B.L.E.
Senior Member
Join Date: 2008-12-20
Posts: 216
Do these pictures scare you? I sure hope so!
I can appreciate those pictures, but I say this with all due respect-
no, they don't scare me- here's why
#1 you can blow up a gun just as badly as in those pictures, with blackpowder, by using a bullet that is .007" too large, creating too much pressure- it's just that easy- it happened to the famed Elmer Keith- he blew the cylinder and topstrap off a Colt Peacemaker
#2, Bill Ruger knew more about firearms, than you or I ever will. Actually, he forgot more about guns, than you or I will ever know. And he proofed that ROA with smokeless for a reason, so it would survive some abuse without hurting the shooter, and triggering a lawsuit.
i.e. the ROA is overbuilt by a considerable margin. Ruger knew some dumb unscrupulous shooter, may eventually get the wacky idea of putting smokeless powder in, or maybe someone would put smokeless in by accident- so he wanted that gun to survive at least initially
#3, I see a bullet stuck in that gun, which makes me think someone reloaded it with a slug that was oversized, and it got stuck in the barrel/cylinder interface, and blew up the gun
it may have had nothing at all, to do with powder charge- any gun explosion must be carefully disected to find the cause
Elmer Keith blew the top off a Colt Peacemaker as a kid, on July 4th making noise shooting in the air, because he loaded larger 45-70 rifle slugs, in the 45 Colt cartridges
so that can happen with the slug being too large, even by a few thousandths of an inch.
and Elmer Keith was not an idiot, either- surviving that episode, led to the invention of the 44 Magnum cartridge- I'm not saying to push loads until the gun blows up as a practice, but your example is obviously one of blatant overloading or the wrong size bullet, or the wrong powder, or too heavy a bullet/too fast powder, etc.
sure, there are super-fast powders that will blow up any gun they aren't designed for- put super fast powder in any magnum rifle, it will blow it apart- that doesn't mean a 5 grain cowboy load is going to blow up a gun, like in your pictures- I've been reloading now for 30 years, so I know better than to get scared by those pictures.
because there are super-slow smokeless powders like H870, that you can top off the cartridges with, and the velocity and pressures are very low, pathetically low actually- and they could not blow up anything, by design- such as artillery shell powder- yet they are smokeless- many a shooter and gunsmith, started off a home-made gun using "full cases of H870" because it is just so safe due to low pressure- it's all about the speed of the powder, and weight of projectile
http://www.reloadbench.com/gloss/hh870.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is_159_26/ai_90099727/
Who was Elmer Keith and what debt of gratitude do we owe him? Born in Missouri in 1899, Elmer grew up on ranches in Montana, Oregon and Idaho. In the 1920s, he decided to celebrate the Fourth of July by firing his .45 Colt 5 1/2" SA revolver, and a letter detailing this experience was published in the American Rifleman in 1925. This was the first, or at least one of the very first, times he appeared in print.
He recounted how his .45 Colt SAA, using black powder loads, blew up as he was firing it during his celebratory triggerwork. Elmer had been using heavy .45 loads in the old Colt, made up with 300 grain bullets with a diameter of .458", originally intended for use in the .45-90 lever action Winchester. The ancient blackpowder Colt gave up after enduring those high-pressure loads once too often.
Elmer was not the first to blow up a sixgun, and probably won't be the last. What's significant is what came next. He switched to the .44 Special after this episode, to come up with a sixgun that would safely handle the heavy loads he wanted for daily use. From that explosive encounter with the .45, Elmer Keith was launched on a path that made him the premier influence on sixgunning for over 50 years.