Loaded for bear

[Frank]

Just get a 58 or a 62 caliber and be done with it.

[Bob Roller]

Looks like a good gun was ruined.

Did the one that fired it  survive? Was it a double ball load or white powder?

Bob Roller

[Daryl]

Nothing but pieces, Bob and never found the hammer.
No injuries except for a permanent flinch.

[bowkill]

Looks like a smokeless powder thing.. Just saying..

[oldtravler61]

  Ok this is my opinion. What is wrong with making your shot count ! Put it where it's supposed to go. Practice so your comfortable shooting your gun an accurate.
   It's better to shoot a smaller caliber that you are good with. Than a big gun that you are not.  Jm2c

[Huntschool]

Just out of interest, were/are there any opinions as to what actually happened.  I am not an engineer but have to wonder that the obstruction may have taken place just before the termination of separation in the barrel......  Are there more specifics available as to what actually happened or what is suspected.  Also what make barrel was it, and whose breech.

Just wondering.......

[Robby]

Me too.
Robby

[Mike Brooks]

Looks exactly like how my old Hawkins-hiemer ended up. I loaded powder-ball with the ball seated at the breech then  the second ball just short started. KABOOM! just like pictured above. Never found the top flat. Tremendous recoil and concussion. I only got a singed eyebrow. Couldn't hear much after for a while either. Short started ball was still in the barrel, never moved. Scarred the $#*! out of everybody....but the match went on. I didn't get to shoot anymore because I broke my gun.

.50 cal 1" Douglas barrel loaded with 80gr 3fff .490RB and .020 patch.

[bob in the woods]

I 'm very cautious about loading my shot loads , ie load everything into the muzzle, before pushing the whole works down. Much safer that way.  I'm curious as to whether the catastrophic failure had anything to do with these being cap locks ?   Perhaps the flintlock vent would allow enough pressure to be vented that the barrel is rung rather than blown ?

[Mike Brooks]

I 'm very cautious about loading my shot loads , ie load everything into the muzzle, before pushing the whole works down. Much safer that way.  I'm curious as to whether the catastrophic failure had anything to do with these being cap locks ?   Perhaps the flintlock vent would allow enough pressure to be vented that the barrel is rung rather than blown ?

I always punch a hole in my over shot card so the air can get out when I push it down on the shot, the over powder and cushion wad go down at the same time.

 The gun I blowed up was a flintlock.

[rich pierce]

I nick the edge of an overshot wad with my fingernail to allow air to pass but will use an awl going forward.

[Daryl]

The ball was not on the powder, is what I was told. It got stuck part way down
I guess, and the fellow tried to shoot it out - or it was a double balled and the top one
worked out some distance off the bottom one.
Either way, it was due to one of the balls not being down hard.
No - not smokeless.
Seems to me, this might have been a Douglas barrel as well, Mikey.

[Daryl]

I will also note here, when loading my .69, I have to lift the hammer to 1/2 cock, off the remnants of the fired cap. If I do not do this, I push the patched ball down, feels spongy and it comes back up 4 to 7 or 8 inches.
I instantly realize I didn't remove the cap from under the hammer, do that then push it down the rest of the way - pshhhhht out the nipple as the ball is seated.  THAT is normal.  I hear it with the cap lock and I hear it with the flinter.  If I don't, I find out why.  This rifle has been doing this since 1986, when it was built.

[bowkill]

[Pukka Bundook]

Rich P,
I think nicked around the edges is better for wads than a hole in the middle, (sorry Mike!) because the ramrod often covers the middle hole.

Someone asked if we thought this sort of destruction Daryl showed, would be more common with percussion than flint barrels, but I reckon not, as the gasses are expanding so fast, the touchhole could not cope with this sudden pressure, nor act as a safety valve.

With shot, I too have often found the rammer being forced back up the bore by air pressure when seating the over -shot wad.  I just press it down again and hold it down, till the air has escaped.  (Or chew the top wad 'round the edges to make air escape routs)

[Hungry Horse]

Bowkill’s video only reenforced what some of us discovered way before YouTube ever existed. And, that would be that a muzzleloader blown up like the Hawken replica pictured would be very hard, to nearly impossible, to duplicate with any amount, or granulation, of black powder.

  Hungry Horse

[Pukka Bundook]

Hungry Horse,

In Greener's book, "The Gun & Its Development" (1910)  there is a photo of a sporting rifle  blown to smithereens by a dose of fine -grained black powder.   You would think the barrel was cast the way it  fractured, but as it was by a good maker such was not the case.
Not usual, but it can happen.

