I have always wanted to watch this happen. You just have to love the fact that everyone packs a camera these days !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkXfYMkTNNs

This video has been out for a long time.

Still not sure what happened.

I know two individuals who forgot a cleaning rod in the barrel, and all they got was a bulged barrel.

In neither of the two cases the barrel blew up.

The rifles were a 30-06 Springfield, and a 460 Weatherby!!

We tried an experiment by try to blow up 3 seperate rifles intentionally.

An old British Lee Enfield in 303 British.

A BRNO 505 in 308 Winchester

A BSA in 243 Winchester.

All three cases had roughly the same case capacity, and we filled them up with - I think - Hercules BULLSEYE.

The BSA blew up to pieces!

The BRNO cracked the stock, and we could open the bolt with a hammer.

We repeated the same shot in it again!!

The stock broke, but did not fall to pieces.

The Lee Enfield hardly noticed it from the outside.

We had to hammer the bold open, but no damage would have happened to the shooter with either the BRNO or the the Lee Enfield.

The BSA shooter, on the hand, would have suffered very serious injury - if not death!

I have seen a good number of barrels banana peeled like that Saeed. Every one of them requires a bulge that starts about 1.5 inches down the bore and extends into the crown of the barrel. You also need the luck of having the grain of the steel running straight up and down the barrel. You could probably emulate it by plugging the first 2 inches with clay and allowing it to harden before firing. I have seen far more chromoly barrels split this way than stainless. When discussing it, some of my colleagues have come forward and claimed that it is because chromoly steal is usually tougher and more brittle than stainless. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that It's simply because there are far more chromoly barrels out there. I have seen a few stainless barrels split the same way and they all had the large inch and a half jug bulge that extended right into the crown.

I have heard of barrels splitting on safari - especially custom made rifles.

On one occasion a 416 Remington's barrel split right in front of the chamber.

It was a custom built rifle - I think it was supposed to have been made as light as possible, and the barrel had flutes cut too far back.

I heard the shooter had fired it before, and everything worked fine, so there is no suspicious of anything being lodged in the barrel.

The shooter had serious injury to his left hand.

Yeah, I have seen a lot of guns fluted by gunsmiths that go well beyond the safe limits. Flutes or no flutes you can not go below about 1/4 inch of wall thickness over the chamber and for approximately the first inch and a half or two inches ahead of the neck and tapered down more or less progressively to the muzzle which should have at least .150 inch of wall thickness. Any thinner and you are playing with a pipe bomb. I have seen a lot of hunting weight barrels that have been fluted to .150 wall thickness just ahead of the neck and ending at a thickness of .090 wall thickness at the muzzle. They will hold, but only barely and a small obstruction or an over pressured round is all that is needed to push them over the edge.

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:
Yeah, I have seen a lot of guns fluted by gunsmiths that go well beyond the safe limits. Flutes or no flutes you can not go below about 1/4 inch of wall thickness over the chamber and for approximately the first inch and a half or two inches ahead of the neck and tapered down more or less progressively to the muzzle which should have at least .150 inch of wall thickness. Any thinner and you are playing with a pipe bomb. I have seen a lot of hunting weight barrels that have been fluted to .150 wall thickness just ahead of the neck and ending at a thickness of .090 wall thickness at the muzzle. They will hold, but only barely and a small obstruction or an over pressured round is all that is needed to push them over the edge.

I bought a left handed Zastava Mauser in 458 Win mag and it had a barrel that was .660" at the muzzle, (0.102" wall thickness). I changed the barrel out with one that was .750" at the muzzle not because I was worried about it blowing up, it was just so muzzle light that it was uncomfortable to shot.

When at one point in my career, I did not have the means to flute a barrel as requested, I farmed the job out. When I got the barrel back, the flutes looked to be too deep at the breech end so I decided I had better test it. I screwed the barreled action into an old stock and fired a factory 300 Win Mag though it. It was only due to good luck that I was not injured as the barrel split and one piece curled straight out but away from my hand. I will be forever thankful that I decided to fire that rifle. I replaced the barrel for free (Unfluted)and have never sub-contracted a single piece of work since.

