Found this over on another forum and though it belonged here too. It appears to have been caused by reloads.

According to author of original thread on other board:

"The load was 200 gr. Horn XTP'S with 27 gr. of H110.......no double charge, can't do that with 27 grs. of H111...oal of 1.600". I fired 3 rounds with no problems, checked for bullet creep, loaded 2 more rounds, fired ok............then loaded 1 round.................k'boom!"






Original thread:
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=5&f=33&t=66328

Found this over on another forum and though it belonged here too. It appears to have been caused by reloads.

According to author of original thread on other board:

"The load was 200 gr. Horn XTP'S with 27 gr. of H110.......no double charge, can't do that with 27 grs. of H110...oal of 1.600". I fired 3 rounds with no problems, checked for bullet creep, loaded 2 more rounds, fired ok............then loaded 1 round.................k'boom!"






Original thread:
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=5&f=33&t=66328

If he blew the cylinder and the topstrap, that's an overpressure situation no doubt. I'm betting all my money on faulty reloads.

Incredible. Does use of "non-factory ammunition" void the warranty?

27 grains of H110 would be a stout load for a 200 grain bullet in a 44 Magnum.


Okie John

That will be an interesting call to the warranty dept.... " hello? yes, I have a small problem with my revolver..."

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SWCA #2420

Its Bush's fault. Besides, the IL caused it.

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Dick Burg

DAMNNNN!

*
Ok, I don't even reload, and as I read the base note, I said out loud "that can't be right". If even I know that, it's pretty obvious. Someone either made a hell of a typo, or they need a guardian a lot worse than they need reloading equipment.

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NHI, 10-8.

That's no 360PD- that's a 329 or something in a 6-shot.

360PD's are 5-shot .357's.
329's are 6-shot .44's

And yes, it's H110.
Looks like an undercharge/detonation.

I don't load H110 for the reason that detonations have been known to happen with that powder. I'm a bit scared of it to tell the truth.

I might get flamed for this- but the guy needs to suck up his pride knowing he- not S&W, screwed up his revolver.

Fact is, a normal load won't do that.
Indications are- that wasn't a normal load.

A quick review of selected pages from Sixguns by Keith shows exactly the same results on revolvers.

I do find it curious that even with space-age materials, revolvers that are over pressured in any caliber explode the same exact way as K-38's, 1917's or N-frame .44 Specials of years gone by...

Just my two cents.

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Lost it all in a boat accident

He's been told my many people that it's his fault. The question is whether or not he'll believe it or convince himself that a dozen experienced relaoders are wrong and he alone is correct.

Heck, I just took a look at his statement:

"I've loaded over 50,000 rounds..."

A. That's not many rounds.
B. The more rounds that you load, the more chance of making a mistake.

If you load, chances are that you will make a mistake. However, if you check, re-check, and then check again- chances are you might catch that bad load before it ruins an heirloom gun, injures pride, or creates a self-righteous idiot.

I've made mistakes in my loads- and thankfully caught them. If I ruin a gun, I'm going to suck it up and know that it was my fault. That's the calculated, yet minuscule risk that I take by reloading.

People with no personal sense of responsibility have no business reloading.

Anyone have a rough estimate of how many guns Elmer Keith blew up? I don't know if I have enough digits...

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Lost it all in a boat accident

A double charge may be impossible, but is a overcharge?

Could the bullet have been set back enough to raise the pressure enough to do that?

Heck, I've had a single YEAR where I've loaded and shot 50K...lol

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USPSA TY23298

I looked through Lymans reloading book, and could not find any data that suggests 27 grains for "ANY LOAD".

In a .357, The "MAX LOAD" with 180 gr bullet is only 14.5 gr of H110. Where did he ever come up with "27" grains.That has to be over 40,000 p.s.i. and is certainly a "DOUBLE LOAD".

I think as shooters, we need to get rthat P+ business out of our heads. "IT AIN'T NECESSARY" and can be very dangerous.

If you want to make a kill that bad, get a 50 cal. pistol.

For a 44 Magnum, 200gr JHP the Hodgdon website shows 27.5 grains of H110 as the starting load. I don't know if you can get a double charge of H110 in that case (I don't load that caliber or powder) but he sure did something wrong.

There is only one grain of difference between the starting load and the maximum load of H110, but there is a significant increase in C.U.P.

I copied it from Hodgdon's website:

H110 .429" 1.600"

grains velocity pressure
27.5 1708 29,000 CUP
28.5 1806 37,800 CUP

That's a bit of a jump for only one grain!
There is also the precaution of never reducing loads of H110 or W296 below minimum.

These powders just don't seem as forgiving as many others out there- I think I'll stick with my old 2400 and RL-7 thank you.

