Overloads

[JCKelly]

Now & again when a muzzle-loader has blown up for no apparent reason, some wise bystander says "he loaded it twice" or some such reference to too much powder and lead.

I suppose.

I am well past my personal expiration date & tend also to read the older gun books. Some were written by men whose grandparents had been affected by Mr. Lincoln's war. Consider Civil War Guns, by William B. Edwards, ©1962.

On page 23 Edwards paraphrases from a  report by H.K. Craig, Colonel of Ordnance -

Craig liked the M1855 rifle . . . It was a good, strong weapon. Soon after a few had been made, tests of blow-up strength were tried. Several arms were taken without special selection from piles of finished guns, and loaded with more than one cartridge. With the rifle-musket, four charges would get blown out of the barrel, but when five were loaded the bottom ball melted partially, the second charge fired and
"the entire force of the powder escaped through the vent with a prolonged sound resembling steam at high pressure. Although all the barrels were rifled, and were mortised and tapped for the sight base, they passed through the firings uninjured. The rifle barrel was made of steel (M1841 bored up to .58), the others (new rifle musket, altered M1842 musket) of iron"

Just for your perusal.

No, no, no - please do not try this with a muzzle loader built of Modern Steel.                                               

[Darkhorse]

Years ago Don Getz had a post about attempting to blow a section of barrel by packing it with powder. If I remember right they never did blow it with BP. Try a search and you might find it.

[Mike Brooks]

That's all fine till somebody gets an eye blowed out.

[jimc2]

Mr. kelly how long have you been shooting black powder and how long have you been fixated on guns blowing up  just wondering

[JCKelly]

Began shooting Grandfather's .20 gage (bored out musket barrel on sporting stock) in 1954. A little shooting with a half-stock John Shuler about 1956-58
Built maybe a dozen or so guns now & again from 1959 through the '70's
Shot my rifle until the mid-1980's.

Two things.
I analyzed a piece cut from my barrel and found it to be youknowwhatImustntsay, as-cold worked.
Knowing this steel was made for screw machines, and just how it attains great machinability, was enough to stop me shooting it.

Until the mid-1980's I really enjoyed muzzle loading rifles. Traveled in Pennsylvania and studied some originals back in the '70's to get mine right.

I did not take it at all well when I found out how my barrel had been made.

Then I was sent the remains of a brass-framed rifle with WVA barrel on it. The pieces were smeared with reddish-brown stuff. Shooter lost left thumb & most strength of the remaining fingers. He had been a draftsman.
That, other lost body parts & changed careers made an impression on me.

I and a smarter metallurgy Professor from Illinois helped bring the light of reason to that WVA barrel maker about the mid-'80's.

I do not expect anyone here to appreciate it.

There are, to my knowledge, no experienced metallurgists here.
If so, they are wise enough to remain silent. 

Fixation to you, straightforward engineering to me.

[Mad Monk]

Mr. kelly how long have you been shooting black powder and how long have you been fixated on guns blowing up  just wondering

A bit of bp ml history is in order.  If you go back into the late 1970s and early 1980s there were a number of bp gun blow ups.  The Buckskin Report and then the Black Powder Report has numerous articles on the subject of burst barrels.  T/C had the most numerous problems with this but that related directly to the number of bp rifles they were selling at the time.  With all of the debate in the magazines there was no one around with a good knowledge of metals until Jim Kelly came on the scene.  The problem with the gun blow  ups was viewed as a serious problem in terms of what it cost the average shooter when manufacturers would have to raise prices to cover increased liability insurance costs.  After one bp barrel manufacturer pulled out of the business there were questions if others would follow.  It was a period of a lot of growth in bp shooting.  The problem with burst barrels, injuries as a result and insurance costs appeared to be a big threat to the ml business in general. So Jim Kelly looked to be something of a light in the darkness as far as accurate information was concerned.  There were simply too many "armchair experts" sounding off and proving little in the process.  I had looked at a bunch of burst barrels that did not result in injury to the shooter.  Those that did generally ended up in the hands of liability suit lawyers.

[oldtravler61]

  Mr.Kelly no matter how well people like you try to inform or help. There are those that know everything an choose to do it their way. It keeps the Er rooms busy, the morticians an the lawyer's something to do....! But I appreciate your advice.. Thanks Oldtravler

[jimc2]

Mr Kelly I did not say you were wrong I just wanted to know your background and experience    Myself I have been shooting and building since I was 14 I'm now 78 so it's been awhile ,sorry you took it the wrong way   

[JCKelly]

It's quite OK, jimc2, no offense taken.
You did give me an opening to add some background, for which I thank you

[Skychief]

"Youknowwhatimusntsay".....  Please Mr. Kelly, I'm not sure.  Will you comment further?

