I had a man bring me a Savage Model 99 308 caliber today, he said over the phone that it needed a new stock and extractor.
When it arrived the stock was broken in half at the wrist and the extractor was missing so far as he said.
But..........what really happened was he over loaded a 308 hand load and when it went off it blew open the action ripping off the extractor egg shaping the chamber mouth driving the bolt back and blowing the stock in half. a huge piece of stock was missing right behind the tang and He never got a scratch. He was loading 150 jacketed bullet with IMR4320 42.5 grain load but thinks he may have bumped the scale and loaded more???? 47 g is max according to my Lyman book.
I told him to go buy a lottery ticket cause he is the luckeyest man I have met in a long time.

Oh yea he also brought in a 788 with the same problem overloaded cartridge 22-250, said he loaned it to a friend totally ruined.
Sent him home with both reminding myself not to work on anything from him period.....

You can't get enough 4320 into a 308 to get into trouble. I just tried it; 47.4 grains completely fills the case, to the top. More likely he loaded something like 4227, etc.
As for blowing up a 788, you would have to try very hard to do so.

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I have been seeing about 3 to 5 darwinloads per year for the last 35 years. I have found that the uniqueness and originality of the excuses increases exponentially with the amount of damage caused.

The best one I have heard to date was a guy who swore that it blew up because he moved his loading room from the basement where it was cool, to his wife's old sewing room upstairs where it was warmer. The increase in temperature the cartridges were loaded at thereby accounting for the DRASTIC increase in pressure.

You can't fix stupid. But you can get stupid fixed so that stupid can't reproduce !

I was thinking the same thing on the 308 but I don't load 4320 so I could not confirm or deny that. The 788 also had an egg shaped chamber mouth plus the bolt having the extractor broken and the ejector driven back into the bolt. They used a hammer to remove the bolt after prying it over to release some pressure. Both seemed to show signs of extreme pressure so a fast burning power must have been used. He got kinda unhappy with me when I wanted to photograph them so I backed off.
I too thought 788's were almost stupid proof

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Normally the first thing they do with the 788 is hit the bolt handle with a hammer and the handle breaks off. Right about then is when and how they got the pipe wrench marks on the receiver and the custom, vise jaw checkering on the barrel in the chamber area. The nice ones have the vise jaw fluting on the chamber area which tend to only go half way around. Then they tell you that it shouldn't take much to fix it. Probably no more than 20 minutes.

It may have just been altitude bringing it up from the lower floor. Not as much pressure to hold back the case.

Naw.

He was pretty set on the temperature thing. Brass must be one hell of an insulator.

Hey, hey, hey...slow down for a minute. lets give the benefit of the doubt and assume his basement is 42 degrees, and his wife's sewing room is also the smokehouse for a home jerky making business. Easily a 165 degree temperature swing. Explains everything.

quote:

Originally posted by Bigjimttu:
Hey, hey, hey...slow down for a minute. lets give the benefit of the doubt and assume his basement is 42 degrees, and his wife's sewing room is also the smokehouse for a home jerky making business. Easily a 165 degree temperature swing. Explains everything.

Yes and being that brass is such a good insulator the temperature inside the case will stay 165 degrees FOREVER! They should make high arctic boots out of brass. You could freeze to death up there and they could find you a year later and your feet would still be 98.6 degrees. I think we're on to a real money maker here. SOME ONE CALL THE PATENT OFFICE !

LMAO ROFF

You guys are cruel!
What ever happened to giving a man the benefit of doubt.
I bet he accidently used a MAGNUM primer by mistake, they look just alike you know!!

I don't know if it's really so much being (cruel) theback40. But you have to be able to take all of this stuff at the service counter with a straight face and nod your head a lot. After the fact, you can't take anything too personal and you have to develop a good, if not twisted sense of humor and a thick skin or it will eventually drive you NUTZ ! LOL

I hope to hell he didn't rub up against you!!

OH MY!

I didn't realize that it was contagious Ray. And to think that after all of these years I have been blaming my dad for dropping me on my head too many times as a kid.

LOL

What about the guys who bring you a box full of parts from a Woodsman or something and tell you the wife took it apart?

And maybe 3 or 4 really useful parts are missing ....

Sounds like the guy I used to work with, he asked if I had a 7mm-08 which I did. He brought me a box of Remington ammo with a single one missing.

He wasn't much of a gun nut and I found out he had a 7mm Rem Mag, and had asked a buddy to buy him some ammo for is "7mm". When I asked where the other cartridge was, there was a lot of stumbling speech which ended up with "it was too damaged to use"

Never did get the full story but would have love to have heard it!

I read this thread a few days ago, but couldn't resist a second look. One of the better 'smiths I've used was damn near certifiable. Now I know how he got that way.

In my work in Failure Analysis I've come across some fun projects. Like a very large box containing some of the parts of a huge 12 cylinder piston compressor ! "tell me what happened " I could because the critical parts were there !
But as far as shooting ? One guy was loading for his .380 but accidently flipped the page and used 38 Super info!! Only one shot made him stop and investigate .That evil reloading book !But the pistol survived !!

Thank you for the sad/twisted Friday humor !



Words to remember !
You can't fix stupid, but you can get stupid fixed.
I have a pocket knife.

Based on the egg shaped chamber, my guess is he grabbed the Bulleye or Unique can, I can't think of any other powder that would move that much metal in a .308. "Normally" a max load in a 99 Savage is 1 or 2 grs. below most book max loads has been my experience and those loads are plenty safe in a good bolt action like my Kimber or Mauser..

As a retired maintenance mechanic / supervisor I have heard and seen many similar happenings on production machinery. My saying is a little different than those mentioned here. Mine is "you can't make things foolproof, fools are too ingenious".