329PD Kaboom pics (new pic in post 1)

I'm curious. Is the last bullet is still in the barrel?

I am wondering if the tiny blast shield was missing and the flame was cutting the soft frame.......

Performance Center Model 329 Safety Recall - Smith & Wesson

link to PC 329's

it states that this doesn't apply to the 329PD, but coincidence?

Slufstuff said:

I added a pic in first post showing the actual location and ammo being fired. My old eyes cannot make out the exact load, maybe somebody can ID it.

Click to expand...

Standard Walmart .44Mag - Winchester "USA" 240gr JSP .44Mag, I believe.

Kind of looks like a Merwin and Hurlburt with the barrel dismounted.

Two weeks ago I was shooting two types of Winchester .22 LR ammo. One lot, very accurate stuff, blew a hole in one casehead and blew the rim to pieces. The other box, an "express" type load [like a CCI Stinger] would go, "bang", "pop", or "poop" depending on the moment. I found some of the bullets stuck in the wood backstop and easily picked them out with my fingers.

I too think Winchester ammo is undergoing a failure of quality control.

BUT, from the looks of the pictures I would suspect the handgun failed, but not due to any failed ammunition. "Something" appears to have made the frame fail.

When I first saw it I wanted to blame it on flame cutting and erosion. But I don't see it. If a portion of the strap were first flame cut till the remainder snapped, I would think you would see a defined line between the two. But I see a clean snap of the entire thickness of the strap. Likewise the rim of the enterance of the forcing cone looks clean and sharp, not like it would after a high round count. I do see some fine pits on the left of the break. Could these be casting imperfections in the metal? Metal fatigue due to stretching and harmonics? Prior round squib and stick in the barrel? I would have expected a barrel swell. Shouldn't have happened.

skeeterbait said:

When I first saw it I wanted to blame it on flame cutting and erosion. But I don't see it. If a portion of the strap were first flame cut till the remainder snapped, I would think you would see a defined line between the two. But I see a clean snap of the entire thickness of the strap. Likewise the rim of the enterance of the forcing cone looks clean and sharp, not like it would after a high round count. I do see some fine pits on the left of the break. Could these be casting imperfections in the metal? Metal fatigue due to stretching and harmonics? Prior round squib and stick in the barrel? I would have expected a barrel swell. Shouldn't have happened.

Click to expand...

That crack is pretty close to where the barrel threads end I believe. I agree that it doesn't look like flame cutting got it.

I've carried a 329pd for years - always on me in the field - mostly shoot hard cast lead hot specials or mild magnums running about 950-1000 fps - would penetrate anything in Oklahoma or Texas. I've shot quite a few rounds of white box Win 44 mag 240 gr jsp rounds, in my lever guns and that 329 - its always been a very accurate load. I'm subscribing to this post and hope to hear what S&W says and does about the warranty. Glad nobody was hurt.

Honestly, I am surprised that this does not happen more often with the scandium/aluminum alloy revolvers. Aluminum alloys can fail due to metal fatigue where there are sharp corners in the metal. Look where the frame failed; along the sharp corners of the frame on the top and bottom. The sharp corners tend concentrate stress. In the 1950's, the de Havilland Comet jetliner had to have its square windows redesigned using an oval shape because the corners were too stressed and cause several crashes after the fuselage cracked and cause explosive decompression.

I would suspect that the frame is defective. Definitely needs to be sent back to S&W for analysis.

I put the 2nd image up so that we can all get an idea where the break occurred.




It looks too far back towards the muzzle to be a flame cut break, in my opinion. The following is Paul105's which looks more like a flame cut break

When you watch those things being fired with super slo-mo photography you cant believe the amount of torquing and twisting the frame goes through,look like its made out of rubber,,supposedly that is how it stands up to the shock,maybe not so well in some instances.I would save the rest of that ammo for testing, Bob

The missing pieces

I'm the owner of that gun. An old browser window with a search I did right after the event brought up this thread, much to my surprise. I'm going to try to address all the comments and questions.

The original post is mostly correct but the barrel assembly went downrange only 6-8 feet. The ammunition was Winchester 240g soft nose purchased out of a locked display case at Wal-Mart. There was no sign of anything wrong with the ammo; the cylinder was fine and the spent cartridges ejected with no trouble.

The final bullet cleared the barrel but did not hit the target at 40'. The next-to-final bullet hit the target about 12" down and to the right; I recall thinking I wasn't that far off. The hole from final - 1 round in the target means the barrel was probably clear, and there was no barrel bulge.

Firing the final round, I got hit in the face with what felt like two specks of powder, nothing like what you get to the side of these guns. I heard nothing unusual, but those on both sides of me heard a much louder blast despite plexiglass dividers.

The gun was about 15 months old with a little over 1,000 rounds through it, pretty much all the Winchester above, and a couple of boxes of 180gr Remington; it had a recoil I did not like.

