Rifle Blowup


http://warthog1134.com/blowup_page_1.htm

If you are familiar with my past posts on this site, or on other sites, you know that I am conservative when it comes to hand loading. I don’t push the envelope on velocity. I have a set of procedures that I developed over a period of 40 years + of hand loading. They have served me well, and safely.

First, and most important, I check, double chance, and triple check my loads at every step of the process. A few years ago I had a Lady Bug experience that proved that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Long story made short, a Lady Bug crawled up on the back side of my RCBS 1010 balance beam while I was out shooting the last 3 rounds I loaded. The next charge I had to trickle a lot of powder in the pan, so much more that when I dumped the powder in the case, it filled it to the top, and then some. I went looking for a problem and found the Lady Bug. Lesson learned.

Another rule I follow is to never reload when I’m distracted.

A third rule, is to be more careful than normal when I try new components.

Another rule is to weigh every charge and visually check every charge in the case before seating the bullet to make sure the levels are all the same.

Common sense stuff.

Yesterday, Sunday, August 9, I spent a good portion of the afternoon rearranging my loading bench. I built the bench to my specifications. It’s higher than normal so I can stand while loading without having to stoop with the neck and back pain that brings on. A few days ago I assembled a store bought workbench next to my home made job. The rearranging consisted of sorting things and moving them to the new bench. Over the years my custom built bench evolved into a all purpose bench, something I didn’t want it to be. The new bench is for everything that isn’t for hand loading, like my mini lath, which squatted on my loading bench when I bought it a few months ago.

I finished early and decided to get in a little shooting. I have a new Winchester Model 270 Winchester Stainless Featherweight that I was lucky enough to pick up a few weeks ago, one of the last on the market. I needed to develop a load for this rifle. I decided to dial the scope to shoot center on paper at 25 yards using a reduced load of IMR SR 4759. The Speer manual lists 20 grains as the starting load, at around 1700 fps. I use a Hornady powder measure to throw the initial charge, then finish the charge on a RCBS 1010 scale trickling the charge to the weight I want.

Since I was only going to load 6 rounds, I decided to dispense with weighing each individual charge. I decided to dial in the powder measure and charge each case from the powder measure. In something like 40 years of hand loading, I have never done this with a bottle neck case. I had the drop tube for larger calibers in place, and have had it in place since I purchased the powder measure 20, maybe as long as 30 years or more years ago. The large caliber drop tube worked fine for weighing and adjusting the powder measure to throw a charge of 20 grains, but it didn’t work very well for charging the 270 casings. Powder spilled the first case I charged. I found the bottle neck drop tube in my loading box, new and unused, screwed it in, charged the 6 cases, and seated the bullets. A visual check of the powder in the case proved useless; 20 grains doesn’t show up very well at the bottom of a 270 case. You can see it if you get the light right, but you can’t judge it.

I fired the first round. No problem.

The second round demolished the rifle. I mean the sucker is toast for time and eternity. No salvage value whatsoever.

The force of the explosion split the stock from just in front of the trigger guard on the right side to the middle of the forearm. There is a second split from the front action screw that measures 3 inches down the centerline. The left side of the stock has an irregular break from in front of the action running forward and down into the checkering. In other words, the force of the blast broke the stock into 3 pieces.

The rear of the stock split backward from each side of the trigger guard past the pistol grip. These breaks extend upward through the stock. The bottom breaks extend back 4 inches toward the recoil pad. These break are gaping breaks. The top breaks extend back 4.5 inches and are also gaping, but less so than the bottom breaks.

The claw extractor bowed away from the bolt in a circular pattern with a full ½ inch radius. The ring holding the extractor to the bolt peeled back and up. The bolt won’t budge even a fraction of an inch even when hammered.

The one piece bottom metal bows out with a radius of .75 inches. The Bottom metal severed on both sides with jagged breaks and also bows down and out. The unloading plate bows down and out with a radius of 3/8 of an inch.

The magazine bows on both sides with a ¼ inch radius on both sides adding a total of ½ inch to the width of the magazine.

The magazine follower and spring blew out of the rifle. I found them on the ground. The follower had a significant downward bow with an estimated 4/16 radius.