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Lost it all in a boat accident

H110 is a funny powder the only trouble I've had with it involved a light bullet and possibly not enough crimp. In a Ruger BH and 250 Speer LSWC's my load was 27 gr .45 Colt caliber. (*not sure where I got that load or if it's even published in the Ruger/TC section, worked well in my gun though.) Standard disclaimer about the load though. Anyway one of the 100 bullets was 200gr NOT 250gr. The effect was a big gob of yellowish goo plugging the forcing cone and chamber throat. We found the bullet about 10 feet down range. My understanding this is what is to be avoided when not reducing H110.

About this blow up we know nothing abou this guy's reloading practices. He might well have used 20 what ever grains of Bullseye for all we know. This is the biggest reason there is only one can of powder on my bench.

On your 329 scanduim smith,I can see what elese caused it to blow,,,,,TITANIUM CYLINDER KINDA WARPED BEFORE BLOWING UP. The brand new ones [329 ngs] have a steel cylinder. But,always to be safe read the owners manual and follow to use factory loads. Not reloads on the before ng revolvers. Also do the same if smith gives you a new gun with a steel cylinder. I do not trust the scanduim frames so next time guy,buy a steel gun. leave those high priced problem child guns alone. rz625-8

Amazing?
Titanium is good enough to build a bunch of an SR 71 out of, but it ISN'T tough enough for this nipple heads hand loads!
I think Mr. Burg was correct.
It's Bush's fault.....

My very first reloading press when I was just 14 years old, was a Lyman Truline, Jr Progressive. It was a real rattle-trap that flexed when you resized the case. But most interesting of all was the powder measure. It had the alarming habit of adding a tenth of a grain to the powder charge everytime you pulled the handle!! Fortunately I had actually read the Lyman reloading handbook before starting so I weighed the powder charge every tenth shell. Since I was using Bullseye in .45 ACP, that was a real eye opener!

Other than that my only experience with bad handloads was under charge, not over charge. Still, I ruined the barrel on a 629.

I'd be careful making statements like that, the new President elect will take office the first part in early 2009, and with him, will probably be the new reloading police? Please don't give them ammunition, before they ask for it?
We could, all, find it a lot harder to reload? I know you speak with jest and experience but, please be careful.
Steve

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NRA Life Member

looks more like 27.5 grains of bullseye!

I may be mistaken - it's been a few years since I last reloaded, but wasn't undercharge/detonation also an issue with Bullseye in .38 Special wadcutter target rounds (low velocity)?

Regards,

Dave

I use 24 grains of H110 under a 240 grain hollowpoint for my hunting loads and they work great. I can't imagine a more powerful load than that out of my 44 mag. That pic sure looks like a gross under or overload to do that damage. H110 works great if you stick with the published load data. I Agree-- this Plus P garbage needs to go away like the fart in a hurricane.

Check out this load data:

http://www.handloads.org/loaddata/default.asp?Caliber=4...owder&Source=Hodgdon

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Tim

That's not a heavy powder charge for a .44 Magnum. There is always the possibility that the wrong powder was used in that one cartridge. After all, 27 grs. of anything else would probably be very problematic.

Dave Sinko

Absolutely!!!

You cannot get 27grs of H110 in a .357 case.

I've been loading 23.5-24.0grs of h110 under a 240gr XTP for years as my hunting load, it's hot, never cared for 200gr slugs because never got good accuracy out of them, but i'm with the others looks more like a detonation-explosion than actual burn of the powder. Just my opinion!

And you know this, how?

Ok, lets summarize. We've pretty well called this as a troll. The gun in the pix wasn't a 360. Thats obvious from the photo. From that we can't place much confidence in anything else in the post. 2nd or 3rd hand information is notorious for being biased or just plain wrong.

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Dick Burg

Because 21.5grs almost fills a .41 mag case and a 220gr Keith SWC compresses it pretty good. H-110 works best when compressed.

Besides , H-110 is a 'slow' burning powder. It would have pushed most of that charge out and burned it in muzzle flash.

But I could weigh out 27grs and pour it in a .357 case and see how much overflow I have.

If you will follow the link at AR15.com, you'll see the original post by the shooter who 'sploded his gun.

niceguymr is most certainly not a troll, though he did make a mistake calling the gun a 360PD. The target hammer and trigger are a giveaway that it's a 327.

Dang, every time I start thinking about reloading, I get scared by something like that.

It's my understanding that the Scandium/Titanium revolvers grenade like that when something goes wrong. Would a steel frame have had the same sort of damage or just something like a bulged/cracked cylinder?

Care to share with us how you arrived at this "understanding?" Certainly it is not common knowledge on this forum.

Guess I'm a relative newcomer to reloading. I started when I was a toddler, watching my father.
Then I did it without his supervision when I was a teen. When I got married I just swallowed any pride I had and bought my own setup. I was scared to death the entire time. Now, I've been doing it over 50 years, and I'm still very cautious.