[bob in the woods]

I remember reading somewhere that Don Getz took a 12 in piece of barrel, filled it with FFg and threaded a breech plug onto both ends. A touch hole in the centre and a length of fuse was used to ignite the charge, and miraculously, the barrel held.    Comment made was " Hard to imagine all that fire coming out of that touch hole, but it did "...or something to that effect.  Black powder is curious stuff. I believe that if the barrel hade only been half full of powder, it would have blown to pieces, but who knows?  I've also read that the U.S. Navy, in experimenting with BP [ used in Naval guns to set off the main charge ]  succeeded in obtaining pressure readings of 100,000 PSI .  Safe enough if used correctly, but it does deserve respect.

[Hungry Horse]

Pukka, I said nothing about such a catastrophic failure in an antique muzzleloader. You must remember antique muzzleloaders were made with lap welded iron barrels, or forge welded Damascus steel, which is an entirely different scenario. Many years ago my gun clubs safety committee tried to create a catastrophic failure in a CVA Kentucky like the one in the video, and an even poorer quality Kentucky built by Markwell Arms. We could not duplicate the damage shown at the breech, or the ripped barrel, without smokeless powder. They blew up, but not as dramatic as the Hawken pictured.
 The double breechplug experiment attributed to Don Getz, was first performed by Turmer Kirkland back in the sixties, with the same incredible results.

  Hungry Horse

[Mike Brooks]

Bowkill’s video only reenforced what some of us discovered way before YouTube ever existed. And, that would be that a muzzleloader blown up like the Hawken replica pictured would be very hard, to nearly impossible, to duplicate with any amount, or granulation, of black powder.

  Hungry Horse

I certainly had no problem blowing mine up with black powder. Easy peasy.

[Elnathan]

Hungry Horse,

In Greener's book, "The Gun & Its Development" (1910)  there is a photo of a sporting rifle  blown to smithereens by a dose of fine -grained black powder.   You would think the barrel was cast the way it  fractured, but as it was by a good maker such was not the case.
Not usual, but it can happen.

Could it have been a steel barrel? I recall reading that in the early days after the Bessemer process made steel suddenly cheap, they made some guns barrels out of it on the theory that steel is stronger than wrought iron, so it should make a better barrel. Didn't quite work out that way.


Some of those old Douglas barrels were cold-drawn to octagon shape without being annealed afterwards, which made them brittle at best due to work-hardening and with pre-existing cracks at worst. If the blown barrel pictured was a Douglas, that might explain why it fragmented like that.

[Daryl]

Some of those old Douglas barrels were cold-drawn to octagon shape without being annealed afterwards, which made them brittle at best due to work-hardening and with pre-existing cracks at worst. If the blown barrel pictured was a Douglas, that might explain why it fragmented like that.

Elnathan, that was my thinking on that particular barrel as well. Yes- it was a Douglas bl, from the early 80's I think.

[WadePatton]

... 12 in piece of barrel, filled it with FFg and threaded a breech plug onto both ends. A touch hole in the centre and a length of fuse was used to ignite the charge, and miraculously, the barrel held...

That is yet to me not the same thing as a proper ball seated on one charge running up against a barrel obstruction near the muzzle.  There are some air-chamber-shock dynamics going on there.  And they're loud as Mike noted.

I don't have the scientific background to lay all that out in proper terminology, but am just pointing out there's an apple/orange thing afoot in this discussion. 

[Bob Roller]

I remember reading somewhere that Don Getz took a 12 in piece of barrel, filled it with FFg and threaded a breech plug onto both ends. A touch hole in the centre and a length of fuse was used to ignite the charge, and miraculously, the barrel held.    Comment made was " Hard to imagine all that fire coming out of that touch hole, but it did "...or something to that effect.  Black powder is curious stuff. I believe that if the barrel hade only been half full of powder, it would have blown to pieces, but who knows?  I've also read that the U.S. Navy, in experimenting with BP [ used in Naval guns to set off the main charge ]  succeeded in obtaining pressure readings of 100,000 PSI .  Safe enough if used correctly, but it does deserve respect.

bob in the woods,
That was in the old Buckskin Report in the early 70's during the 12L14 controversy about
non certified steels for gun barrels.It proved that only that ONE section of barrel held the
pressure but it was something to write about back in "the day".

Bob Roller