Me, I have a black eye, literally and figuratively, and a cut forehead, preventable with safely glasses, which I didn’t take the time to find and wear. A bit of bleeding. I was wearing hearing protection. I have a welt across the inside of my right arm where the stock slapped me when it split. Same with my thumb. I’m right handed, but shoot left handed off the bench or with support. I was shooting standing up resting the rifle against the door jamb that lead to my back yard from my garage.

So what went wrong?

The Rifle Autopsy:

I checked all of my settings. The scale checked out slightly heavy. I adjusting my powder measure for 20 grains. When I threw a charge and weighed it, the charge balanced slightly over the balance line. I was no more than ½ grain over 20 grains. On a start charge I would rather be slightly over, than slightly under. I was slightly over, but not enough to do the damage inflicted.

I had 4 unfired shells left. After I cleaned up the blood, I pulled the bullets and weighed the charges,.

The first casing had a 10.2 grain charge.

The second, 9.4 grains.

The third, 11.6 grains.

The fourth, 15.1 grains.

That’s a total of 46.3 grains.

The total accumulated charges for these 4 rounds should have added up to something like 80 to 82 grains.

At 20.5 grains per charge for 6 rounds, I dispensed a bit more than 23.0 grains.

I was missing 76.7 grains of powder. No matter how I divided the possible powder charges for the 2 rounds I fired, it came out to a scary number.

When I loaded the six rounds, I put them in a specific order in my loading block; back to front in a straight line so the charge for the first casing above was the first charge thrown, and the second charge for the second casing. The same with 3 and 4. I kept them in order as I pulled the bullets and weighed the individual charges.

When I was ready to shoot the two fated rounds, I took the number 6 load because it was the first up in the loading block, put it in the magazine, and carried the number 5 load to the door where I put it on my new bench to wait it’s turn. The number 5 round is the one that blew.

I threw pan after pan of powder to check the weight of the charge my powder measure was throwing. I threw at least 2 dozen charges. While there was a slight variation, the variation wasn’t enough to turn my rifle into a grenade.

Then I took 6 casings and charged them directly from the powder measure duplicating what I did with the 6 deadly rounds.

Bingo!

The powder charges would fall through the drop tube and into my scale pan, but would stick in the drop tube when I used a case. I didn’t weigh each charge that came out of the case that I charged during this experiment. I dropped each charge on the a sheet of white paper and compared the piles. Very little powder cleared the drop tube for charge 1, 2, 3, and 4. The drop tube overloaded on charge 5 and dropped all of the accumulated powder into the case. I repeated the experiment a dozen times. Sometimes the powder dropped and properly charged the cases 6 times in a row. But most of the time, it didn’t, and then it over charged either case #4 or #5, with 5 being the favorite. I did bang the charging hammer down several times to shake the powder loose, just like I pound it in the up position so I get the full volume.

The drop tube worked fine when I was holding the powder pan under it, but something about the case neck up in the tube made it hang up. I pulled the drop tube and rigged up a way that I could drop powder down the drop tube to see what would happen. I couldn’t see why the powder would hang up with a case inserted, but it did.

It happened. A new rifle ruined on the on the second shot. Time to place the blame.

ME. I did it. Nobody to blame but me.

First, I was distracted by an unrelated problem I was trying to solve, a decision I have to make. My full mind wasn’t on what I was doing.

Second, I changed my standard practice which made other standard practices I developed and used over the years impossible, namely, a visual inspection of the powder charge in each case before seating a bullet. If I couldn’t do a visual inspection, had I not been distracted, I might have, and more than likely would have, weigh each charge, as has been my standard practice. I know what 58 grains of RL 22 looks like in a 270 Winchester case. I know what 73.5 grains of RL 22 looks like in a 300 Winchester Magnum case. I don’t know, and can’t know, what 20 grains of IMR SR 4759 looks like in a case. It’s too deep and too dark down that casing to get an accurate estimate.

Third, I used a new piece of equipment, namely the drop tube, without a good and accurate trial run before I pulled the trigger. The end result shows every time I look in the mirror.

