Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Guns you've blown up

The only one I blew up myself was a .22 long rifle bolt action. After watching my dad reload, I got the bright idea I could make the .22 go faster by pulling apart 2 shells and putting all the powder in 1. I did, and it did ... sorta. It was some sort of Springfield bolt action with extractors external to the bolt. Blew the extractors off the bolt but the bolt held, ruptured the case at the rim, and I got an eye full of powder soot and brass pieces. Since I'd done a dumb I couldn't tell my folks ... I walked around basically blind for about 3 days before my eye recovered. I was probably 7-8.

This was only one of at least a half dozen instances of my father teaching me HOW to do something without any explanation of why or why not, from both safety and morality angles.

Others I've been around ...

1) A friend blew up a .375 H&H bolt action. It was carried to the range in a soft case. In the case was later found 4 .221 fireball loaded cartridges, 1 short of a full mag and the box of 50 had 1 unaccounted for. The barrel was 'unwound' starting at the muzzle. The only thing I can think of is one of those cartrdges his son had thrown in the "rug" when taking the .221 home had somehow gotten into the muzzle and my buddy forgot to check his bore before starting to shoot.

2) One day at the range I saw a guy fighting with a 1911 clone, had "montana" in the name, maybe "montana armory". It was a 10mm. The barrel had split inside the frame bending the slide upwards and locking all the parts together.

3) The same guy was shooting a S&W 19 a bit later. I was keeping an eye on him as I shot and he had an odd way of firing the gun so i went over to look. Turned out he'd bulged one chamber with an overload and had to open the cylinder to move it past that one bulged chamber to fire the rest.

Yes, you read right, a bulged cylinder and he was still shooting.

"Bye ..."

3) An acquaintance of mine was known for blowing up a gun about every 2 years. He was really old. The last I heard of before he quit shooting was a Ruger .22-250. It appears he grabbed powder off the shelf over the loading bench without paying attention and got H110 instead of H380. 38 grains of H110 under a 52 grain Sierra HPBT. Boom.

There's a lot of ways for things to go wrong. Not paying attention is a good way to find them.

"Handbook for shooters and Reloaders Volume II" P.O. Ackley 1966
"a few causes of blow ups"

My synopsis:
page 23
1) obstructions
page 26
2) overloading
page 28
3) wrong powder
page 30
4) wrong ammo
page 34
5) soft brass
6) double charge
7) faulty chambering
page 37
8) faulty barrel
page 38
9) cartridge design
page 41
10) gunsmith alterations

Ones I have seen:

12 gauge barrel peeled back coming out of a dove field.

270 win will fit in a 7mm mag and detonate.

45 acp come apart when the ramp was shortened, magazine ejected out the bottom, side plate came off, round went of below the chamber. Shocked look on shooters face.

Here I have shot 270 in a 7mmRemMag at 10k psi and 75k psi Quickload.

I do not consider that a blow up, as it requires no repair.

if you've really blown up 19 guns with overloads, it might be wise to stop handloading, unless you were trying to do it deliberately for some reason.

Never blew one up but I've had s couple of close calls.

1. I was trying to get 2200 fps with a .458 and 500 grain bullet. The Hornady manual had a load that got that velocity. My first shot was loud, stuck the bolt so I had to hammer it, and the chronograph read 2376. I guess they means you should not start with the maximum in the manual. BTW: 2200 is easy to get.

2. I had a German made .300 Wby. The maximum load of H4831 in both the Hornady and Sierra manuals was 80.7 grains so I loaded some. This grouped about 8" at 200 yards. A call to Weatherby elicited the advice (what else?) to only shoot factory ammo. I had some old 150 grain factory ammo. The first shot blew the primer and made a shiny spot on the case head.

