but didn't listen to it. Is he claiming all those injuries he's sporting came from that kaboom? Just my opinion, but not an unqualified one: I didn't see anything happen to his left hand that would have necessitated that splint. Not anything flying back that would have caused that laceration on his neck that's closed with staples. He was bald at the time of the kaboom, and has a pretty good head of hair in his narrative, and he still has his staples. Typically, staples stay in 7 to 14 days depending on a severity of the laceration. Looks like more tha 2 weeks of hair growth to me. But, maybe,
 
Micro said:
I watched the video but didn't listen to it. Is he claiming all those injuries he's sporting came from that kaboom? Just my opinion, but not an unqualified one: I didn't see anything happen to his left hand that would have necessitated that splint. Not anything flying back that would have caused that laceration on his neck that's closed with staples. He was bald at the time of the kaboom, and has a pretty good head of hair in his narrative, and he still has his staples. Typically, staples stay in 7 to 14 days depending on a severity of the laceration. Looks like more tha 2 weeks of hair growth to me. But, maybe,
Click to expand...
Go back and listen but in a nut shell. Broken obirtial bones around the eye socket, broken nose. Small metal piece severed the jugular vein and the lung. Large incision on chest from operation. Left hand had a finger broken into several pieces.
 
JohnKSa said:
Kind of surprised that the rifle would come apart at 85KPSI per the manufacturer. That seems a bit on the low side to me, especially given that the failure mode is so dangerous to the shooter.
Click to expand...
It’s just an accident that I should happen to know this, but it’s basically a legitimized zip gun with a rifled barrel. There’s a YouTube ‘celebrity’ who called himself Royal Nonesuch (or something like that) who built improvised firearms and tried to blow himself up a bunch of times. He somehow talked Serbu into building a low budget 50 cal version for him, and this is it. At least that’s what I think the story is, someone will undoubtedly correct me if I’m wrong. I remember learning about it a few years ago and thinking it was a bad idea even then. I’m even more convinced now. Not that the gun was at fault here, mind you, but combining a gun with minimal overpressure tolerance in the design with suspect ammo seems like a bad idea all around.

Off the topic of guns but related to the video: if you give God credit for saving your life and your fast healing then don’t you also have to consider that maybe God was sending you a message when he almost blew your face off?
 
When I still had my AMAC, I used to continually be plagued by goofs trying to get me to shoot; custom, performance or one-offs through it.

Nothing EVER but U.S.G.I. surplus EVER went through my .50.

Not a perfect solution to the potential issue but not begging a problem either.

Todd.
 
Anecdote Alert:

A guy here was loading .50 with the very accurate Hornady bullet.
One day he neglected to empty his powder measure when changing from .308 to .50.
We don't know how much Varget was in that round with the H50BMG but it froze the Armalite AR50's bolt.
Then after knocking the bolt open with a mallet, and seeing no broken parts, he fired another one.
You guessed it, there was still a substantial proportion of Varget, locked up again.

Moral, if you are going to do dumb things, do them with a strong gun.
 
I had one Mark Serbu's first 50 BMG rifles, kicked like a mule, traded it to my shooting buddy for a 500 SW magnum and some cash, best trade I ever made. I went and got a Armalite AR-50 and the recoil difference was night and day. We would shoot together and I could shoot 100 rounds and never feel a thing, he shot 20 rounds and had a sore shoulder for days. But he said he loved it, guess some of us like to feel the shot. I believe the brake on the Armalite was the big difference, and the Armalite was heavier which helped.

I showed a friend the video today about the slap round failure, first thing out of his mouth was the round was only meant for M2 machine guns, not for any gun with a muzzle brake. I have fired tracer and API out of my Armalite, but I know for sure now I will avoid Slap rounds.

Keith
 
Jim Watson said:
Anecdote Alert:

A guy here was loading .50 with the very accurate Hornady bullet.
One day he neglected to empty his powder measure when changing from .308 to .50.
We don't know how much Varget was in that round with the H50BMG but it froze the Armalite AR50's bolt.
Then after knocking the bolt open with a mallet, and seeing no broken parts, he fired another one.
You guessed it, there was still a substantial proportion of Varget, locked up again.


Well I would bet around 218 grains, my Armalite likes 218 grains of H50BMG with a Hornady 750 grain Amax, but I will bet it wouldn't like 218 grains of Varget, I was just loading 25.2 grains of Varget yesterday, but that was for 223. Think I will go out and check the hopper on the powder scale.

Keith
Click to expand...
 
Elkins45 said:
... if you give God credit for saving your life and your fast healing then don’t you also have to consider that maybe God was sending you a message when he almost blew your face off?
Click to expand...

No. God gave us each a brain and free will. We are supposed to make good use of those. The shooter made a decision that involved risk. There is no promise that God will intervene every time someone makes a bad decision.

Off topic , yes ; but I did mention the shooter. And , I am grateful that he survived a calamity that could have been even worse. This is coming from a guy who made a bad decision a while back ; the result was an N frame cylinder that stretched but did not blow. God did not make me use the questionable ammo in that situation - that bad decision was entirely on me.
 
JohnKSa said:
Kind of surprised that the rifle would come apart at 85KPSI per the manufacturer. That seems a bit on the low side to me, especially given that the failure mode is so dangerous to the shooter.
Click to expand...

I don't think it would. He said "over 85,000 psi". His terminology throughout the video is not very exact. He probably misinterpreted or misquoted Serbu. This thing looks like a piece of junk, but Mark Serbu knows better than to build any gun that would have that low of a safety margin.

SAAMI standard for the .30-06 is 60000 psi and the proof load is 86000 psi.

Maybe Serbu tested these guns with proof loads at similar pressures, and they held up to them, and he told this guy "well, it must have been higher than that".
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

BigBore44
  • Locked
Explosion inside ballistics gel??
Replies
12
Views
2K
JellyJar
J
T
  • Locked
Who saw the ..bomb... machine gun on TV?
Replies
10
Views
738
NMshooter
N
ontarget
  • Locked
Pistol load for .50 cal ?
Replies
12
Views
6K
ontarget
ontarget
D
  • Locked
'Fiddy-Cal' Becomes Weapon of Choice in Iraq
2 3
Replies
69
Views
4K
crashresidue
C
T
  • Locked
50 cal incident-Kansas City / not good!
2 3 4
Replies
84
Views
9K
AZ Jeff
A
Back
Top