My mistakes in short:

No eye protection.
A new powder I wasn’t familiar with.
Equipment I had never used, namely the bottleneck drop tube.
Deviating from standard practice so I would catch mistakes, or possible mistakes.
Not just poor quality control, but no quality control.
Distracted.

I paid the price, mostly in humility, and almost with my eyes.


Flames welcome. I damned well deserve it for being stupid and careless.

Ouch. It's amazing what we do to ourselves at times. I have seen the powder bridging too many times and that why I like the RCBS uniflow powder measures, the drop tubes are transluscent enough to see that happening.

Saying that, last month my 5 year old grandaughter turned the seating die out on my Redding seating die when I wasn't looking and I didn't check the setting when I reloaded a batch of ammunition.

Let's just say that the effects of seating a 142 g SMK, jammed into the lands .070" instead of .010" short of the lands, on a max load is quite noticeable

Thanks for the thorough explanation. It seems as though you've fully sleuthed this (potentially tragic) mishap and have come to a quite sensible conclusion as to cause and effect.

I'm sure that any of us could offer you admonitions about what you did wrong, but you clearly need none from me. I just hope my luck holds and I can continue to avoid a catastrophic loading mistake for another 40 years.

Sure don't want to make light of the issue. But considering what was in the case the action did hold together very well.

No flames here.

Thank God you're safe and got away with only some bruises and a wrecked rifle. The dipshits who intentionally hotrod their rifles I can understand blowing themselves up. Situations like this, when a careful, experienced reloader simply runs into a set of circumstances that conspire to cause a near tragedy are what scares the crap out of me. This could happen to any us.

Andy

Roger,Iam glad your OK!To hell with the rifle,we want YOU around ,The rifle can be replaced...Your lucky!

No Flames, Glad you are able to tell us about it and your still in one piece. It doesn't hurt to have an angel sit w/ you at the bench.

I would like to state that this is a good reason to really stress caution to folks that use reduced loads. Powder is cheap, IMO its best to work w/ a burn rate that will fill the capacity and give desired performance. Makes double charging impossible.

I guess you lost a good pair of shorts w/ your rifle as well.

Reloader

Thanks for this valuable report.

Loading reduced loads for rifle cartridges is a little risky because it allows you to put too much powder into a case and is not very visible.

We should always be aware of this danger, due to equipment or because we might load a case twice. Checking with a flashlight before seating the bullets helps.

RK, no flames here ,so very happy that it wasn''t worse than it was, i COMMEND you for your honesty,and shareing your misfortion, so others are safer and more aware of what can happen even too a very good veteran reloader, my deepest regards jjmp

grateful to hear you survived the oversight. your ability to share such a humble experience goes a long way. I just hope I continue to be alert too as I go on to reload.

good strong actions pay off in more ways than one.

regards,

Smart people learn from their mistakes.
Smarter people learn from the mistakes of others.

I commend you for having enough character and courage for allowing others to learn from you..............DJ

ouch. Double or tribble charges of fast powder well do.

thankfuly, you weren't hurt worse than you were. i'm surprised the barrel is in place and the action is not a "flower". you are able to pass on hard earned knowledge so that we less experienced reloaders might not make this mistake! THANK YOU!!!

Hey RogerK, Nice, well thought-out posting. Darn shame the rifle got trashed, but at least you will still be able to go shoot.

Come to think of it, I'd guess it will take awhile to feel comfortable shooting again. If you don't have a "slight" flinch from that, I doubt you ever will.

Thanks for the post. We can all stand a Dose of Reality from time to time.

Best of luck to you.

Ouch!
When the first picture was loading, and I saw the extractor......I knew it was going to be a nasty looking gun!
Thanks for the reminder, I think we all need one now and then!

Glad you are OK.

Superb post. Glad you are OK and
that you were shooting a strong as
hell action and not something less.

This will caution many reloaders.

I can't take credit for the idea, but
the fellow that taught me reloading
said, "on reduced rifle charges take
a small dowel rod, insert it into the
case after charging and check the powder
level in each case before seating the bullet."

dxr

Roger, I echo what others have said in extending thanks for having the stones to share with us, especially for anyone considering reduced loads.