3. I loaded 24.0 grains of Varget in my AR15 with both 69 and 80 grain Sierra Match Kings. This is a typical practice and not particularly hot. After about 1200 rounds, the 80 grain began to leak gas around the primer and even blew a couple. I thought this was due to carbon buildup in the chamber so I brushed it out with JB, but that worked only partially. Finally I cut the 80 grain load to 23.2 grains.

I don't think any of these instances were mistakes but such things happen. I also once saw a .308 case fired in a 30-06 M1 Garand. All it did was to produce a straight case with just a bit of taper where the 30-06 shoulder started. Looked like a .45-08. Of course the shooter fired a miss.

I guess thats one way to blow up a .22. Someone else here said they did one too, but not sure how. Question for you guys. There is a fellow at work who is typically FOS about almoost everything he says. He also claims to have blown up a .22 by pulling the bullet and putting in "rifle powder" instead. Didn't specify which powder though. I was under the impression .22 was loaded with a fairly quick burning powder, perhaps even a pistol powder. Would it be possible to blow up a .22 with any of the common rifle powders?

I've not ever blown up a gun. I've had a single near miss with almost loading pistol powder in a rifle cartridge. 57gr of HS-6 should be a hot load in 30-06 brass. I didn't get a bullet seated. I haven't let spectators chat with me during reloading since that day.

I did shear a lug on a Browning A-Bolt in 223 WSSM. I have thought so long and hard about that. I had a middling pressure load of R-15, 36 gr, Fed210, behind Sierra 63's that would cluster so tight that I had to shoot a few before I saw more than a single-caliber hole at 100. It was crazy-accurate. And then one day I went to the range, set up, shot 2, and the 3rd sounded funny. It hit 8" from the other 2. I got thoughtful. The bolt wouldn't open. It would rotate a tiny bit, but not beyond that. I smacked it hard, and it popped open, but with a tinkling of metal. And the case was still in the chamber.

When I got home, I tapped the case out. It didn't take much: the palm of my hand on the cleaning rod. Looking at the lug that broke, there isn't much metal there after they drilled a hole for the spring piece, and opened to bolt face up for the Wizzizzum. I know that the throat had become as rough as asphalt. I know that I likely left oil in the chamber after cleaning it last. Still pissed about that whole thing. And still haven't done anything with it.

I suspect the mix of the super-short, super-fat case and the way the A-Bolt lug set-up is designed, that action doesn't lend itself to WSSM's. I plan to turn it into a .483" casehead something that will fit into the 2.36" action. And since I'll need a new barrel, I'm thinking 6mm BR or Dasher. The other thing that would be very cool would be a 450 Bushmaster on that action.

I had some close ones, working with guns for years, but never had it happen to me. Some of the worst I have seen were in the military. About 10 years back there was a guy killed on a range not far from me. According to the coroner report, he took a piece of the receiver ring in the head. If I remember correctly, he was using/reloading for one of those Danish Krags. That may be wrong, it has been a while. Blow ups are nothing to fool around with.

I've never blown one up, but have put together some, uh, overloads and fired them in my rifles, which didn't like them much.

Did hear about a guy who blew up a rifle, supposedly with a load I published in a magazine. Was contacted by a reader who gave me link to another forum. Seems the guy had saved for years to buy a 6mm Lee Navy rifle, an original military model. About the time he got the rifle an article of mine about handloading for my own Lee Navy Sporter appeared, and he claimed one of "my" loads had blown up his rifle, and he posted that he was going to contact both me and the magazine.

Turned out there two problems with his claim: First, the load he used has apparently been published in every edition of CARTRIDGES OF THE WORLD. I had only tested the load in my rifle, where it worked with no problems.

Second, I had used necked-up, new Winchester .220 Swift brass. Instead he somehow bought some cases converted from .30-40 Krags, with the rim lathed off, then a new rim and extractor groove lathed into the case head. The first round shot fine, with no sign of any problems, but the second blew the action. The case was apparently still in the chamber, and had blown out one side the new extractor groove.

Never have heard from him, and neither has the magazine.

