NEED HELP! Pictures of barrel failures!

**Mike Irwin** · October 26, 2006, 09:57 PM

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.

DonR101395 · October 26, 2006, 10:01 PM

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.

**Mike Irwin** · October 26, 2006, 10:15 PM

Don,

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

This one, right?

DonR101395 · October 26, 2006, 10:16 PM

Yea, I got more angles on it though, plus a picture of the boresighter that was recovered. It was 5-6 pics total

**Mike Irwin** · October 26, 2006, 10:25 PM

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).

DonR101395 · October 26, 2006, 10:39 PM

http://www.thegunzone.com/m1akb/762r.html

Here's a link to an M14 kaboom report that has a pic of the barrel.

DonR101395 · October 26, 2006, 10:42 PM

http://www.thegunzone.com/m1akb.html

Here are the pics of that rifle taken right after the kaboom.

**Mike Irwin** · October 26, 2006, 11:30 PM

Don,

Yep, those are the ones I have posted to the thread already.

DonR101395 · October 26, 2006, 11:33 PM

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.

Hedley · October 27, 2006, 12:06 AM

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.

Quote:

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?"

mete · October 27, 2006, 07:04 AM

I can't recall ever seeing a spiral barrel failure and I'm a REAL metallurgist !!!

JJB2 · October 27, 2006, 09:40 AM

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.....

castnblast · October 27, 2006, 09:49 AM

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...

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

)

50 shooter · October 27, 2006, 10:26 AM

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.

Brian Williams · October 27, 2006, 10:36 AM

Look for some of the ones that came about with the Federal overloads or was it the Sako barrel splits???

Sako/Tikka barrels

mete · October 27, 2006, 11:05 AM

The SAKO/TiKKA problems were caused by batch of defective barrel steel !

Gewehr98 · October 27, 2006, 11:26 AM

Which forum, and which thread?

BigG · October 27, 2006, 11:51 AM

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 -

Wildalaska · October 27, 2006, 12:49 PM

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

**44 AMP** · October 27, 2006, 05:43 PM

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.

**Mike Irwin** · October 28, 2006, 12:20 PM

I have seen banana peels on high-power rifles before. My gunsmith had a beautiful one -- a guy tried a second shot after a squib lodged a bullet near the muzzle of his .270.

He apparently thought he could shoot it out...

cas · October 28, 2006, 01:51 PM

**Mike Irwin** · October 28, 2006, 01:57 PM

GOOD GOD, Cas!

What happened to that first one?!!?

Great pictures, thanks!

I've got the guy admitting that yes, it is possible for a barrel to burst as I've noted, and that it doesn't have to spiral burst.

50 shooter · October 28, 2006, 04:32 PM

Mike,
That first pic that Cas posted is of the AI .50 that I was talking about. Can't remember the specifics but the operator was okay. You can see that when the barrel split it followed the flutes.

cas · October 28, 2006, 07:16 PM

The only one I have any real info on is the second from the bottom, a firends 1886 that just gave up after a very long service life.

October 26, 2006, 09:57 PM	#1
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	NEED HELP! Pictures of barrel failures! 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. __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.

October 26, 2006, 10:15 PM	#3
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	Don, That's the one that set off the entire freaking controversy. This one, right? __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.

October 26, 2006, 10:25 PM	#5
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	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). __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower. Last edited by Mike Irwin; October 28, 2006 at 01:58 PM.

October 26, 2006, 11:30 PM	#8
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	Don, Yep, those are the ones I have posted to the thread already. __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.

October 27, 2006, 09:49 AM	#13
castnblast Senior Member Join Date: July 2, 2006 Location: Corpus Christi TX Posts: 1,148	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... 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 ) __________________ VEGETARIAN...old indian word for bad hunter

October 26, 2006, 10:01 PM	#2
DonR101395 Senior Member Join Date: October 30, 2005 Location: NWFL Posts: 3,031	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.

October 26, 2006, 10:16 PM	#4
DonR101395 Senior Member Join Date: October 30, 2005 Location: NWFL Posts: 3,031	Yea, I got more angles on it though, plus a picture of the boresighter that was recovered. It was 5-6 pics total

October 26, 2006, 10:39 PM	#6
DonR101395 Senior Member Join Date: October 30, 2005 Location: NWFL Posts: 3,031	http://www.thegunzone.com/m1akb/762r.html Here's a link to an M14 kaboom report that has a pic of the barrel.

