barrel failure need advice

[blunderbuss]

 This happened while shooting blanks.The blanks were made of synthetic black powder of some type. The gun is an original and .34 cal the fellow was using 75 gr and no wadding. The barrel looks to be a cast materal ,got any ideas?

[Daryl]

Cast steel was used in the later 1800's - I think - fluid steel, etc. I don't know about this one - or why it happened. 

How close to the breech did it blow?

Looks like one end of where a bomb went off - very thick barrel.  Almost looks like a 3/8" wall, all the way around.

Was there a big chunk missing? 

Was the fellow injured?

[JTR]

Blanks?
With no ball and no wadding?
Just 75 grs of powder poured down the barrel?

Something seems seriously amiss with that story.

John

[bgf]

It is odd.  That looks like pot metal that just "broke".  If there really was no obstruction, I can't think of how loose powder only would produce enough pressure to do that if it wasn't ready to go already.  Were the "blanks" compressed cakes that became both projectile and propellant, and maybe lodged in a rough spot?  Possibly they were "pellets?".  Some of the newer substitutes for *nlines can build serious pressure.  Maybe a second pellet was shorted over the first one.

[greybeard]

It has been my understanding that what you did is very dangerous. You must put a wad over the powder . This causes the charge to only use it's own oxoygen. With only the powder down , when it is ignited it has the whole barrel of oxoygen to burn and this procedure causes very high pressures.. Years back we always put a restriction over the powder when firing a fouling shot for this very reason even if it was only 20 grains.  I'm surprised that this practice has been abandoned. I can not understand why a person would put a tripple charge down a barrel with all that  extra oxoygen to burn and be surprised that the barrel failed. It reads to me that thes is accepted as a common occurence among reenactors.
Give your heads a shake chaps and try and figure out the real cause. Only my opinion!!!
Bob Reader
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

[Chris Treichel]

Not saying its the case here but in the several accounts of reenactors (powder only shooting) having barrel failures it has occured that due to lack of cleaning, powder residue built up half way or so up the barrel and since no rammrod was used (only powder poured down the barrel) this buildup eventually lead to an overpressure short of the build up site causing the barrel to blow up.   Maybe with this small caliber powder build up could have happened much faster than in say the large bore muskets its happened to.  Many reenactors will shoot 30-40 shots in the course of a weekend without ever putting a ramrod down the barrel...

let me look arround if I still have the research article about the India made bess that blew up.  It showed that it was user error in not cleaning.  

[Chris Treichel]

Here is the document I was talking about...

http://www.middlesexvillagetrading.com/special/HPWhiteReportWithPersonalInfoBlocked.pdf

A specific problem in reenacting is that you are not allowed to place anything down the barrel other than powder.  A wad shot out of a barrel will do significant damage and a ramrod carelessly left down the barrel after seating said wad will do even more. 
 

[bob in the woods]

75 g is a lot for that small of a bore, and the fouling will be horrendous, even after only a few shots . Without a wad, the fouling is way worse than usual. And......"synthetic " black powder ? [ of some sort  ]
So....it was black in color ... 
All bets are off when using anything other than real black powder.  My guess is that the gun is a percussion style, and the barrel failed due to a bore obstruction with who nows what kind of pressure .
IMO the guy was lucky.

[blunderbuss]

 

  this didn't happen to me I was some distance from the fellow and we were shooting salutes at a funeral so no ball and no wad. I got to examine the barrel afterward and it seems that some of the shards were black on the broken part and some were shinny indicating that it may have been cracked to start with. Agreed it looks like an obstruction was in the bore but excluding clotted powder I have no idea. I never found out what kind of black powder substitute but it was for muzzle loading guns. The part of the barrel shown is from the break to the muzzle the back part went into pieces.

[verbrugen]

I have put 1000's of blank rounds through my smooth bore military muskets without issues.  In some rev-war events my unit has fired as many as 40-50 rounds in a 1-2 hour period.  In some cases the barrel gets hot enough to impart a nasty burn. Typical charge for .75 cal Bess, Charlville, Potsdam Musket is 100-125 grains 2F or 3F black powder.  Here are a couple of my observations that may be of interest;   I have noticed that the in the barrel approximately 8-10 inches back from the muzzles typically will develop the most fouling in the barrel of these muskets after being used in reenactment.  I have noted on several muskets I have used/owned/cleaned over the years that this same area becomes roughened to the point where it is noticible when running a cleaning patch on a jag across this area.  I have also used various rifles in reenacting over the years and have found that they take more care in use in order to make sure problems do not occur.  I have found that for a 45 or 50 cal rifle a black powder charge of 35 to 40 grains is more than enough to generate the desired effect.  The amount of fouling in a 45 cal rifle even after 8-10 blank rounds is enough to restrict the pressure in the barrel.  I was at large event in Quebec City several year ago and was 4-5 men away from a dude with a comercially available jaeger rifle that went off with a triple charge, sounded like a cannon went off,  couple of guys next to me got taken away to medical with hearing issues,  the dude with the rifle stood their dumb-founded with partial split barrel, brass flash guard on lock blown out straight (very lucky).  When asked about powder charge by safety officer dude reported using same load as muskets (125 grains).  Bottom line on this for me is don't use small caliber rifles for reenacting unless you use small charges and run a patch down after every 5-6 shots.  Add in some of the recent imports from India and other places to this equations and what you see above is not surprising.
 