.660 is too small a muzzle OD for a .458 but not because of pressure, which is very low at the muzzle. .1 wall is plenty, but the recoil had to be horrendous. Of course, any obstruction and they blow; we had many tank cannon tubes blow the ends off due to dirt in the muzzles. You have to be careful when entering and leaving firing positions as they always have a dirt berm in front and your tube will scoop up dirt/sand if the TC doesn't lift it. Leaving the Muzzle Bore Sight in one will cause it to blow too.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Leeper:
When at one point in my career, I did not have the means to flute a barrel as requested, I farmed the job out. When I got the barrel back, the flutes looked to be too deep at the breech end so I decided I had better test it. I screwed the barreled action into an old stock and fired a factory 300 Win Mag though it. It was only due to good luck that I was not injured as the barrel split and one piece curled straight out but away from my hand. I will be forever thankful that I decided to fire that rifle. I replaced the barrel for free (Unfluted)and have never sub-contracted a single piece of work since.

The lightest that I have ever accidentally done was on a Gaillard barrel that I cut to 12 spline in 300 Winchester. I have seen a lot of the old Douglas Featherweights (lighter than the #1 Shilen) chambered in 300 Winchester with no (MAD BOMBER) tendencies, so I elected to use their .195 wall thickness beginning at 4-1/4 inches from the chamber start and end at .125 wall thickness at the muzzle. I started the flutes at 6 inches for cosmetic purposes instead of the 4-1/4 inch mark. Some how I had a malfunction-at-the-junction and ended up with .170 wall thickness at 6 inches from the chamber start and .120 inch at the muzzle. I know that on the impressively scary scale, that's right up there with chugging beer or drinking whiskey straight but its right at the top my chicken-shit level. Common sense sort of told me I was still somewhat in the safe buffer. But it took a box of shells to put my mind at ease. Sort of. It's still damned thin and I would never do it again on purpose.

Splines belong on drive shafts, not on gun barrels.

I have seen a few rifles with mud dauber wasp nests in them when I tried to boresight. Definitely a bore obstruction and quite resistant to removal. A lot of hunters put the gun in the closet at the end of the season and don't check the bore before firing.

Try Leaf cutter bee's,

I usually get 1-3 rifles per yr, mostly 22 calibers, to shorten the bbl's on, cause of dog knotted/bulged bbl's.

One farmer had it happen 4 times, to the same 22-250 rifle, after that the bbl was too short to do anything with.

He just gave me the rifle and bought another one.

All it takes is a piece of tape OVER the end of the bore, stops all the costs/headaches etc.

Tia,
Don

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Those little, alfalfa pollinating bastards are a gunsmiths best friend. I get 5 or 10 guns a year that have fallen victim to them. Every farmer in Southern Alberta owns a Cooey 22 with a 10 inch barrel and a Lee Enfield with a 12 to 16 inch barrel. All highly illegal as the minimum barrel length is 18 inches but they don't care. The bees fill up the barrel for about 3 inches and they blow it off or bulge it. They chop it off with a hack saw and square it off with a file and away they go again. The best recommendation that I have ever heard was from an old farmer that announced that he had finally beaten the bees by putting a large headed roofing nail in the end of the barrel. He proudly stated that the nail was too heavy for the bees to lift out and when you dipped the rifle to load it, the nail would fall out on the ground.

I personally had no idea that the bees were smart enough to pull a nail out of the end of the barrel so they could make a nest. But who am I to question a wizened old nonagenarian whose bitten the necks off of more whiskey bottles than I could possibly count !

I remember reading old articles by the late Finn Aagard. He swore by duct tape and there were even pictures of his rifle with a supply of tape wrapped around the barrel so it would be close at hand. I use tape and those soft foam earplugs wet with a little gun oil.