As I stated above, I think something about the thread stinks. I don't trust the information we've been given. Scandium/Titanium guns seem to be pretty reliable when used with any common sense. Its possible to blow up any gun if you try hard enough, or are so stupid that you build a gross overload.

When I reload, even if I have helpers (they're adult sons now.) I always take charge of the powder step, and I'm very careful. I prefer no distractions in the room when I'm doing it, too.

Many of us here have reloaded 10s of thousands of rounds with no mistakes. Its because we're careful. Most of us have also driven hundreds of thousands of miles without killing ourselves. Some things are inherently dangerous, like reloading, driving, and taking a shower (most home accidents occur in the tub.) Pay attention.

We'll never get the straight story on the grenaded gun. Either because the guilty party is embarassed and won't tell, or because of carelessness doesn't even know himself. There are some people that are just stupid, careless, or shouldn't do many things that require attention to detail.

It upsets me when a gun is blamed for an accident when almost everything points to a human element being the failure point. This is one of those incidents. Now you know why most factories specify that the use of handloads voids the warranty. Its because there is no control over how stupid some people can be. At least the major reloading companies all have some degree of quality control.

There's a guy I know (I refrain from calling him a friend.) His father managed to blow up a Weatherby .460 a few decades ago. He did that by using his own reloading formula. The books know nothing, he decided to mix his own powders because the tiny factory case wouldn't hold enough of the recommended powder to do what he wanted. Yes, he mixed some pistol powder with the huge volume of 3031 he was using. Kaboom. And guess what? It was the factory's fault for building a weak action.

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Dick Burg

Take a look at the second pix. i may be wrong here, but the recoil mark around the firing pin appears to indicate that the round fired while the cylinder was not fully locked up.

fly rodder

Also note the odd mark in the floor of the ill-fated chamber. does this indicate a case head seperation? Ummm.

and a second look at the first pix, is telling too. the force was so great it literally bent the frame itself as shown by the position of the side plate and the yoke screw. This is not simply a slightly hot load.

fly rodder

Sure, nothing scientific. At the range I used to go to, the guy that owned it told me that. He said that he preferred the Aluminum/SS combination in a J-frame over the Titanium/Scandium combo.

He said that T/S are relatively brittle materials, so if for some reason there is a problem (like a problem with a reload), it completely lets go and explodes - like the one in the pic did.

I've never seen it happen, and I wasn't saying that I thought there were T/S guns blowing up everyday. I wasn't saying I don't think they are safe. If I could afford one, I'd buy one.

My questions was just about how different metals react to being catastrophically overstressed. Do they react differently?

That's why my 2 powders for all my hand gun loads are Blue Dot and Unique....(and now Blue Dot is supposed to have some problems...though my particular 8 lb jug seems to be working for all my loads).

Titanium isn't brittle. It can be amazingly elastic. Ever have titanium/nickel alloy eyeglass frames that you can twist like a pretzel and they return to their original shape?

Titanium cylinders often have difficulty with releasing empty cartridges as they can expand under load and then return to their unstressed dimension making the empty brass tight in the cylinder.

Scandium alloy is also some tough stuff. The Russians first figured out how tough scandium alloys were when they were trying to figure out a way to prevent the aluminum fins on their submarine launched missiles from ripping off as the missiles penetrated arctic ice.

If you have a load that will do that kind of damage to a Ti/Scan revolver, it doesn't matter what you make a revolver out of, it's not going to end well.

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-Greg

Never fire reloads out of a gun you can't replace.

Thanks for the response, GMChenry. I forgot about those titanium glasses, I've seen those. That all makes sense. That's why I love this forum. I learn stuff all the time.

For the .44 Mag, Hornady lists for its 200gr HP-XTP a minimum load of 25.8gr H110 to a max of 28.7gr. with COL of 1.600.

I assume the blown gun is a 329 as Hornady does not make a 200gr bullet for the .357mag. But, for grins I weighed out 27gr of H110 and dumped it into a fired unsized .357 case. It filled the case to the top. No room whatsoever to seat a bullet of any weight.


If this is a 357 PD, the Hornady manual lists a 200gr HP-XTP for the .41mag. 27 gr of H110 will fit in the case, and it may be possible to wedge a jacketed bullet in over the top. It would be reeeeally crowded in there. Max load in this manual for that bullet is 22.7gr. so this would be a significant overload.

If I didn't shoot reloads, I wouldn't shoot enough to have any fun at it. Guess I've just been lucky all these years. I'm not going to say it will never happen to me because I've seen others with more expertise have a KABOOM.

With all this talk about Ti guns I'll have to dig out my M357 PD and shoot it some. Handloads... of course.

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Rick

Has anyone thought of what primer was used? Standard large pistol or large pistol magnum. Some powders use standard large pistol primers for "44 magnum" loads. It does make a big difference.

Ray K.