taurus KABOOM!

[bgreenea3]

while enjoying a nice afternoon of shooting with greener I loaded up a mag of 230gr LRN with 5.0gr of Universal, a load that I have shot quite a bit out of my Springfield with no issues, and commenced to firing, greener's pt1911.

on round #3 of the magazine the recoil felt off and my face stung a bit I looked to see a blown case in the chamber......and I was to startled to curse sure was glad to be wearing shooting glasses!

unloaded the gun took it apart and we inspected it and saw nothing obviously broken.. looked down the pipe and saw a dirty chamber but nothing too alarming. took the blown case and the next one in the mag and set them aside. looked at the mag later and saw the follower was bent a bit.

rounds side by side

and the mag


greener blames the loads I blame the dirty chamber, our thought was that the case didn't quite go fully into the chamber when the round fired causing the case to be unsupported and the case failure....

BTW the stinging on my face was brass shrapnel and I ended up with a itty bitty cut on my nose and some soot marked hands...

[Bullseye]

Glad you're OK. Safety gear protects a lot when the unexpected happens.

A dirty chamber is one possibility. A improperly crimped round could be another. If the bullet was not seated all the way and enough lead was pealed upward the case could have head spaced on the shaved lead in the chamber.

Another BIG issue is that pistol's disconnector needs to be checked. It should have not fired out of battery if the disconnector was working properly. That case appears to have been at least 3/8" out of battery and that pistol should have never fired it. One way to check it is to slightly push the slide rearward and the pistol should not drop the hammer if even a little out of fully locked battery. The disconnector pin (nub) may be too short. The minimum length tolerance for the 1911 disconnector length is 1.296", and maximum can be 1.315". The ideal disconnector length is between 1.305 & 1.306".

I agree your load was not near enough to cause a failure of a good, normal case.

R,
Bullseye

[bgreenea3]

the disconnector works as it should... the case has been reloaded a couple of times , but I only shoot mild loads. dad sent me this pic of the underside of his pistola.

[Bullseye]

If the disconnector is working properly, then a trigger malfunction could have been the culprit. There is no way that hammer should have dropped on that cartridge out of battery that far. The picture shows a normal position for a 45 ACP case. That exploded case was out beyond the safety of the casing cup and into the thin part of the case wall - that is not normal.

R,
Bullseye

[bgreenea3]

crimp on the other rounds look good nice taper crimp no lead shavings.....the only other thing i can think of is it had some sort of pressure spike...the primer looks like this



all the rest looked normal... I still blame dad's gun

[Bullseye]

Yep that primer is awfully flat - typically indicates an overpressure condition. There are two possible causes for this situation; one the cartridge was double charged with powder (can happen accidentally with a progressive press or by a moment of inattention by the reloader), two a severely under charged round (less than half the powder was dropped into the cartridge which can cause a severe pressure spike that can cause a catastrophic failure like what you have there.

R,
Bullseye

[greener]

Glad you're OK. Safety gear protects a lot when the unexpected happens.

A dirty chamber is one possibility. A improperly crimped round could be another. If the bullet was not seated all the way and enough lead was pealed upward the case could have head spaced on the shaved lead in the chamber.

Another BIG issue is that pistol's disconnector needs to be checked. It should have not fired out of battery if the disconnector was working properly. That case appears to have been at least 3/8" out of battery and that pistol should have never fired it. One way to check it is to slightly push the slide rearward and the pistol should not drop the hammer if even a little out of fully locked battery. The disconnector pin (nub) may be too short. The minimum length tolerance for the 1911 disconnector length is 1.296", and maximum can be 1.315". The ideal disconnector length is between 1.305 & 1.306".

I agree your load was not near enough to cause a failure of a good, normal case.

R,
Bullseye

I'm glad he found time to post the pictures. The barrel on the Taurus has a fairly tight chamber. When I was developing loads for it, rounds that would chamber easily in a Springfield or Kimber wouldn't chamber fully in the Taurus. No round that was not fully chambered has been fired by the Taurus, but I didn't see the slide on this one.

Rounds that don't chamber don't result in fully closed slides and the pistol doesn't fire. I tried pushing back on the slide with the hammer cocked and it would fire with a slight rearward movement of the slide, but wouldn't fire if the slide is back 1/16" or so.