October 26, 2006, 10:42 PM	#7
DonR101395 Senior Member Join Date: October 30, 2005 Location: NWFL Posts: 3,031	http://www.thegunzone.com/m1akb.html Here are the pics of that rifle taken right after the kaboom.

October 26, 2006, 11:33 PM	#9
DonR101395 Senior Member Join Date: October 30, 2005 Location: NWFL Posts: 3,031	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.

October 27, 2006, 07:04 AM	#11
mete Senior Member Join Date: June 14, 2004 Location: NY State Posts: 6,575	I can't recall ever seeing a spiral barrel failure and I'm a REAL metallurgist !!!

October 27, 2006, 09:40 AM	#12
JJB2 Junior member Join Date: December 14, 2005 Posts: 558	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.....

October 27, 2006, 10:26 AM	#14
50 shooter Senior Member Join Date: August 6, 2002 Location: SoCal PRK Posts: 986	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. __________________ I see the world thru bloodshot eyes Streets filled with blood from distant lies The dogs of war never compromise, No time for rearranging.

October 27, 2006, 10:36 AM	#15
Brian Williams Senior Member Join Date: September 4, 2001 Location: Lancaster, PA Posts: 1,288	Look for some of the ones that came about with the Federal overloads or was it the Sako barrel splits??? Sako/Tikka barrels __________________ Brian <><

October 27, 2006, 11:05 AM	#16
mete Senior Member Join Date: June 14, 2004 Location: NY State Posts: 6,575	The SAKO/TiKKA problems were caused by batch of defective barrel steel !

October 27, 2006, 11:26 AM	#17
Gewehr98 Senior Member Join Date: June 30, 2000 Location: Token Creek, WI Posts: 4,067	I wanna see the fight! Which forum, and which thread? __________________ "Bother", said Pooh, as he chambered another round... Neural Misfires

October 27, 2006, 11:51 AM	#18
BigG Senior Member Join Date: May 19, 1999 Location: Atlanta, GA Posts: 4,334	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 - __________________ o "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC o "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain o "They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?" Paul Harvey o TODAY WE CARVE OUT OUR OWN OMENS! Leonidas, Thermopylae, 480 BC Last edited by BigG; October 27, 2006 at 10:30 PM. Reason: Spiling

October 27, 2006, 05:43 PM	#20
44 AMP Staff Join Date: March 11, 2006 Location: Upper US Posts: 28,817	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. __________________ All else being equal (and it almost never is) bigger bullets tend to work better.

October 28, 2006, 12:20 PM	#21
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	I have seen banana peels on high-power rifles before. My gunsmith had a beautiful one -- a guy tried a second shot after a squib lodged a bullet near the muzzle of his .270. He apparently thought he could shoot it out... __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.

October 28, 2006, 01:51 PM	#22
cas Senior Member Join Date: July 22, 2004 Posts: 123	__________________ "He who has it, would do well to have it, as if he did not have it." Savage24.com Cylindersmith.com

October 28, 2006, 01:57 PM	#23
Mike Irwin Staff Join Date: April 13, 2000 Location: Northern Virginia Posts: 41,380	GOOD GOD, Cas! What happened to that first one?!!? Great pictures, thanks! I've got the guy admitting that yes, it is possible for a barrel to burst as I've noted, and that it doesn't have to spiral burst. __________________ "The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind" -Theodorus Gaza Baby Jesus cries when the fat redneck doesn't have military-grade firepower.

October 28, 2006, 04:32 PM	#24
50 shooter Senior Member Join Date: August 6, 2002 Location: SoCal PRK Posts: 986	Mike, That first pic that Cas posted is of the AI .50 that I was talking about. Can't remember the specifics but the operator was okay. You can see that when the barrel split it followed the flutes. __________________ I see the world thru bloodshot eyes Streets filled with blood from distant lies The dogs of war never compromise, No time for rearranging.

October 28, 2006, 07:16 PM	#25
cas Senior Member Join Date: July 22, 2004 Posts: 123	The only one I have any real info on is the second from the bottom, a firends 1886 that just gave up after a very long service life. __________________ "He who has it, would do well to have it, as if he did not have it." Savage24.com Cylindersmith.com