hi-power hand grenade

Sleeper

Sleeper

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Camrose , Alberta
So yesterday I was out plinking at some steel gongs with the browning hi-power when the pistol went boom and the left grip panel blew right off.
The cartridge case head had a hole blown out the side possibly due to the pistol not being in 100% battery when i pulled the trigger. other possibility i suppose would be a weak piece of brass got into my batch of once fired cases.
I doubt it was an over loaded case as i am pretty meticulous about my loading and i was using a progressive. the 700x powder charge filled most of the case to boot so a double charge would have spilled all over the place.

Anyone familiar with this type of indecent with the hi-power? I have shot mine a pile with no issues.
Oh and If you have some grip panels kicking around let me know.
 
It seems to me that unlikely as it may be, a greater-than-normal charge is responsible for the problem, although it is possible that a bad case was involved. It's hard to imagine anything else causing it. There have been examples of very light charges blowing up .38 Spl. cases (and revolvers), but in those instances the whole top strap of the revolver was lifted and the walls of the cylinder blown out. How is the chamber and the rest of the structure of the gun?
 
I am using 4.5 grains of 700X over a 115 fmj. I wont rule out the double charge but i am not convinced that it was the issue.
My slide can be out of battery by as much as .094 and the hammer will still drop when the trigger is pulled. i am wondering if that is enough to allow the case to be unsupported and rupture.
the other possibility is that a untrimmed case was in the lot and got a heavier crimp raising pressure, but i think the hi-power could stand up to the excess pressure that would provide.
I don't know, i hate to think that a double charge could happen with how careful i try to be.
 
How's the throat area look? If there's too much wear or someone's tooled it, the unsupported portion of the case can be too far forward and you can get a blowout with a regular or even a light charge.

-M
 
Well then I'd say you're laughing... May have had a case that had an undetected incipient case head separation too, depending on how many times you've reloaded it. Who the heck knows, I guess.

-M
 
no it was fine, plastic grip just broke around the screw and blew through my fingers. i just read about a fellow that did something similar, blew the floorplate off the magazine and bulged the aluminum plates around the grip screw on what i would assume are rubber grips. The fellow wrote that it was misc crap ammo. said it stung his hand pretty good too. guess i got off lucky, i'll keep my eye on it.
 
If your pistol will fire while it is out of battery you have an issue there. The brass blowing sounds more like an overload, but if it was out of battery the brass will let go. I would have a smith take a look at getting the disconector fixed up. Did you dissable the mag saftey and somehow affect the slide disconect?
 
I've had a similar (not quite so boomy) experience with 9mm and factory ammo, the only thing I could think of was that the bullet got set back in the case. In 9mm a set back bullet is very bad news, even if only sets back a small amount.
 
The Mag safety is still in place. Thought about removing it but it isn't a target pistol. Funny thing is that there seems to be a number of right side panels kicking around for the hi-power but no left ones. Need more lefties Blowing up their pistols i guess.
 
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