Model 67 Catastrophic Failure

[bodyarmorguy]

Friday night we were running a Corrections Class through night fire quaification. Corrections is required to shoot .38 Special revolvers and the academy uses S&W Model 67's. These guns are new, with no more than 800 rounds through any one gun.

A student, who has consistently been a good shooter, was all over the target. Inspection of his revolver revealed that the barrel was missing....yes, missing. It was recovered on the ground where he was shooting from. The barrel separated at the threads halfway down the forcing cone.

At that same time, a second cadet was complaining that he could barely pull the trigger on his. Inspection revealed that the same thing had happened but the barrel had not yet fallen off. It was separated and was creating pressure between the forcing cone and cylinder.

The ammo being used is Mag-Tech 158 grain round nose standard pressure. The barrels of the revolvers are marked .38 Special +P.

All guns were pulled from the line and are being inspected this week along with a phone call to S&W.

Has anyone seen anything similar?

 

[tekarra]

That is interesting. Do you a photo of the fracture surface? I bet S&W would be anxious to have those two back for an analysis.

 

[bodyarmorguy]

This is the best pic that I have of the surface right now. And S&W will be getting the entire lot of guns back, not just those 2....24 I believe.

 

[ken158]

Excellent time to get the guys into autos.... and I bet S&W will be willing to cut a good deal!

 

[4864]

Happened to NC Parole & Probation Model 65 with two piece barrels a few years back. Do these have them? I know S&W is no longer making two piece barrels.

 

[bodyarmorguy]

Yeah, unfortunately DOC mandates revolvers for corrections statewide, while we run the law enforcement cadets with 9mm Glocks.

 

[bodyarmorguy]

Happened to NC Parole & Probation Model 65 with two piece barrels a few years back. Do these have them? I know S&W is no longer making two piece barrels.

I will check.....however, I do know that these guns were just received from Smith in the last 3 or 4 months.

 

[Iggy]

Yup, those old fashioned pinned barrels were just a waste of money.

 

[stantheman86]

Pretty neat that Corrections still uses wheelguns! Any particular reason why?

I am also curious if these were 2-piece barrels.

Thank God no one was hurt, that could have been catastrophic. My question is how do you shoot a revolver after the barrel has fallen off and not notice it

Looks like all the guns came from a bad lot, pretty discouraging that two guns that could have been used to save someone's life would fail like that. If I were shooting a S&W and the barrel fell off, it would take a LOT to restore my faith in S&W.

 

[Landric]

I was working for NC Probation and Parole when this happened. Here Prisons got new 4" 64s and P&P got 3" 64s, issued and qualification ammunition was 125 grain SJHP(+P) from one of the big manufactures, depending on low bid. We had problems with barrels coming off, internal lock malfunctions, and misfires. S&W quietly took back all the new revolvers and traded them equally for new M&P40s with night sights and 3 magazines.

 

[Marshal Tom]

Do you suppose that he or someone on the range would have noticed that he didn't have a barrel on the revolver? DUH! Sorry but it sounded from the post that he was all over he paper as if he shot it for a while. I suppose that almost anything can fail and does but this sounds a little strange.

Tom

 

[n4zov]

There were some photos on the forum of the two-piece barrel failures if anybody wants to dig for them. Please keep us posted on how S&W responds.

 

[stantheman86]

I like the idea of revolvers still being issued as duty guns.....has the Corrections dept. considered switching to Ruger GP-100's?

 

[Palmetto Sharpshooter]

Wow, never saw that before.

 

[cp1969]

Well that's about as bad as it gets. Never thought I'd see the day when the barrel blows off of a 'quality' revolver. What have we come to?

Is nothing sacred?

 

[AKAOV1MAN]

This has got to be an incredible failure of QC by S&W. I have a 67 that I regard as a "go to" revolver, have fired just about every +P round there is through it(and mine does not have a "+P" marked barrel.

I am interested to note IL failures here. Myabe S&W should not place the IL on LE weapons.....................

 

[Stillwater788]

I may be mistaken, but the newest two peice barrel 67s are the dash 6 models - Craig Buckland is using them to dominate the SSR division in IDPA. S&W has gone back to the one piece barrel this past summer and I think those are dash 7s. The revo pictured with the failure is a dash 5 - could it be that S&W is trying to recycle some of thier old stock? Those guns may be new to the users, but they aren't current manufacture.

 

[Kelly Green]

That is unacceptable coming form a quality gun maker like S&W. Heck, that's unacceptable coming form any gun manufacturer. From the photos it looks like metal fatigue and failure, but after only 800 rounds? It would be interesting to see a metallurgist report on those broken guns.

 

[scooter123]

More that likely they were just using up some old frames they had in the warehouse. After all S&W does have a rather long history of releasing serial numbers out of sequence.

BTW, for those blaming the 2 piece barrels for this failure, look closely, that's a heavy profile one piece barrel that came apart. If I'm not mistaken the 2 piece barrels used the same half lug shroud as the 620 that covered the ejector rod and keyed into the frame. They also failed in an area which is typical for a failure of the one piece barrels, normal mode of failure for the 2 piece barrels is at the cap on the muzzle end.

Possible causes that may be at work. One is that some assembler got really stupid when tightening the barrel down. However I would expect a failure due to overtorquing to cause a failure at the transition between the extension and the barrel body, not within the threads. Second is that the mating face of the frame wasn't perpendicular to the bore for the barrel extension. This could cause a failure such as seen here. Basically tightening the barrel would impose a bending moment on the extension and depending on the strain path it could cause a failure at the point shown. Personally, that's what I suspect to be the cause in this case, it's a rather odd location for that failure. Finally it could be due to bad metalurgy, either improper grain structure or an alloy that didn't meet the specification.

If this failure is even a bit widespread I expect we will be seeing another recall. Especially if the cause is due to poor metalurgy. If S&W follows normal industry practice, they rely on their supplier providing material that meets specification and is certified to that specification. This means they don't have to pay to equip and maintain a metalurgy lab, they pay a bit extra to have the supplier carry that cost. It also means that the supplier will have to pay for the full cost of any recall that can be attributed to material that doesn't meet the specifications. BTW, you can bet that these barrels will be subjected to lots of testing at an independent lab, a quality manufacturer like S&W gets VERY VERY upset when a supplier screws up like this. I also suspect those frames will be gone over with a fine tooth comb and that things will get VERY tense in the QC areas.

 

[bodyarmorguy]

Do you suppose that he or someone on the range would have noticed that he didn't have a barrel on the revolver? DUH! Sorry but it sounded from the post that he was all over he paper as if he shot it for a while. I suppose that almost anything can fail and does but this sounds a little strange.

Tom

The corrections recruits shoot two stages from the 7 yeard line at night. One stage is 3 strings of 6 rounds each utilizing a handheld flashlight. The second is a repeat of the first stage however no handheld flashlight, only whatever ambient moonlight is available. On that particular night it was very dark, just enough light to be able to see the target, however the recruits are essentially point shooting so there is no visualizing the front sight, hence he did not notice the missing barrel. Cadet to RO's ratio is 6:1