So, this guy was playing with SLAP rounds in a single-shot 50 and the thing blew up on him and nearly killed him. He survived and the maker of the rifle sent him another one to play with and blow-up.
The test video is here FWIW. Not a ton to learn other than he couldn’t reproduce the failure with the ammo used in the accident, which isn’t very comforting at all to be honest.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsw70VfSFFw[/ame]
The test consists of one round at standard pressure, then 12 rounds loaded “hot”, whatever that means, then one round loaded to over the maximum design yield of the firearm. This isn’t really a very useful test. For all we know the “hot” rounds were only like 70KPSI. It would have been a lot more useful to shoot those, since those rounds were a potential cause of the failure, but first to shoot rounds designed to produce 70, 80, 90… KPSI and up to about 170. That way you could empirically verify some utility between arbitrary “hot” and “this will destroy the gun”.
The company response was to say this design will fail at ~185,000PSI and it will fail by the breech blowing out. A normal round generates 60KPSI, so it’s fine. Now, rather than just do a little PR, the company could easily have done a redesign and cut a couple shallower windows near the front of the chamber area that were designed to squib-out at ~160PSI so the person sitting directly behind the breech-cap would have a much better chance of not being killed by shrapnel in the event of a catastrophic failure, but no. This seems a bit irresponsible to me really, but to each their own I guess.
Anyway, 50 rifles are expensive and pretty special-purpose. They are also way worse to be around when something goes wrong, so there’s an argument for being very careful about the ammo, the rifle, or really both.
The test video is here FWIW. Not a ton to learn other than he couldn’t reproduce the failure with the ammo used in the accident, which isn’t very comforting at all to be honest.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsw70VfSFFw[/ame]
The test consists of one round at standard pressure, then 12 rounds loaded “hot”, whatever that means, then one round loaded to over the maximum design yield of the firearm. This isn’t really a very useful test. For all we know the “hot” rounds were only like 70KPSI. It would have been a lot more useful to shoot those, since those rounds were a potential cause of the failure, but first to shoot rounds designed to produce 70, 80, 90… KPSI and up to about 170. That way you could empirically verify some utility between arbitrary “hot” and “this will destroy the gun”.
The company response was to say this design will fail at ~185,000PSI and it will fail by the breech blowing out. A normal round generates 60KPSI, so it’s fine. Now, rather than just do a little PR, the company could easily have done a redesign and cut a couple shallower windows near the front of the chamber area that were designed to squib-out at ~160PSI so the person sitting directly behind the breech-cap would have a much better chance of not being killed by shrapnel in the event of a catastrophic failure, but no. This seems a bit irresponsible to me really, but to each their own I guess.
Anyway, 50 rifles are expensive and pretty special-purpose. They are also way worse to be around when something goes wrong, so there’s an argument for being very careful about the ammo, the rifle, or really both.
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