NEED HELP! Pictures of barrel failures!

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Mike Irwin

Staff
On another board I've run into a guy with a bit of education opining that a picture of a rifle with a "banana" failure of the barrel is a fake because "rifling grooves are the weak points in a barrel and barrels WILL fail in a spiral pattern - that's the ONLY way it can happen."

Anyone who has ever seen a barrel failure (other than on a Damascus barrel) knows that's crap -- barrels fail as they want to.

However, I can find only 2 decent pictures of barrel failures on the web, and both are from Gunzone.

Can anyone help me out?

I want to bury this guy in pictures.
 
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DonR101395

New member
Mike,
I'll look and see if I still have it on my work computer, but I just got an email today with pics of a barrel that was shot with a laser boresighter left in. I'll post them if I didn't delete them. They were about the best I've seen.
 
M

Mike Irwin

Staff
Don,

That's the one that set off the entire freaking controversy.

This one, right?

burst3.jpg
 
M

Mike Irwin

Staff
Yep, the thread is on Trapshooers.com.

It was linked into the thread where all this is being discussed.

The guy I'm starting to duel with has a degree in mechanical engineering/metallurgy.

That's why I want to bury him with pictures.

Another thing he's claiming is that the failure should have stopped at the point where the bullet encountered the obstruction - in other words it never should have done the full banana routine.

It's pretty obvious he has no clue how much energy can be involved when a bore obstruction is involved (IIRC pressures can approach 300,000 PSI with some cartridges).
 
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DonR101395

New member
Sorry Mike that's about as good as I can do short of blowing up my gun to see what happens. If I come across something I'll post it.
 
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Hedley

New member
The only good kablooey pics I could find were on the Gunzone, which you already mentioned. Found a few mean looking cannon catastrophies, but that's not relevant I guess.

And I also ran across a bunch of gun-destruction pictures from buy-back programs. The sight of a Ruger Super Redhawk being smashed with a hammer got me all misty eyed and dewey like.

I did come across this in another forum though. He's either an idiot or a liar. Take your pic.:)

I was hunting the other day with my son and he knocked his gun off the truck andplugged the end of the barrel with mud. now being a firm believer in what happens on mythbusters is fact,i decided that nothing would happen if i just discharged the weapon to clear out the mud. well to my disbelief, about one and a half inches of the barrel peeled back just like a bananna. myth confirmed! i guess it all depends on the quality of the gun. this was a h&r topper jr model 20 guage. so what i want to know is "can i have another gun please?"
Click to expand...
 
J

JJB2

Moderator
WOW!! that m-1 had a catastrophic failure i'd say! the ammo was the cause of all that? what a mess...... sounded like the guy was in pretty good shape after it all happened though.....
 
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castnblast

New member
That picture is too perfect. We all know that true barrel failure is a random event. The pic appears to be "technically produced" if you know what I mean. The ONLY time I've seen a failure like that was on the Bugs Bunny Roadrunner show...:D

That guys is full of $#@%...Does he really think that shooters who actually know something about the subject would really fall for this? What a dumbkopf... (if any of you can actually spell german, please correct my spelling:D )
 
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50 shooter

New member
If you can find the picture of the AI .50 that let go you can see the rifling and the fact that it didn't follow it when it split. I have the pic but it won't fit on the page.:eek:
 
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BigG

New member
Looks like the barrel failures follow the weak spot in the material, not necessarily the rifling grooves, which might be the weak spot if the bbl were made of perfectly homogeneous material. From the pictures, it looks like they've got some funky structure that has some inclusions. JMTC YMMV yada yada -
 
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Wildalaska

Moderator
Here is the barrel off a protoype 500 S&W lever gun fired with a short chamber and a proof load (we did this deliberately)...the receiver split in half

WildboomAlaska
 

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Staff
I have seen "banana peel" splits

On shotguns (even though Mythbusters was unable to do it) Shotgun barrels are thin. I have seen Stub Twist (poor man's damascus) unravel.

And I have seen a banana peel on a 155mm artillery tube. I have never seen anything quite like that rifle picture. It leaves me sceptical. It could be completely authentic, but it certainly isn't typical.
 
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