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A collection of Guns that have been destroyed,probably most by careless reloading procedures.

I'd love to know the history of these blowups, but I imagine using the wrong powder was the usual cause.

Blowup photos here.....

Hell's teeth, some horrors in there! I had to wonder about the pistol with at least five bullets stuck up the barrel though - you'd think he'd have noticed by that point wouldn't you?

The most common cause is through under-filling the case rather than double charging. This allows the powder to burn too quickly with a resulting rapid increase in pressure. It is a misconception that the powder explodes. However a gun will if subjected to violent pressure increases for which it was not designed.
Using wrong powder doesn’t help. Many years ago at Millpool in Cornwall I was running the 600x firing point when my attention was drawn to a loud boom amongst the cracks of the various rifles on the point.

I turned to see this chap struggling with the bolt on his number four. Between us we tried everything, including a big wooden mallet from my tool-box. On closer examination I saw that the bolt was bent upwards in the middle by about 1/8th of an inch. :shock:

George (not his real name) told me that he had been using Nobel rifle number 2. I asked how much and he told me the amount. I can’t remember what it was but it was perfectly reasonable. Now you can’t (or couldn’t) get too much of that in a 7.62 case, not enough to cause damage anyway; We discussed all the possibilities and eventually George confessed that he had run out of Rifle Number 2 so had used Pistol number 2. :G

Nobel have changed the names of their powders because of lots of similar errors.
I told George to go home and do two things, first say a prayer of gratitude for the strength of his number four action and second to write to the Home Office to tell them that he had de-activated his rifle.
Moral of this particular story – read the words on the can and don’t download.

Shoot safe - shoot well.

That made me cringe and I only saw a few, including the one with five bullets in it, amazing the person kept shooting after the first one did not see daylight.

I prefer to stay ignorant.

I was shooting next to a club RCO a while ago who announced his last shot had sounded different, it took two of us and a lot of prompting before he got his cleaning rod out and stuffed it up the barrel.

Ooops, good job he checked eh? It was also a good job he checked the following shot as well, at that point he blamed it on his mate who loads for him....

If you have heard my yarn from another forum...my apols.

We were in The Singleton Pub in Swansea in the 70s at a club meeting upstairs when my mate with his 45ACP national match asked what I thought of the action...it was a little stiff.

Field stripped it to find a bulge in the barrel ... he had sent one up it which stuck half way and another behind it.

:shifty:

I remember a friend firing 6 shots up his S&W - VERY light loads with wadcutters - only to find ALL 6 stuck up the barrel. The gun survived intact, amazingly.
The usual cause of a blow up is two shots, the first with little (or usually no) powder followed by a normal round. Explosions due to very light loads of SLOW rifle powders (pressure excursions) are much less frequent.
Bottom line - if your shot sounds odd then check the barrel before firing again!

I never hear my shots as I always have my eyes shut when I fire. :G

I had what I believe was a slam fire on a AR15 , it was a hot summers day and I was shooting on the battle range ETR at Thetford , I had done a lot of firing so I decided to take the shots sitting as the fore end was getting hot I placed a clean hanky in the palm of my hand and was gripping the mag well , not sure what happened next but there was a loud bang and I kind of let go of the rifle rather quickly .
I could feel cuts down my right arm and left leg , and stinging of the left hand at this point I was thinking the worse that maybe I had lost a couple of fingers .
The mag had blown out , luckily it was the last round in the mag , the mouth of the mag had bellowed , bits of brass had showered every where . well luckily for me the left hand was in one peice not a cut , the neat white folded hanky now had a black smoked impression of my hand print on it .
The bolt was jammed but that was the only other part to suffer damage .

Dave

Eeeck! :G

How about shooting "until the plastic catches fire"?