Shotgun Explodes

[slingshot77]

I don't see much of anything coming out of the front of barrel. When I was younger I saw a guy blow up a shotgun by unintentionally putting a 20 gauge round in then not realizing it became stuck down in the barrel so he then stuck in the proper 12 gauge round and fired the gun.

Wasn't a bolt gun so it just blew up and hurt his hand not his face.

He should have heeded the "Never carry a 20 gauge round in your pocket when you are shooting a 12 gauge gun".

[Quads]

Bolt was pretty clearly locked down.

Frame by frame. For those that want to tinker themselves.
"K" pauses, and "<" and ">" move frame by frame.
"J" back 10 sec. "L" forward 10 sec.

[joepistol]

nice work, Quads..on the stop-action & enlargement of the pics.. you can see bolt looks to be locked in down position.

my guess is someone loaded a shotgun shell with faster burning powder, or an in some manner, an over loaded round.
dang.. almost hurts to watch that.

[oldmann1967]

Doesn't matter if it looks locked or not if the lugs were broken off. Yikes.

[JDG]

Wow!! Lucky to not have more face damage!

[Aveguy311]

The guy in the video is fiddling with the safety. He first pushes the safety lever forward and attempts to fire the weapon (you can see the barrel dip down in anticipation of the recoil). He then thumbs the safety backwards and then appears to be pushing harder on the safety lever to ensure it is in the fully rearward position. That clearly deactivated the safety as he desired because, well, the rest is history.

-Aveguy

[mittenman]

As a younger man I had several bolt shotguns (because they were cheap) Many like the one shown in the video were sold by Sears, Western Auto, hardware stores etc. (you get the picture). The metal used in many of these guns was substandard. I can remember broken extractors, broken firing pins, and even one broken locking lug... on a 16 gauge that only had 2 lugs in the first place

My bet is that the gun had one or more damaged locking lugs. He was messing with the bolt trying to make sure it was locked. The bolt wasn't locked fully in place and it fired the bolt backwards into his face.

An interesting question... Why would you be shooting a ancient bolt shotgun on a video at an indoor range in the first place???????

Mark

All good points

[XDM 40 cal]

That's one lucky man who needs to play the lottery. Second. OUCH!

[Thunderhead]

Excellent example of why I always wear safety/shooting glasses.

That explosion happened right in the receiver. So I'm not thinking obstruction.


It's obvious all the pressures came right straight back just like a squib would. I've seen it happen in an M4. Blew the magazine to smithereens and literally twisted the bolt to
the point where we could not get it out of the receiver.

Doesn't it make sense even if the bolt was damaged in such a way that it would come back like that, but some of that pressure would have come out the barrel as well.

It looks to me like the shell just exploded. Kind of like closing your fist around a firecracker type thing.

If anybody finds out the true cause I would be interested in knowing.

[Thunderhead]

Double post. Sorry.