How to blowup your rifle

[Archerfish]

I don't have anything technically useful to add to this post but wanted to add my voice to the many who have expressed their relief that you walked away with all your body parts still functioning.

Best regards,

Archerfish

 

[Deleted member 46119]

Nope, not if that's your experience. My experience with 215's is very good, that doesn't mean I should believe it's universal. Or that someone else's poor experience is a personality defect.

It was a joke.

I have said many times the physics of how the mechanical bond between the barrel and the brass is made during the firing sequence and why a particular brand and model is more susceptible than others.

I just didn't want to use a very scary incident to point it out again.

However, I expected certain parties to use it to attack my preferred brand and model.

I sent a PM to someone predicting that these parties would do just that.

They did.

Yet my preferred brand and model has nothing to do with it ever happening, though one says it did. I do remember the incident he referenced and it was a magnum case full of pistol powder not a "hot load" or "cold reaction" as this one seems to be. This party left that detail out so that it could be inferred that what I like is worse than..

They are belligerents with a long long history of holding a grudge and acting on that grudge over and over. Yet they want to be seen as "the good guys".

 

[Deleted member 46119]

I cannot keep from wondering about the powder though, because several shooters on this thread have reported similar instances with Retumbo. That cannot be coincidence.

It is not the first time I have heard of pressure problems with Retumbo loads in colder conditions that the load was developed in.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

wondering how Retumbo might clump at -10 or -20 degrees

That is a great one and repeatable. We all have freezers that can hit cold temps.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

High humidity and static "can" cause clumping.

Yes sir.

 

[Pdvdh]

WOW. This post has gotten off track since I last looked at It and my observations will not change that. But I will go back to the issue the poster ask.

We are all just guessing because there are so many things that could have gone wrong we will probably never know.

If it were mine This is what "I" would have done when I stuck the case.
This is not to point fingers at the OP, or rule out any of the suggestions It is just to analyze what went wrong.
J E CUSTOM

Isn't guessing all that's left, after the evidence has been so compromised.

No disagreement on the more straightforward, logical process to troubleshoot the evidence in the effort to ID a cause or causes.

Since the evidence is largely compromised, all that's left is speculation. Seems like the membership is enjoying this as much as any subject over the past 6 months. If it weren't for that enjoyment, the Thread would have ended after your first recommendation for diagnosing the cause.

 

[Winkfish]

In hindsight I maybe should have taken it to someone else who may have had more working knowledge of such problems. There may have been alternate ways to disassemble the rifle that could have provided more insight as to the root fault. Since we were unable to remove the barrel it sounded reasonable to take the path we did.

I guess like other things in life it always good to get a second opinion or it may cost you.

I have the parts all packaged up and ready to ship out tomorrow to see if bigngreen can see what he can find in the barrel.

I would not rule out operator error and if someone is able to determine it was my fault I can accept that use that information to be more informed, safe and open to more points of view in the future.

To answer a few of the other questions:
I opened my jug of Retumbo powder in October of 2017.
I did not see any powder clumping in either dispensing the charge initially or when I measured it after removing the bullets and checking weights.

All the federal primers came from the same lot and the ones used for the 230 Berger were from the same 100 primer package.

The brass was the same batch of 20 Hornady cases and only have been used in this rifle and only with the 230 Berger. The cases have only been reloaded twice.

I initially tested the Berger 230 with a starting load of 86.2 and a max of 88.5 the previous day. I was doing .3 gr steps. There were no pressure signs with any of those loads and the rifle performed without fault. The temp on the day these rounds were tested was 3 degrees. I was unable to get velocities on that day due to fact it was snowing and overcast, so the chrono would not pickup the rounds.


I appreciate the comments. Hopefully it will also provide other folks options if they experience the same fault and possibly their rifle can be saved.

If I missed any questions let me know and I will try and answer them.

 

[den]

reloaded twice as in first day out working up the load was on new brass then the one that stuck was the second firing of that brass ?

 

[BEEMAN]

I personally don't use Retumbo in any of my guns. But a friend of mine shoots it in his 300 RUM with 215 Bergers. We are in southern Manitoba Canada and shoot when we can in winter. This means we sometimes shoot in -20 to -30 Celsius. He has never had a problem in these cold temps with Retumbo. Nor have we seen problems with any other powders in cold conditions.

