Shocking Video of Catastrophic Barrel Failure
In the shooting sports, safety always has to be your number one priority. Even if you have a safe load, if the barrel is obstructed in any way, such as with mud in the barrel, a squib bullet, or a bore-sighting tool left in the barrel, the barrel can blow up, pealing back like a banana skin. Serious injury or even death can result. Below is an amazing video showing a catastrophic barrel failure caused, presumably, by a barrel obstruction — probably mud or dirt. You can see the barrel blow apart, starting at time mark 0:25 seconds.
The rifle is a Browning stainless A-Bolt, caliber unknown. We don’t know for sure, but the barrel probably became obstructed when the shooter allowed the gun to rest muzzle down on the ground, so some mud collected in the bore. Below, we’ve grabbed five frames from the key section of the video. You can see the barrel split into two segments. This shooter, who was NOT wearing eye protection, was uninjured. He is is lucky that the action held and no metal shards blew backwards.
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While its easy to blame it on operator error…. It is likely it was simply a failure of the stainless barrel. 416 as used in most barrels is a BRITTLE material. This is more common than I am comfortable with.
See
http://www.kriegerbarrels.com/RapidCat/catalog/pagetemplate.cfm?template=/RapidCat/common/viewPage.cfm&PageId=3390&CompanyId=1246
Bottom of the page.
Sako had a rash of stainless failures and a recall. But it didn’t get a lot of press.
There have been unexplained blowups of stainless pistol barrels as well.
I will stick with a less brittle steel like 4140/4150.
Stainless is brittle in sub-zero temperatures. I would surmise from the clothing that the ambient temperature is not that cold.
The failure seems to originate from the muzzle, lending credence to the theory that this is a partial or low-grade obstruction. Even water down the bore can lead to such a failure. Covering the muzzle with a condom or even a patch of duct tape will help prevent this and will not affect pressure.
lol….so anyway, back to the animal. That’s commitment.
Could have been a bore obstruction.
But there seems to be a rash of these things involving SS that cannot be explained. Then, my father once shot a 30-06 with a dirt plug and it only bulged and it was thinner than this barrel being a M1 Garand. My point is that it *should not have brittle fractured in any case* .
416R from what I have read is not approved for “pressure vessels” by the ASME. But making barrels from non-free machining stainless is not economically feasible, too much work.
ALL free machining steels are brittle. Stainless or otherwise.
Most free machining carbon steels are brittle until heated-quenched-annealed.
Then the metals added to make material free machining, usually sulfur and/or phosporous and/or lead cause inclusions in the metal as well. Causing further issues with strength when exposed to high *internal pressure*. Gun barrels also are subject to shock loading and the things that make free machining material bad for firearms barrels “enhanced” further by shock loading.
Owners, shall we remove this from the bulletin, as the video has been deleted by the user, or pulled by YouTube?