Best regards, Skychief.

[longcruise]

This is a bit of a tangent, but last Saturday I was chatting with a fellow that shoots at one of our clubs.  He is an experienced and knowledgeable builder and 'smith.  He described an incident that he had witnessed a few weeks ago.

A guy shooting a TC Hawken had a blow up in the breech.  No injuries except to the gun.  Turned out that the owner wanted to improve the ignition and attempted to do so by enlarging the flash channel by by drilling it out through the clean out channel which he then tapped for an oversized plug.

If you have dissassembled a TC you know that rather than fit the lock to the plug they cut a channel into the plug for the lock to slide into.  You probably already guessed what happened!  There was less than 1/16" of steel between the lock channel and his enlarged channel!

[EC121]

I had a cast patent breech leak on me like that.  I was testing a new rifle for a friend and started seeing fouling where I shouldn't.  Turns out the manufacturer had drilled the flash channel too close to the corner of the  patent bolster.  Had to be paper thin right there.  I only shot it about 4 times before I saw the fouling ahead of the bolster. 

[Bob Roller]

I had a cast patent breech leak on me like that.  I was testing a new rifle for a friend and started seeing fouling where I shouldn't.  Turns out the manufacturer had drilled the flash channel too close to the corner of the  patent bolster.  Had to be paper thin right there.  I only shot it about 4 times before I saw the fouling ahead of the bolster.

You have just described what I call "production expedients". About 40 years ago Bill Large
had a barrel come in that the owner thought was one of his. It was another makers
work and someone had got a patched ball half way down and tried to shoot it out and the
top flat of the barrel lifted up into an arc.This was perhaps a 45 caliber and 15/15 across the flats
and the pressure build up before the barrel split forced patch material into the whatever steel that
barrel was made from.Bill made a new one from whatever he was using then,1144 I think.
The burst barrel sat for years by the fire place until it rusted to nearly nothing.
    The Hawken Shop when owned by Art Ressel had all their cast breeches X rayed as a way
to have peace of mind and a good selling point.I have installed them in Bill Large's barrels when
he needed help in the shop and had no worry about them. I never heard of one of these breeches
leaking or creating other problems.

Bob Roller

[TMerkley]

While we are on this topic, and this may be for another thread.  How did the Harpers Ferry and Springfield attach the drums to barrels before and during the civil war.  The drum that looks like a snail... Were they cast along with the barrel?  I ask because some have a screw in the side where the flash hole appears to have been drilled and on others there are not.  How does it hold the pressure? 

[Standing Bear]

Was on site when one blew last year. No one hurt. Shooter error. 70 gr and patched. All then later another 70 gr and short starts patched ball.  Could see where damage started just below the short started ball and lay the starter in the channel to see that was the problem.

My position is that all barrel failures were operator error even if the operator swears it wasn't double loaded or not short started only or was always properly cleaned and oiled.
TC

[Mike Brooks]

Was on site when one blew last year. No one hurt. Shooter error. 70 gr and patched. All then later another 70 gr and short starts patched ball.  Could see where damage started just below the short started ball and lay the starter in the channel to see that was the problem.

My position is that all barrel failures were operator error even if the operator swears it wasn't double loaded or not short started only or was always properly cleaned and oiled.
TC

I did that once with the same outcome.

[Daryl]

Machinist and gun maker here in town, back in the 80's, looked at a TC Hawken's breech & decided to section it.
He cut through the flash channel from above and revealed that the thin web between the top of the lock plate and the interior hole, had an air-bubble in the casting.
The material above and below the air bubble, which would be to the lock plate and to the flash channel was less than .010" thick.
The picture of the TC lock and barrel breech with the bottom of the lock plate cut-out blown open and the lock broken or cut into two pieces reminded me of this.
IT happens.

[n stephenson]

Mad Monk, maybe I`m missing something here . You said that barrel blow -ups were occurring in the 70s or 80s or whatever and then along came Jim Kelly with his metal knowledge and what? I haven't heard of anything different so far. He continues to condemn  the use of 12L14 for barrels and, most of the major barrel makers continue to use it with evidently good success . Maybe I`m missing something but the only thing I`ve seen is Jim refusing to use 12L14 barrels and everybody else posting posts searching for out of stock barrels made of 12L14 by these makers . JMHO                     Nathan

[Mad Monk]

Mad Monk, maybe I`m missing something here . You said that barrel blow -ups were occurring in the 70s or 80s or whatever and then along came Jim Kelly with his metal knowledge and what? I haven't heard of anything different so far. He continues to condemn  the use of 12L14 for barrels and, most of the major barrel makers continue to use it with evidently good success . Maybe I`m missing something but the only thing I`ve seen is Jim refusing to use 12L14 barrels and everybody else posting posts searching for out of stock barrels made of 12L14 by these makers . JMHO                     Nathan

When the debate was raging on the subject of the frequency of burst barrels and then questions of the steel being used there were a lot of people spouting off with utterly no knowledge of what was going on.  The armchair experts were in their glory.