 

[Swamplord]

Not buying the Accubond vs Berger fouling/galling bit, I've fired both in my stainless 338 Edge, sometimes upwards of a hundred rounds before cleaning, ranging from +80 F temps down to -40 F, the 300 gr Accubond was my usual hunting bullet and the 300 gr Berger EH was my long range backup, killed game with both and shot a bunch of these bullets with several powders, recently have used Chinchaga RBTST, Hornady ELDM & ELDX, Swift AFrame, Nosler Accubond & ABLR and Barnes TSX & LRX, firing all bullets with different powders during load development without cleaning in between, and not only in the 338 Edge but in 4 other wildcats in different bullet diameters in different barrel brands, rifling type and twists, all built on Rem 700 actions,

Back in the 90's I exclusively used a 300 Win Mag and 8mm Rem Mag for all my hunting and used the original Barnes X bullets and Swift A Frame bullets, both bullets had reputations of bad copper fouling for different reasons but never had any severe pressure issues firing multiple rounds each without cleaning, and again in similar temps as mentioned above

there is something else going on here

 

[Pdvdh]

there is something else going on here

I pretty much agree. Would like to know what happened. But I doubt we ever will at this point.

Thanks to the OP for sharing his experience. All of it, including the good, bad, and the ugly. The ugly being the hack-sawed parts and pieces. Made for an interesting, even entertaining, thread. All in all, an interesting start into the new year!

 

[bigngreen]

You can not buy it all you want, I wouldn't have thought of it either till I watched it happen with ammo that was long proven and not max loads. It's certainly a possibility, won't know if it's the cause till it's bore scoped and cleaned, then a chamber cast and bore slugging and that's about all the barrel will tell you. It could be the key bit of evidence went down the barrel and the bore will be lightly fouled and normal at least by looking at where the evidence leads during a root failure analysis a guy can learn something and either not repeat it or change his loading practice to make it more secure.

I've never seen a copper related pressure issue on a newer barrel, all were bores that we're getting rough. 6.5 Sherman, 300 RUM and a 7 STW. Very significant cleaning brought two back and the STW was rebarreled.

 

[can1010]

The brass was the same batch of 20 Hornady cases and only have been used in this rifle and only with the 230 Berger. The cases have only been reloaded twice.

load development on new unfired cases. plus a little this little that could have added up to stuck case.

 

[Don A Parsons]

A few questions to ask if I may WF.

What cases were used.
What was is the Jam of OAL, how far off the lands did you seat bullet.

Was the powder charge in the case under partial compression or tight pack.

Once you seated the bullets, how many days or hours before you attended range day.

Did you stack the rounds in the top feed or clip, would you know the case neck tension.
How many loads on cases, what is the case length.

Do you crimp the the bullets when loading.

The reason I ask this is due to a few factors.

Normally, normally powder can expand,,, either buy cold temperatures or taking your ammo on a air plane ride over seas.
Most target shooters seat their bullets part way before going over seas, once they arrive, they finish the final seating to make sure they are set back off the lands.
Rifle powder grows and has been known to push the bullets forward.

Case length, if the case have been fired a few times, the brass flows forward not only forward, but the thickness along the sides thickens up by milly thousands.

Between this and the max case length has been known to make the brass around the bullet bite or squeaks around the bullet holding it tight.
Now the pressures spike to get the bullet going. As the case is pushed into the chamber, the throat ""V" cone before the lands can squeeze the brass around the bullet even tighter.
Hopefully the brass is not over length.

Low neck tension with with no crimp.

If the bullets have limited neck tension, and are stacked in the clip or top feed, bullets can grow.

The first shot is fired, the rifle recoils back. The cases in the feed follow the direction of the rifle,,, because the spring in the clip keeps them in place.

But the bullets are sitting free, in low neck tension cases to bullets, or low neck tension cases to bullets with no crimp have been known to grow.

The rifle and ammo recoil is in milly seconds,,, not the low neck tension bullets.
5 bullets.
1st shot, the 4 bullets slide forward.
Each shot could continue this trend.
Shots 4 & 5 "could" end up longer then the COL when seated by your press.

The bigger the bang, the more chances of ammo (bullets) having that opertunity stretch if they are in the feed.

Just putting out some ideas of what could happen, but it will take a sharp eye to see what happened.

Thank the supreme bean that you came out of this unscaved my friend.

One of our shooters up here in Western Canada was very lucky when his 308 winchester F Class rifle bolt blew out the back of its action this spring.

He was wearing glasses and the bolt and handle missed hitting his face,,, good thing he hand the 20 MOA rail on his optics as he had his head sitting high off the stock. Had he not, his chin and cheek bone would of taken the impact.

Lucky, lucky indeed.

Western Canada Don