We've finally got a shooting club going at our college and were getting ready to go shoot a few rounds of skeet. We were walking over to our skeet field and I heard an explosion. The gun of one of the older gentlemen who had been shooting skeet right in front of us blew up. I saw the top barrel hit the ground. Fortunately he wasn't badly hurt. His left hand was sliced open pretty bad and he was taken to the hospital, but he has a lucky man.

Here are the details that might help somebody a little more experienced than me piece together what happened. He was shooting the lower barrel. He had shot several times before. (I don't think he hit his last target, but I'm not sure of that.) The explosion was 4x as loud as a normal shot. The top barrel flew up and was airborne for several seconds. The stock and forearm flew in several directions. The receiver flew in front of him, but looked relatively fine. The bottom barrel didn't go far. The chamber bulged and peeled a little bit, but the rest of the barrel looked fine. The shell was melted. It was a AA hull. I think he had reloads. The gun was an O/U Perazzi. It looked like the receiver was case colored.

I'd appreciate anyone's educated guess as to what happened. I don't know the guy and hope he gets it checked out. I just thought it really odd that the gun failed at the chamber.

Thanks to all.

Best,
QD

[ 02-03-2003, 05:04: Message edited by: quickdraw ]

Without additional information, it's impossible to tell.

One possibility is that he had a 20 gauge shell in his pocket and accidentally dropped it in the barrel, then put a 12 gauge shell in above it and fired. (This assumes that it was a 12 gauge gun.)

Another possibility is that his previous shot was a dud and left the barrel obstructed with a wad.

There are so many other possibilities that one wants more evidence before coming to any conclusion.

I don't think there was a 20ga shell in his pocket. The barrel didn't bulge like there was an obstruction. It was the chamber that blew, so I was thinking maybe an overpressure shell.

--QD

Let me see if I have the correct picture of the condition of the Perazzi after the big boom...

1---the top barrel separated from the bottom barrel and landed some distance away.

2---the forend was knocked off the receiver & bottom barrel lug and also landed some distance away.

3---the stock broke off the action and also landed some distance away.

4---by process of elimination, the receiver with the bottom barrel still attached fell to the ground.

A question! What happened to the trigger group?

I've been shooting competition skeet and trap for a long time during which I've seen more accidents like this than you can believe but never one quite like this. The most common reasons were:

#1 A light load where the wad didn't clear the barrel...followed by a full-power load. Usually a split barrel but at least a mouse-size bulge where the obstruction was. Common to trapshooters....can also happen to skeet shooters but their most prevalent accident is...

#2 dropping a 20ga shell into a 12ga barrel and when the firing pin goes "click" thinking they hadn't laoded it and then dropping a 12ga into the chamber and shooting it.....been on a squad where it's happened on two occasions. The first was a young man shooting a Rem 1100...at the shot there was a very loud noise and the barrel flew from the high house #1 position and landed just past the low house....the forend was shattered. the shooter was wearing glasses so except for some powder burns on his face and a lot of splinters on his forearms he was OK although I'm sure he and his Dad got an earfull when they went home.

From your description I suspect this is what happened to the Perazzi...it would be confirmed if the shooter had a "misfire" right before the accidend.

DB Bill,

You've got it pretty much right.

The receiver was actually a few yards in front of the barrel, which was at the mans feet. I believe the trigger group was still attached.

The strange thing to me is that the lower barrel didn't have a bulge. It was straight as an arrow except for the damage at the chamber.

BTW, if this is relevant the brass was not on the hull we found.

--QD

[ 02-03-2003, 09:52: Message edited by: quickdraw ]

Not knowing details, one could guess. In the case of an obstruction, like a remaining wad from a former dud round, the barrel(s) let(s) go just in front of it and usually there's no damage to the shooter. In the classic example of a 20 in front of a 12 ga. the shooter will more than likely get hurt. Here's a graphic rendition of a Merkel given the 20+12 treatment :

Andre,

Thanks for the picture. Guess people make mistakes on that side of the pond too! This gun didn't look like that (not to mention the fact that it was in a dozen pieces. Wish I had a picture. This gun had damage at the chamber, but no barrel splitting.

Thanks,
QD

if there was an obstruction, the "rupture" starts at 50% between the front of the projectile and the blockage. I can't get these pictures to open, and need to run, but if there was something in the barrel, you can determine WHERE it was by finding (generally) the widest spot and measure the overall split. divide that in 1/2, and that's the center point. It might NOT be at the end of the rupture, probably wont be, but you can figure out what it was.

This is NOT my original work, as I had a boss that was a ME/PE. mech eng, pro eng, and he helped in a couple cases of ruptured guns locally.

jeffe

My best guess would be that it was caused by a base wad separation on the previous shot. Winchester totally lost their dominance of the target shell industry when they switched from a one piece hull to the newer two piece. This was due to reports of gun failures caused by base wad separation. Supposedly, the base wad blows out along with the powder charge, causing an obstruction for the next shot. All two piece shells carry this danger, but a lot of the shooting bulletin boards have stories of this happening with the early "new" AA's.

Art S,

That sounds plausible if the base wad get's stuck in the forcing cone. I couldn't tell from the melted casing whether it was a new or old hull.

Thanks,
QD

Perazzi is not a company know for producing crap. Most likely this dufus is a reloader and either used a shell that suffered a base wad separation, or fired into a stuck wad from a blooper, or simply overchared one cartridge with powder and blew the gun to pieces.

Easy money on shooter's fault.

Here's the story on last week's mystery. The fellow was reloading his shells on a nice Posness Warren reloader. He was concentrating on fixing his primer feeding and must have double / triple charged the shell and forgot to put a wad in. That explains why it blew at the chamber.

He was back out shooting trap Sat.

Thanks for all of your replys.

Best,
QD

99% of blowups are traceable to stuff like that.

I have blown up allot of guns.
Some on purpose and some were accidents [or not supposed to blow up, YET].
I blew up my first shotgun with an obstucted bore in 1965. Sometimes I go to the gunshow with just to buy guns for destructive test.

I know what guns look like from hot loads vs bore obstructions. That Merkl picture looks like a bore obstruction because the center of the blast is not at the chamber and has long longitudanal failure lines. Most overload failures send parts flying from the chamber and leave the bore a few inches away intact.

Of guns that other people blow up, I see overload, wrong ammo, bore obstructions, and stuck bullets as the causes.

It is ironic that wimpy ammo causes as many failures as too hot ammo.

[ 02-12-2003, 00:12: Message edited by: Clark ]

is it really worth it messing around with reloading shot guns shells??