Photos from Dan's GH 20

[Phil C]

In April last year I was shooting some Eurasian dove and pigeons. Birds were coming in at a feverous pace. I had taken along a bunch of vintage shells to shoot up.
My Forgeron has ejectors. I just finished shooting two birds, one with each barrel. I popped the gun open to not miss an opportunity of another flight of birds coming in.
Everything seemed normal, shells ejected out.
I Slapped two more rounds into the barrels, one did not want to go in the last 1/4 inch. I figured the shell had swelled and all I needed to do would be to push it in harder. It moved but I could not get the gun to close.
I Removed the shells and Loaded another. Same thing. Looked down the bores and noticed something I didn’t recognize at first. Then I realized the paper shell had separated.
I put the gun away and when I arrived home I removed what was left of the paper hull. I was very fortunate that when it separated it stopped just short of clearing the forcing cone area. I’m sure that things could have been very serous had I been able to chamber a round.
I am also pretty sure if things had went to hell I would have sworn everything had been normal when it blew up.

[Bill Murphy]

Dean Romig and Art Shaffer came up with the explanation for the burst of my Remington 3200 lower barrel. Stuck wad, inertial effect of the approaching load, extremely fast pressure rise behind the stuck wad. I can make this determination because I knew there was a stuck wad, forgot about it, and later loaded the gun and shot it. The GHE 20 in question seems to have had the same problem at the same place in the barrel. However, in the excitement of the injury to the shooter, a separated hull would have a similar result, and the two parts of the hull may not have been found.