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Firearms industry standard engineering safety factor: Youtuber almost dies from exploding gun

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Red Squirrel said:
What exactly did he do wrong? Never really got much context. Is it because the gun was too hot when he placed another round in it?
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In theory, too much powder in the round, also called a 'hot round' or 'overpressured ammunition'. Firearms have a maximum amount of pressure they can take from the ammunition firing before they reach materials failure, and ammunition should be manufactured to exist under that threshold. Sometimes it isn't, apparently.

He didn't specifically do anything wrong, unless he a) loaded (created the round) it himself (unlikely), or b) purchased overpressured rounds (I don't think that even exists for .50BMG, it's already about as overpressured as you can get). There was probably either a flaw in how the round was built, or a rather substantial flaw in how the firearm was built. The former is far more likely than the latter.
 
A guy on youtube speculated in an educated way that the round may have been reloaded with pistol powder which burns at a much faster rate than rifle powder. It basically turns the rifle into a pipe bomb, which they are already pretty close to anyway. Gun powder in a steel tube; not much room for errors as severe as using the wrong powder.
 
My opinion.... bad gun design, and here is why:

This is my blunt way of agreeing with what "gun jesus" said in his video........

In every design, there is a failure point, and in this case, clearly the weak spot was the threaded cap. So the threaded cap is the weak point, but this is NOT the main problem. The reason I call this a bad design, is that the backup support (those little "ears" that prevent closing the gun if the cap is not fully installed) were not strong enough to prevent rearward projection of the cap. In my view this is a less than optimal design, which seems to disregard the possibility of failure (remember the operator is always behind the gun).

I wonder if the manufacturer ever tested the gun for the obvious failure - eventually those threads will wear down from use / corrosion / etc. and the fitting will get loose enough that a regular cartridge will cause failure. And then......
 
moonbogg said:
A guy on youtube speculated in an educated way that the round may have been reloaded with pistol powder which burns at a much faster rate than rifle powder. It basically turns the rifle into a pipe bomb, which they are already pretty close to anyway. Gun powder in a steel tube; not much room for errors as severe as using the wrong powder.
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Good catch, and a decent theory. Better than someone just loading double the amount of rifle powder, or whatever.
 
Mark Serbu released a short video saying the 85kpsi number was in error. The real value that should break the end cap is around 160kpsi, so a safety factor of around 3. That makes much more sense and is inline with other industries where human safety is at risk. That means the round was probably loaded with pistol powder or something and it was just a pipe bomb at that point. Maybe a better failure mode would have been "better" for the shooter, but unless we get to watch a normal bolt action .50 cal get blown up to compare the two, it would be hard to know.

Here's the video.

Listen closely from 19 seconds to 24 seconds. It's a gold mine for various reasons.
 
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The firearm industry tends to make products that do not including making you a firearm parent. Never underestimate the level of dumb with money trying to go pew, pew, pew and boom.
 
[DHT]Osiris said:
Yeah, and I wouldn't expect a firearm mfg to mfg a firearm to withstand double the intended load, that's just silly. A .50cal would probably be double the cost, and double the weight to withstand double the rated load.

What firearm survives a partial barrel obstruction with a rated load? A .22?
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I have a Mark III Hunter with the fluted bull barrel. Somehow it got a 22 bullet stuck in there and I didnt notice. Shot it, gave a weird sound and a strange poof, but no damage.
I dont think any other gun could survive that.
 
I had the opposite happen out plinking. We were shooting a couple of .22 revolvers across a small stream to some targets set up on a stump. This round went "thunk" and the bullet arced out of the barrel in plain view and splashed in the stream. It traveled maybe 15 yards 😀
I figure it was a primer-only load.
 
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