60947 Fires it's last shot
 

60947 is a grade 2 hammerless 10 ga. 1890. Due to the shortage of
Clays powder I was testing a new load using IMR 7625. I got the load date from John Shanafelt's "Reloading For The Short Ten Gauge". It was 28.5 grains with a psi of 6820, in short a light load. It had a bit more kick than my clays load. On the 13th shot, low 4, I heard a loud boom and felt an impact on my hat and shooting glasses that had me seeing stars. Gun has been fires about 1500 to 2000 round by me with no problems just one of those things. There was a hidden crack in the left barrel chamber just under the rib if I can get these pictures attached you can see it. It was my first and only hammerless (the rest have hammers) and will be missed.
Now to the main question I want to make sure the other guns I have are safe ie no cracks, any and all suggestions are very, very welcome.

The fact that you also cracked the stock in two suggests something other than a light load. Maybe 28.5 x 2?

Yikes. Glad you only saw stars.
Erick

Mr. Yeatts as I have recently have had a handgun blow up on me. I send my deepest sympathies and hope that you are ok. This is the first evidence I have seen of damascus barrels blowing up. I can not see the crack that you are talking about. I would get these barrels to a metallurgist to examine the failure. There was a large amount of plastic deformation before failure which is good and it does not appear that there was any failure along the welds.

No fishtail it was 28x1. While I use a PW for loading these were hand loaded. Could not seat the wad on a double.
There were no breaks along the welds. The crack is at the start of the chamber where the extractor channel is bored. Discussed it with Pfrommer and he showed me a modern 20 with almost the exact damage.

[David: Just count yourself VERY LUCKYthat you didn't lose a hand, an eye or a head.

Best Regards, George

You are one lucky fellow to not have sustained bodily harm from that one! 28.5grs of 7625 is a pretty light load. When I was 14 I was handloading 2.25" loads for a stout, or so it seemed, family VH12 and thinning the sparrow flocks around our farm when one shot rung my ears good. When I looked the top rib had separated from the bbls for about 2.5" down each side and opened up the breech a tad. Likely my first hearing loss incident. My brother still has the gun. It's never been repaired and is likely not worth repairing since it needs a butt stock also. I'd like to suggest parting it out at some point.

YIKES!
David, in your second photo, is the chamber actually that distorted or is that camera distortion?
I've seen rifle stocks blown out at the magazine well from ruptured cases or catastrophic failure, but your stock is cracked right thru the wrist several inches from the rupture. Did that happen at the instant of rupture or was the gun thrown from your hands and hit the ground?

Thankfully you were not injured!

It almost looks like the dolls head rib screw had something to do with it maybe drilled into that chamber to far .

David,
Had you checked the chambers/bores after the 12th shot for any blockage ? Glad you are ok !