After the incident I field stripped the pistol and looked at it. I wiped down the barrel and chamber and attempted to fire several of my reloads. None seated. The slide had to be manually pushed forward into battery. I didn't fire it today.

I think the problem was with Bill's reloaded round. But the Taurus will come apart for a disconnector check.

[bgreenea3]

That must've been the only bad round out of the 500 I loaded in that batch......I'll go with the undercharge, but I am really careful not to double charge....

[Bullseye]

After the incident I field stripped the pistol and looked at it. I wiped down the barrel and chamber and attempted to fire several of my reloads. None seated. The slide had to be manually pushed forward into battery. I didn't fire it today.

Based on what you described the disconnector sounds like it is doing it's job now. But that one round was not fully seated by the looks of the damaged casing. Also your current loads are now not seating? Did they seat before? Check to see if there's any lead build-up in the chamber near the rifling. If there is that could be preventing the cases from seating properly. The 1911 head spaces on the case mouth and any build-up will cause a similar situation to what you've described.

R,
Bullseye

[greener]

Disconnector: Measured 1.3045" Several measurements of 1.304 and several 1.305. It looks like it functions without hindrance. However, both the Taurus and the "new" 1911 will fire slightly out of battery. My eyeball guess is between 0.020" and 0.040".

Taurus barrel: I had thoroughly cleaned the barrel and chamber in late June. The cleaning was Hoppes with brass brush, rem oil and Iosso bore cleaner. I pretty much had a clean patch. I fired 50 rounds between the cleaning and the incident. I did a wet patch/dry patch cleaning. The barrel and chamber looked good. The barrel does not support the bottom of the round and the casing seems to have blown in that direction.

We fired about 200 rounds through breene's Springfield and my Taurus. The ammo was ~100 rounds of bgreene's 230 gr lrn w/5.0 gr universal and ~100 rounds of my 200 gr lswc with 5.7 grains of universal. I'd assume about equal distribution but the taurus may have gotten more of the 230 gr lrn. The chamber on the Taurus is tighter than the Springfield. The Taurus chamber will not take rounds that feed well in other pistols. I've moved from checking every handload in the Taurus barrel to random checks.

After the incident we checked the pistol. Couldn't see much other than very heavy carbon. I tried a few of my rounds and none would chamber. I had to push the slide forward before the round would fire. When I cleaned the barrel at home, it was pretty dirty in the chamber and up the barrel. Whether that caused the incident or resulted from the incident, I don't know.

Alhough I tend to think the problem was with bgreene's hand load, I think the barrel chamber needs a close look. Maybe it should be a smidge larger.

[bgreenea3]

I think it was just a fluke......and the chamber was rather dirty/fouled when I looked at it may have been a combo of ammo/gun or the case was bad...hard to tell at this point.

[Bullseye]

Well, that disconnector's length is within tolerances. How are your rounds seating now? Will they drop check? Take the barrel out of the gun and see how your round seat.

R,
Bullseye

[greener]

The rounds seat fine. The only time I had a noticeable seating problem was immediately after the the problem
Think I will get some round.nose bullets Ans see if I get more seating problems

[Hakaman]

My 2 cents:

That must've been the only bad round out of the 500 I loaded in that batch......I'll go with the undercharge, but I am really careful not to double charge....

I had loaded some 38 sp for my S&W 686 to about the minimum load.
In fact, while shooting the rounds at the range, it felt like they were really
weakly loaded, having no muzzle flip at all (6 in fully lugged). I shot
about 100 rounds, all extremely comfortable to shoot because of their
gentleness, then "KABOOM". Wondering if the top strap and cylinder was still
attached to the gun, I was shocked by the force of the "bang". Fortunately,
no harm, no foul, the gun was perfectly ok and so was I.
Needless to say, it was quite alarming, realizing what could happen in the "wrong" circumstances.
Originally, I thought I "double" loaded, but now I am convinced I underloaded.
So much talk goes on about double loaded, AND RIGHTFULLY SO, but not much talk gets generated about "under loading".
Take a look at the primer from this "underloaded" 38sp and imagine what force was needed to produce this !
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[KAZ]

Great pictures, and good to bring this topic up. Many years ago I used to shoot thousands of rounds a year of 45ACP with 6.0 gr Unique under a cast bullet. That 6.0 grains looked so lonely that I was always concerned with a double charge. Now, I realize that I was lucky and should have been just as careful about a light charge. Regards