I'm really glad you weren't hurt worse!

Hell, those pics might make ME flinch the next shot or two at the range!!

Regards---Don

Roger,
Thanks for sharing and giving us all a reminder.

I am thankful that you didn't get seriously hurt, just your pride and some bruises.

I think that rifle actually held together pretty good for what it went through.

If you're interested in replacing the rifle. I have the exact same one, that I would be willing to sell. PM me if your interested.

Roger, I must stand with the other gentlemen in that your courage to post this personal happenstance is without question a testiment to the man that you are. Thank the Lord that no irrepairable damage was done to the shooter, you. The rifle was just never meant to be, though I would have it tested for hardness, on the of chance that a disgruntled employee of a soon to be defunct company left a present for an unsuspecting gentleman, you. Maybe you didn't make a mistake?

I am glad you are OK.
4759 is one of those powders that are most likely to bridge, 4198 is tricky too. I learned a long, long time ago to weigh and trickle all stick powders just by seeing that they didn't flow into the case from the measure. For test loads or less then 20, I just use a dipper instead of setting the measure. Easy to dribble from it into the pan for the last 1/10 gr. Even when I use ball powder in my revolver loads I watch through the drop tube to see if every charge flows the same. I then eyeball every case.
I am very glad you posted this because it might save someone else.

quote:

Another rule is to weigh every charge and visually check every charge in the case before seating the bullet to make sure the levels are all the same.

Roger, thanks for sharing your experience. I have been reloading for over 40 years and one thing we share and I ALWAYS do is visually check the charge in every case. Yes it is a pain the the a$$. The RCBS Charge Master sure make this part easier.

Every one here who has read your post owes you one, you brought it home and I hope it makes us all a little more careful.

I personally have blown up one rifle.. and that was a model 70 like that... at the time Winchester was still in business...

I returned the rifle action to them and they repaired it...

The charged me $250.00 for the amount of repair and it was much worse than that...the replaced the stock at no charge, which was much worse than the damage to your stock....

But we are thankful for both you sharing and that you are safe.. and walked away from that one...when I blew up my Model 70 all that was hurt was my pride...

But NOW since people know I do a lot of down loads, I am sure they are blaming it on that...

Well actually, it wasn't on a down load... It was not paying attention to the beam scale close enough... Instead of setting the scale on 47 grains of H 414, I set it on 57 grains...operator error....

It goes to show you can never be too safe with loading technique and safety....

But in that same light, when I am loading a fast powder that the charge is light enough to do a double or triple charge, that is simple to eliminate....

Charge the case and then seat the bullet... before going onto the next one...I put all of my brass, upside down in the holder until I charge them, so there is no way to double charge something unless I am not paying enough attention to what I am doing....

and I managed to do that only once, and that was not with a down load.... that was just putting 10 grains of powder or 20% over max, because I didn't do something as simple as read the beam scale right...

But thanks so much for sharing.. because safety in the name of the game...

cheers
seafire

Roger K,

I am very sorry to read of your accident. I can see no reason to flame, as the damage you have done to yourself and your rifle is more than enough punishment. I am glad your injuries were only minor, and especially that no one else was hurt in the mishap.
There is probably no one who can honestly say that they did not get "away" with something when reloading that should and could have had dire consequences. As we are both coming into our 40th year at the bench, I guess we both learned not to commit anything to memory and to cut no corners when it comes to procedure.

Learn by your mistakes, and enjoy shooting in the future. Best of luck, and luck you indeed do have RogerK.

It always amazes me how strong modern actions are manufactured.

Thank God you are allright with just minor injury.
Thanks for the courage to remind us to be carefull at your expense, no flames here.

RogerK, A really good post. No criticism from me whatsoever, but along with Duk and others I could see trouble comming when I saw a 20gr load. Light loads give me the willies.

Roger, good explanation of the problem, I have had chages hang up like that and I got in the habit of looking into the charged cases, in the block, with a light it will shoe the relative level of the powder and any that are over or under stick out like sore thumbs.