If you let the gun do its thing, it's not painful to shoot; a nice straight arm, but let it kick up. You also need to grip it in just the right position; not hard once you know you need to do it. I've put 100-150 rounds through in a day, and typically 50. I shoot tighter groups with this gun than my Kimber 3" .45.

There was no sign of erosion on the top strap, which did indeed fail first with the bottom cracking due to the high leverage.

My father happens to specialize in pressure vessels and is an expert in metallurgy. I sent him the pictures. He wrote: Although it would be necessary to look at the fracture surface under a microscope to be sure, it looks like the failure occurred at the top first, then the bending load caused a brittle fracture at the bottom. The darker portion in the center of the top fracture surface was probably a fatigue crack. The discoloration was due to either oxidation or contamination by gun oil or some other substance. The rest of the top fracture surface appears to be a brittle fracture.

S&W took the basics over the phone: failure symptom, round count, and ammo used. I sent in the gun and the final two shells on S&W's dime. They finished their analysis in about a week, and they think the barrel was over-torqued during original assembly, and agreed to replace it. Two more weeks and they found a replacement to send to me. I had covered my bases by asking the photographer to shoot the bench in addition to the gun pics he wanted, taking pics under better lighting later, and asking the range co-owner who happened to be nearby to document what he saw. I never even had to mention the documentation; S&W made it right.

The grips went with the gun to S&W, but if someone wants the wood grips, let me know.

About 100 rounds through the replacement, including the rest of the 'final' round box.

Just curious - while I did put the photos on my web site for friends, the album is hidden (not protected) and still doesn't appear in a Google search; where did Slufstuff get the info? Was it D.S., the photographer? I took the first two shots later at home; the range shot was his.

Hey Glad your ok.and im glad Smith did you right.

Thank you for a complete and very clear report on what really occurred.

Very interesting that your Dad is so knowledgeable about metallurgy.
Being that pressure vessels are his specific expertise, he is certain to deeply understand the causes of failure.

Please let me know about the grips, I am interested.

Great first post, please let us know how your new Smith works out.

John

Welcome to the Forum!

That is a heck of a first post. I saw those photos posted back in May on a couple of forums, and it was my understanding that a bystander had taken them and put them on the net, but I may be mistaken.

In any case, glad to hear you're ok, S&W came through for you, and that (hopefully) this can serve as an educational episode (for S&W, at least).

Although I can't see how you could have done anything to prevent or avoid what happened, I am wondering if you have changed anything about your range regimen now that you have a replacement gun.

Are you using different ammo, handloading, doing anything else that you feel might mitigate the risk of a reoccurrence?

Thanks for taking the time to post your first hand experience. And stick around, this is a great forum!

What I changed

After each of the first few shots, I took a look at the top strap.

If there's a stray shot, I'm going to inspect the gun carefully. While I'm not a great shot, I usually know whether or not the shot should have been on target. I had a warning that I did not recognize.

Hand loading

Hand loading has come up a few times in this thread. I have considered hand loading, but it seems to void the warranty of just about any gun. It doesn't matter whether or not YOU trust your loads, the gun mfg has to trust them.

How do hand loaders handle this issue? Has any hand loader had any experience with warranty service on their guns?

How would they know that you used handloads if you don't send them ammo or spent cases? In this case, it certainly wasn't ammo related.

I have reloaded hundreds of thousands or rounds of centerfire ammo over the last 35 years. The one and only gun I have ever had a problem with was a S&W 19 with 125 grain jacketed hollow points and Blue Dot powder. A safety warning about the 125 grain hollow point/Blue Dot/357 combination was put out by Alliant about 30 years too late for me. Still, the gun held together in one piece, but was ruined. Strictly speaking, that was not a handloading failure.

I would not be so fast to condemn handloaders. For every 1 person determined to make a 44 Special into a 44 Magnum, there are hundreds who practice safe, conservative reloading. I have never been shy about informing manufacturers about loadings and problems I have encountered, in one case I ended up speaking with the company technical department several times until we tracked down the problem- and it had nothing to do with ammunition, but rather cleaning method.

Strictly speaking, the process of reloading centerfire ammo is little different than loading a muzzle loader. Yes, there will be the yahoo determined to burst the barrel of a muzzle loader, but that hasnt stopped manufacturers of muzzle loaders from honoring the warranties of responsible shooters. So, I think that a blanket refusal to honor the warranty of any gun firing a single round of reloaded ammo is unreasonable. The manufacturer can usually tell of over pressure ammo is at fault.

There are a couple of points I would like to add.

If a gun is fired with factory ammo only, the owner is likely to go broke before putting significant wear onto the gun. A reloader may fire 10 times the ammo of non-reloader and greatly accelerates wear related issues. This allows the manufacturer to see the typical problems that will be encountered with a line of guns years before most start having problems and develop solutions. From this standpoint, reloaders actually help manufacturers of quality guns.

On the other hand, there are manufacturers who are putting out some expensive guns which have a very limted design life, much less than what you might think. Such a manufacturer is going to have major problems with handloaders, because the handloader may exceed the designed life of the gun during inital load development.