Garand Kaboom

[Shadowrider]

So what I want to know is, will an OOB cause the entire rifle to grenade like this? Seems that if the bolt was partially open the gas and pressure would have an escape route even if it touched off the magazine too.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. When you touch off ammo that's not contained in a chamber and backed by a breech, not a hell of a lot happens. You get some noise, shrapnel from the case, the bullet moves a couple of feet and that's about it.

 

[ronny]

There are too many unknowns in this situation to say for sure. She touched off six rounds, removed one by hand and the eighth one blew up. So, there was no explosion of a round in the clip, which I had wondered about. If you look at the explosion, I think you'll see that the body of the stock in the area of the clip literally blew to pieces. A large piece of the stock just barely misses that guy. The metal of the rifle itself is in two pieces, apparently seperated right at the chamber. It would be interesting to see some real slo-mo of the blow up.

I also am puzzled. It's almost as if the gun was an inch or so OOB and all the force of the blast was outside the chamber. I've played with stop motion and it appears to me that, although there was no muzzle blast, something did exit the barrel.

I don't know.

 

[coolhandluke]

So what I want to know is, will an OOB cause the entire rifle to grenade like this? Seems that if the bolt was partially open the gas and pressure would have an escape route even if it touched off the magazine too.

From what I've seen, that seems to be common damage for OOB fire or a case failures around the primer pocket area. I believe that a majority of the rear escaping gas seems to be diverted downward through the triggergrouping thus disintegrating the stock in that area.

 

[Perplexed]

Don't forget that the stock in the area of the trigger group and the chamber is pretty thin, so it really wouldn't take that much of a pressure spike to cause an impressive display of flying splinters of wood, IMHO. As for minimizing such incidents, a pre-firing inspection of the bolt, lug recesses, chamber, etc. would help a lot. Also, don't let go of the charging handle from anywhere but the rearmost portion of its travel, and avoid riding it home. If you have a new bolt that sticks, slapping the rear of the charging handle should help ensure the bolt goes completely into battery. Also, headspacing the bolt, while probably not imperative, is a prudent measure.

 

[flatwins]

I will start by saying that this is probably a stupid question but is the Garand able to fire if it is that far out of battery?

 

[Shadowrider]

I will start by saying that this is probably a stupid question but is the Garand able to fire if it is that far out of battery?

I'm no Garand expert by any means, but I know that it and the M14/M1A can set off primers OOB. The firing pins aren't spring loaded and that's what the CCI military primers are supposed to prevent (ETA: Slamfire). Beyond that I'm not sure and yield to the experts.

 

[ldp4570]

I've watched this over 10 times, an even slowed it down. I think what you see coming out of the barrel on the last shot before the blowup is forced air an crud from the bore. The bolt only locks half open on that round(MAJOR WARNING SIGN!!), then she chambers the next round by hand, the bolt is in its forward position when she fires the Kaboom. The barrel an action stay together, and you really have to watch, but the bolt comes very close to taking her face off, an the other shooter was just barely missed by part of the stock. I do not think this was an out of battery firing. I've seen M16's fire OOB due to over heated bores, and nothing like this happened, but I've seen lots an lots of M16's turn into a grenade when the operator didn't notice the difference in recoil from a squib type load. I used to have to do malfunction investigations when ammunition was involved, and some of those were not pretty.

 

[ronny]

Well, I missed that bolt flying out, although I looked for it a number of times. Seems like that would be a hint of being OOB.

Whatever came out of the barrel was just a poot, that's for sure.

I wonder if anyone knowledgeable ever inspected the rifle after the fact?

 

[ldp4570]

Well, I missed that bolt flying out, although I looked for it a number of times. Seems like that would be a hint of being OOB.

Whatever came out of the barrel was just a poot, that's for sure.

I wonder if anyone knowledgeable ever inspected the rifle after the fact?

Don't know, but would have loved to go over it, an find the last case, as it would tell alot!!

 

[SMS]

What about the possibility of reloads...and a double powder charge? What would that do?