[Dave Faletti]

That break has the look of cast iron or grainy work hardened steel. Not sure what is used in older railroad couplers but they look kind of like that when they break from too much use.  It would be interesting to section a length of the metal in the breech section to see if it had been developing cracks from corrosion or other cause.

[blunderbuss]

Cast steel was used in the later 1800's - I think - fluid steel, etc. I don't know about this one - or why it happened. 

How close to the breech did it blow?

Looks like one end of where a bomb went off - very thick barrel.  Almost looks like a 3/8" wall, all the way around.

Was there a big chunk missing? 

This is from the muzzle forward the rest fragmented like a grenade .one piece clipped a fellow next to him's leather thong in two on the other side a fellow took a piece of barrel or wood cut across the finger. One chunk was found behind him on the other side of the road. I'm asking premission to post the picture of the exact instant it exploaded 

Was the fellow injured?

[valongrifles]

Oxygen does not burn, explode or ignite. Oxygen will decrease the ignition temperature required to burn substances. The movies like to show oxygen tanks exploding and burning and such, but it just isn't so. I've been "playing with oxygen" for over 40 years. Fill bottles with it and put glowing embers into them and all that happens is the source of the embers immediately ignites and burns really fast. The astronauts that died on the launching pad did not die because the oxygen was burning. The oxygen was used as the pressure gas of the capsule. When a spark occured, the contents of the cabin ignited as would never have happened in an environment of compressed air. Thus , now the pressurization gas is nitrogen as nitrogen is non-flammable and does not support combustion. Oxygen is labeled as an oxidizer, not explosive or combustible. I would have to agree with the opinion that continued firing produced a restrictive orifice that produced a large obstruction and that that was the cause. For a demo of the effects of a wad only shot, try it some time. Put a usual amount of powder in the barrel and then a wad over and tamp it down. Point the muzzle in a safe direction  and notice how far the fired wad alone travels.

[Fullstock longrifle]

This is why you shouldn't shoot the old originals.

FK

[JTR]

 some of the shards were black on the broken part and some were shinny indicating that it may have been cracked to start with.

So the guy was shooting this rifle with blanks, with a tripple charge, even though the barrel was already cracked?

Sounds like someone is shooting for a Darwin Award!

John

[Captchee]

  I have seen a few  old original barrels that burst . Near all look this way including Damascus ones . For what ever reason  when you view these  failures , the metal appears  crystallized  .
  One should also remember  that small bores  build more pressure then larger bores when using the same  amount of powder .
why did this happen . well the pressure  exceeded the barrels ability to  contain it
 We can talk all day about not shooting originals  Or what metal grades are best . But it will always come down to  pressure exceeding barrel strength

[The other DWS]

When I was active in re-enacting 20+years ago. our organization had so much trouble with rifles fouling out they eventually basically banned the use of rifled bores in "battle reenactment".  Just pouring and firing loose powder down the smaller rifled bores created fouling bore restrictions in short order. so the safety guys concluded that it could create problems, and better to be safe than sorry.
  Smoothbore muskets and trade guns worked well, but we only used paper cartridges, no ram-rods allowed on the field except safety pinned dummies. all guns had to be cleaned out between the demos.  they were all safety inspected and clean checked before each demo.

[Daryl]

We've all seen the situation on a firing line, where a fellow dumps in a powder charge, and in talking with his buddies  forgets to load the patched ball, then fires it off.  A hollow sound.  It invariably is recongnisable due to it's VERY low pressure sound - no bang, no crack, no boom = a hollow sounding boosh or whatever = low pressure. Yes, this causes a  badly fouled the bore - BUT- the intrepid man on the line has no difficulty reloading his rifle with it's 3/8" hickory rod and the tightly fitting VERY wet patched ball that cleans the bore as it is loaded - and we carry one, ribbing the individual as is invariably required.

[Keb]

I'm wondering if this isn't one of those old original guns that was once shortened & converted to cap and then "restored" using less than acceptable methods.  :/

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

When soft steel is torn apart, as in this catastrophic failure, the metal has a crystalline appearance.  That's how it looks.  If it were hardened steel, it would still appear crystalline, but much finer.  There's nothing unusual in the appearance of this one.

It's such a pathetic loss.  It breaks my heart to see this kind of stupidity.

[blunderbuss]

  This wasn't due to fowling as he hadn't shot that day at all. I made a mistake earlier it was a .32 cal not a .34 He used no ramrod or wad. I did state that some of the shards were shinny on the back some were black as though there had been a crack it the barrel for awhile .

[Daryl]

Is the barrel damascus if if so, did it appear to separate or start to separate on a weld?

[SPG]

Gentlemen,

"Synthetic black powder of some type"?

That sure takes in a lot of territory...

Steve

[Gaeckle]

Gentlemen,

"Synthetic black powder of some type"?

That sure takes in a lot of territory...

Steve

May even be mil spec ball powder

[Mike R]

Yes, I'd focus on the powder, small bore and fouling--not just the fact it was rifled.  Civil War reenactors shoot thousands of blank rounds without wadding through their large bore rifled guns [typically .58] without incident [normally].  Most events ban the use of wadding [even rods] for fear of some dolt launching a rod into the crowd.  There was a catastrophic failure of an India made Enfield at an event I was at a year [or 2?] ago, but apparently the gun was at least triple loaded with 100 grs fffg [at least 300 gr, some say 400] before it went off.  Most reenactors I know load 75 gr ff or fffg [some reenactor powder is poorly sorted] per shot and do not swab until the action is over.