Roger
Glad to hear that you'll be ok and didn't suffer any serious personal injury!
Sorry you have lost a really nice rifle!

Thanks for posting the pics!
I printed them and they will be posted somewhere in my reloading room as a reminder!
Maybe everyone should print them out!

WOW!

The gentleman that taught me reloading was very against ligt loads. He also broke a rifle doing something similar.

Thank you sir for for posting this.

Roger and All,
Drill an .031" dia. hole along the axis of the bore on your drop tube at an angle upward to vent the air as your powder falls into the case.
You will never have a problem dumping into a pan as you don't seal off the mouth as you do when you force a case outo the taper in the drop tube. I have not had a problem since I did this. Hope this helps.
Doug

I had my nice Mosin-Nagant blow up on because I was loading distracted was one of those stop and start deals the wife wouldn't leave me alone that day when I was charging cases.... I was using 150 gr cast gc bullets i 2 sets.... I had my lee dippers out asnd did the first set with a reduced load of imr 3031(those shot great, would be better with a lil more tweaking...) My second batch was with alliant 2400 .... after getting distracted too many times I evedentlly grabbed the wrong dipper and cahrged 10 cases with ii(I didn't realze this untill I shot the first round of the second batch KABOOOM!! i had pock marks all over my face a piece of metal hit me in the forhead just above the hairline and I was bleeding profuseley.... Luckily there was a couple of guys at the range gave me a shop towel to stop the bleeding and luckily it stopped aftera few mins.... Im glad I was wearling glasses.... That whole episode ruined my rifle and I had a gunsmith freind take it apart for me and the chamber is expended 1/8 of ann inch all around!!! he tied it in a tire and stood back an shot it with another bolt.... That was prety scary I have been reloading for more than 15 yrs and never had any problems like that...... I now do not allow any distractions while im reloading, way too dangerous to get distracted for an instant that coulda killed me... btw i pulled he other 9 bullets and they were 25 grains over the max for 2400 thats what did it I grabbeded the wrong dipper..... Shesh what an experience!!

No Flames from me! I am happy to hear that
you were not hurt beyond some stuff that will
heal, and your pride, that may never be the
same again.

Just recently, I deviated from my normal "Weigh
every powder charge", when loading some
.223 Rem. plinking ammo for the AR-15. It sure
felt spooky not weighing the charges, beyond
dropping about every 10th one in the scale pan,
and checking it for relative consistency.
I think I will buy plinking ammo, and stick
to weighing every charge

Squeeze

RogerK,

I am thankful too that you weren't hurt. I'd also like to commend your thought process and dilligence in disecting the process and identifying the breakdown in the process that caused the failure. Thanks for the lesson.

quote:

Originally posted by djpaintles:
Smart people learn from their mistakes.
Smarter people learn from the mistakes of others.

I commend you for having enough character and courage for allowing others to learn from you..............DJ

How about a 25/300WSM SS rifle?? Sound familiar?
Thankfully, the Winchester action is deceptively strong.

Thanks for the post. I am fairly new to reloading so it is good to see and hear of reminders to stay focused.

Roger,

Thanks for the post - glad that you were not injured more severely.

Great lessons learned for all of us.


Phil

Thanks for the post, and glad to know you will be ok. I've been reloading for several years, and it is imperative that we all understand the risks of making a mistake. I measure each individual charge, and visually inspect each charged case to be certain that it looks like the right amount of powder. This has reinforced my willingness to spend the time doing this. Thanks you.

gd

This was a GREAT post. Well put together and detailed well. It should serve well to caution us all. Nobody is beyond a mistake!
Glad to hear your fine, and for having the moxy to tell all. I'd check on saving the action. Nate

Roger, glad to hear you were not injured too badly. I think you are lucky you had one of the new M70s with the gas deflecting flang on the left side of the bolt sleeve. If it had been an earlier version, you may have had more gases blowing back to your eyes.

I think maybe the only thing you have done "wrong" is to be too hard on yourself. I too am thankful for the post, and appreciate your absolute honesty. You are obviously a very upright and honorable man.

Black eyes and bruises will go away, and firearms can be replaced; lives cannot. I am glad you are okay.