There were problems with how a lot of these barrels were designed.  The idea was that black powder is a low pressure propellant so bp barrels are not subjected to the levels of stressing seen in smokeless barrels.  All but one of the burst barrels I had looked at were blown up with short started projectiles.  Often sitting close to a sight mount or under rib screw hole or sight slot.

Nobody has done any work showing the pressure fluctuations in an ml barrel with a short started projectile.  The military had run a bunch of tests on artillery placing pressure sensors at various points in the bore to look at pressure variations in firings where they knew there were non-uniform pressures in the bore.  Such work was also done by Nobel & Abel in England in the 1860s but small arms were ignored in any of that work.

With the legal atmosphere in the U.S. it became a question of how can you protect a shooter from injury when the gun is not loaded properly.  In the subject of which barrel steel to make a barrel that can't be burst there are still a lot of unanswered questions.  Or as I used to joke.  If you build a barrel that can't be blown up you will need wheels on it.

T/C was so concerned about their liability problems they had a college laboratory attempt to prove that only smokeless powders or smokeless mixed with black powder could blow up one of their barrels.  The university work published in an chemical industry magazine was a joke.  I know of one gunshop that was put out of business after a CVA rifle blew up and injured the shooter.  And all the gunshop did was to put a new nipple in the rifle for the owner.

[Scota4570]

"When the debate was raging on the subject of the frequency of burst barrels and then questions of the steel being used there were a lot of people spouting off with utterly no knowledge of what was going on.  The armchair experts were in their glory."
... think I have verbally jousted with those individuals on another forum. 

I'm surprized nobody has used a strain gauge to aquire actual pressure data. The question is asked often yet nobody seems to have data to support their views. 

[JCKelly]

In my opinion for the most part, pressure is not so much the problem. If ductile steel is used and pressure goes to high the thing bursts, which can be tragic if the shooter's hand is right there. Using steel with very low ductility across the grain, the barrel shatters which is considerably more damaging to the shooter.

Just for fun, I included pressure information in my 1985 Muzzle Blasts series. Tedious to copy from my pdf, but -
  Oct 1985 pp 4,5  . . . published by John Bivins in 1982 . . . 80 gr GOEX FFg . . . maxi-ball can develop 21,500 psi. . . black powder rifle pressures may easily be in the 21,000 to 24,000 psi range. That is two to three times the working pressure of a modern 12 ga shotgun, loaded with smokeless. . . recent published work . . .Carl Wood, who showed that a 1/4" air gap could double the breech pressure in a .40 caliber . . . 50 gr FFFg resulted in 43,150 psi at the breech . . . comparable to normal smokeless pressures in a modern .44 Magnum revolver or .30-30 rifle.

I should read this thing again myself. I did write it as an engineer, so I suppose it is overly tedious for most people. As I review it I am even more impressed for the need of a bit of ductility in a barrel steel. I used to have an 1888 reference which I think indicated that British gunmakers knew this. Been a few decades, might be hard to find.

As usual, if anyone is willing to wrestle through this 1985 thing, send me your real email & I'll return a pdf, hopefully.

[Scota4570]

"If ductile steel is used and pressure goes to high the thing bursts,"

Wouldn't ductile be better than brittle?  Better a ring than blowing out the side of the barrel?  The old cold formed octagon barrels could become worked hardened and possibly cracked?  Maybe I understand that wrong?  The more modern ductile barrels are more homogenious and safer? 

[JCKelly]

Scota4570 guess I was not clear.

Ductile is always better. Ductile can (not always) bulge and split

When something goes wrong in a barrel of steel which is not ductile, it comes apart in pieces. Very bad.

[bob in the woods]

I remember reading that the British favoured brass barrels for their cannons because of the ductile nature of the material ?
Iron cannon barrels had a tendency to blow in a failure while the brass would bulge or split . Sorry, I can't remember the source.

[JCKelly]

Cast iron barrels I believe normally ended their life by blowing up. Recall a test on one gun which had survived 4500 rounds & the Army guys thought it a shame to destroy it, as it had lasted so very long.

Yeah, bronze ( about 90% copper 10% tin) guns were tough. Also they didn't rust from saltwater. In Mr. Lincoln's war the Napoleon, a bronze smoothbore, saw a lot of service.

Other than lower cost, I do not know the working advantages of cast iron guns over bronze. I believe they did have some, but reliably staying together was not one. In 1844 aboard the Princeton the secretaries of state and navy were both killed during a firing demonstration when a new (cast iron) gun burst.