60947 Fires it's last shot

[J.B. Books]

Originally Posted by David Yeatts

Thank you all for your opinions, suggestions, and good wishes. The main reason I was not injured, good safety glasses and gloves.

I have had other shells blow up on me (Cheddite is very bad I limit them to no more than 3 reloads) but the guns have remained intact. I have checked all 12 of the other hulls and all have there base wads and I broke the bird on 4 high.
A lot of old hulls will also be hitting the dustbin.

Dave

Glad you are OK, what an awful thing to have happen, You make a good point about always wearing safety glasses and at least one glove on your barrel hand for sure.

I am thinking out loud here, 10ga Federal hulls have a tendency to split down the side from repeated firings. Could it be possible that when a hull with a split is fired the pressure could vent through the split before the crimp can open venting all the pressure against the chamber wall?

Someone mentioned detonation, I think that is most likely a myth. The NRA commissioned H.P. White Lab to make/prove detonation could occur in a 38 special as so many were blowing up with reported light loads. Thousands of deliberate attempts to create the conditions for detonation and none happened.

[Smoothebore]

David, I'm glad you are okay. I'm not an expert either, but just thinking about what can cause an obstructed barrel. Everyone who reloads has occasionally experienced a squibb load, where the full powder charge doesn't drop when loading the shell. When it's fired, it makes the sound of a pop or pffft. When fired, it only has the power of a few grains of powder, or even the primer only. The squibb has enough power to eject the shot, but the wad is often left behind in the barrel. That could have been shot number 12, but the sound would have been obvious, allerting you to check the barrels.


There is also such a thing as a tumbled wad. This is a rare occurance when the wad is deformed by being loaded improperly. It may have been twisted, or folded over sideways, or a shot cup petal folded under. I have experienced a tumbled wad in shooting, one time. The report sounds like any other normal shell, but the wad melted and tumbled and stuck solid midway in the barrel. Up until that time I had only occasionally checked my barrels during shooting. Luckily, I checked that time, and found the obstruction. It took a cleaning rod, and considerable effort to get it clear. Since then, the regimen is to blow in each barrel, and visually inspect after every shot. This could have been your shot number twelve.


Dave