Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Have you seen a modern Rifle action blown up???

Hi Tex,

They are making a run of them now. Look on the Browning website under SHOT SHOW specials.

Best,

JM

P. O. Ackley found the same to be true with the JAP Arisaka's.
He said they were the strongest actions he had ever tested.

Saw a Browning 81 that let go after a fellow loaded it full of Bullseye. Split the action at the threads, barrel went downrange, bolt went back and hit him in the cheek and penetrated the skin and the docs removed it from the back of his neck. Lucky guy to be alive.
dan

I've never been present for one and I'd just as soon pass in the future too. I don't want a 12/20 barrel burst either.

One that should be more widely known - because the book should be more widely read - is reported in The .30-06 by Godfrey. There's a picture of a bolt with sheared locking lugs reported to "give way with a relatively mild 55,000 psi load. That really isn't the whole story though because it says nothing about the half dozen 100,000 + psi loads which were fired the day before."

A strong and well written reminder that over pressure can accumulate until the metal breaks.

I saw that. They even got rid of the white line recoil pad and claim it will have Grade III/IV wood. Now if they just went back to the old trigger...

One of them in .300 mag would be pretty sweet...

So it seems the bottom line from all this is not poor quality actions but poor quality operators.

O

I told a Mexican from Mexico to take my 243 Savage mod. 99 and shoot themselves a deer, and I went to town for some supplies. He got the 243 and a box of 250-3000s shot the deer and said the recoil was very bad and he didn't ever want to shoot it again..I sprung the lever getting it open and finally got the case out..Swaging a 25 caliber bullet ot 243 is tricky at best but the old 99 held together, and I hammered the lever back to working and never looked back..that could have been a real explosion, but wasn't...After that I gave him a .22 rifle to do his hunting with and he never had a failure..:)

Ray,

In P.O. Ackley's first book he ran some experiments with using over-size bullets, such as an 8mm in a .30 caliber barrel. He came to the conclusion that the big problem wasn't the bullet going down the smaller bore, but the tight grip the case had on the bullet when (and if) the round was chambered. Evidently standard lead-core bullets will swage down without much difficulty in a slightly smaller bore.

I checked the case dimensions on the .243 and .250 and your Mexican friend would have had to jam about 1/10th inch of the .250 case into the neck of the .243 chamber. The .250 neck with a bullet seated supposedly has a maximum diameter of .286", while the .243 neck is supposed to be .276". This would obviously be possible with a little effort, especially with a slightly oversize neck in the .243 chamber.

Luckily his .250 ammo was without a doubt factory, which is pretty low pressure.

A friend of mine has a Remington 700 chambered in 8mmRemMag, which he once accidentally fired a 338WinMag round in. Didn't hurt the rifle one bit!

Yep and P.O. reamed the chamber neck for proper clearance and shot some pretty large bullets through undersized bores. Seems as long as the neck releases the bullet and the case seals the chamber you stand a good chance of the bullet managing to make it down range. I have no inclination to follow up his work. Bear

I have read that where another problem crops up is when the case is shorter than the chamber, like a .308 cartridge forced into a .30-06 chamber (if you could do it.)

Another example would be a 7 X 57 Mauser in a .270 Win. The case would probably come apart at the unsupported neck, releasing the high pressure gas into the action and magazine well.

Yes, but for clarification Ackley did his work with a case and chamber correct for each other and simply reamed the neck for proper clearance of the larger bullet. He then was able to shoot them through a smaller barrel such as a 32 or 33 caliber bullet through a 30 caliber barrel for example with no high pressure signs such as a handloader would look for. If on the other hand the case does not fill, (seal), the chamber there may well be fireworks. As I said before however this is not something I wish to personally test! Bear

I had a customer buy a PF Mod 70 in 7mm Rem Mag from me. The rifle worked fine the first year of deer hunting, the second year he tried to save a buck on ammo and the guy in the discount store said he didn't need magnums for deer and sold him a box of 7mm Rem Express shells. The first one destroyed the mag box, floorplate and stock. After pulling big chunck of wood out of his arm I loaned him one of my rifles for the season. I replaced all the broken stuff and the rifle was just fine(he was sighting in on my range). Also went to the Dicount store and told off the salesperson and manager. This was back before everyone sued everyone else.

erich