I haven't blown one up myself. I've had several face-palm incidents as well as lucky breaks on some loads. Had a friend that gave me some of his reloaded 25-06's to 'try out'. I took them home but didn't have time to shoot them.
Couple of weeks later we were chatting and he said his reloading method was to simply pour IMR-4831 into a bowl and scoop the case full, then just 'crunch' the bullet down. He stated that he used magnum primers to make sure every grain was ignited.
I went home and pulled everyone of those cartridges and never shot anything he loaded.
Not idea what it would have done to my rifle but I wasn't going to find out.

Upon graduation from college I got a job with a sporting goods store in Conroe, Tx. We had a customer come in with his left hand bandaged up to his elbow. Seems he'd been riding along on his ATV on some back roads when a little buck bounced out into the road. He pulled is Mod. 100 Winchester out of the scabbard and let one go. Seems there was about 12" of mud in the 18" barrel and the barrel, fore end and part of the receiver let go as well. The wood from the fore end as well as part of the barrel nearly took his thumb off as well as his pinkie. His buddies found the pinkie and put it on ice and hurried him to the hospital to get everything sewed back on.
He was bringing us the rifle to show people not to carry their rifle in a scabbard in the east Texas mud.

This is a page from an Italian police magazine explaining how I detructively test guns. I can not understand Italian, but I still get emails in English from the author on Italian Resurrection Day.

I've been shooting center fire rifles and pistols since 1967 and reloading since then too. I started out with a 357 Mag Colt Trooper (A real piece of junk) and a Marlin 336 in 44 Mag. I had those before my Dad would even let me get a 22 LR. I shot them every afternoon after school and the only way I could do it was to reload. A local Sheriff's Deputy got me started loading 357 Mags then the 44 mag. It just got worse as time went on. Every rifle or handgun had to be reloaded. I don't even know how many different cartridges I have dies for now.

I've read this whole thread and kind of feel like I'm the only one that hasn't blown something up. In almost 50 years of reloading not once have I had anything worse than a loose primer. I've got to be doing something wrong!

Me either & '67 was a very good year!

Last year I watched a high school kid blow up the bottom of his AR. He brought 2 AR's to the range chambered in 5.56 and 300 BLK. He had shot the 300 BLK 1st before switching to the 5.56. Using the same mag, he missed the one 300 BLK round still in the mag when loading his 5.56 rounds. He fired his string and on the last shot the bottom of the AR blew out (luckily he was not holding the mag). Here's what the 30 cal bullet looked like when it was extracted from the .224 bore.

A lesson in why you shouldn't run cheap range reloads as there may be a reason they are cheap. Buddy A let me borrow his 1911 45 to go the range and do some shooting. I went with buddy B and purchased a few bags of the ranges economy reloads. buddy B was firing the aluminum frame 1911 when the slide came back so hard that it blew the mainspring housing out of the frame. Buddy A sent the pistol back to the manufacturer and had the frame replaced. It was 20 odd years ago so I have no idea what brand of 1911 it was.

A good friend has loaded for many people for decades. He is one I would let load for me if I didn't do it myself. He always used IMR 4350 for everything he loaded, then he got a 222 and bought 4198. He loaded 3006 for a friend. Friend and son were checking zero and Dad's gun sounded funny and smoke came out ejection port, tried second round and action locked up. He set the rifle down and said "let's set how these shells work in yourgun". Ruined two 760's. Luckily another father son duo didn't try their 708 and 7 mag that had just been loaded. Fellow who did the loading was mortified and tried to pay for the rifles. I try to always follow the common sense rules and not get distracted, but these things can happen to anyone and I try not to judge others mistakes. However when you have just locked up a rifle......

Dang wonder what the BC is on that baby.

Wow. I can't figure out how the .300 blk round chambered though. Did it fire out of battery?

If he had enough air space in the case to allow the bullet to set back and he slammed the bolt home, it would chamber.