Smokeless muzzle loader
- Thread starter wamo
- Start date
tactical870
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Buckhorn, Ontario
I've been shooting a Savage for years with no issues at all. Hell, I know someone who even once accidentally double charged a Savage and still managed to get away with no issues. IMHO you'd really have to screw up something to hurt a Savage.....
The fella i know of is meticulous to details i would be shocked if he had made any mistake at all, yet his model 10ML II blew up causing serious injury to his hand. I have heard plenty of talk about this happening relatively often. I am having a hard time finding objective opinions with internet searches. I myself think that savage makes a great gun, but if there is a flaw with a batch of barrels, a lot of people that would like to know. These things can happen my father and uncle bought 2 Savage model 16's in 17 HMR with near to consecutive serial numbers and neither gun had rifling cut into the barrels.
I think he needs to contact Savage with the serial number if he believes there's a flaw in the barrel. If there's a flaw in the barrel, I would have thought it would have shown up by now on my rifle, but you never know. It would be odd though for a sudden catastrophic failure after hundreds of round shot off. That barrel is hella thick and we're probably not running crazy pressures (sticking to factory loads, I used 43.0 gr SR4759) , a sabot won't take too much pressure I'm led to believe.
I doubt that the gun would even go off if the bullet wasn't seated. Smokeless muzzleloading is different from BP in just about every way possible. A misfire with smokeless can even be caused by a loose fitting sabot. The weird thing is that a smokeless misfire will burn the powder, but not generate enough pressure to even get the sabot out of the barrel.
I was thinking more along the lines of detination . this can blow up a 500 jefferies so why not a smokeless muzzel loader if the sabot and bullet are not seated all the way and the powder charge is loose it could cause the primer to flash across the whole charge of powder at once . causing Detination
A metallic cartridge is a different situation as well. Due to neck tension, crimp and a groove diameter bullet building pressure is never a problem, managing it is. A smokeless muzzleloader is different, if you can't build pressure instantly it goes poofff instead of bang and doesn't pressure up at all. Sort of like a shotshell with too light of wad pressure in the old days or a bad crimp, it barely lights and the wad stays in the barrel.
Its best to forget everything you know about blackpowder and cartridge loading, just about everything about smokeless muzzleloading is opposite to what you'd expect. An exception is that if you manage to get 2 powder charges or 2 bullets down the barrel, you are still going to be in trouble.
Smokeless powder, especially slightly slower ones used in Muzzleloaders, need pressure to burn well. The primer could flash over the powder, but that might cause it to burn, but slowly. Not detonate.
And what is this red herring about a .500 Jefferies?
And what is this red herring about a .500 Jefferies?
tactical870
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Buckhorn, Ontario
There were a lot of powder issues when the savage guns came out. I had a couple misfires until a friend put me onto a better powder. Actually 3 of us had misfires with deer in front of us in 2 days until we switched.... I'll have to look up the load I'm shooting now and post it.
Toby Bridges managed to blow his up, right after Savage fired him. No conflict of interest there.
A coincidence - I doubt it.
From http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/firearm-review-forum/297093-another-savage-ml10-blows.html
Yep, another Toby Bridges thing. Bridges worked for Savage for many years and he touted that gun as the best ever made. Then he and Savage had a falling out and Savage fired him. Bridges also got into a urinating contest with Ball, who invented the Savage gun. Shortly after Bridges was fired he had a run in with the law.
Strange thing; the first Savage gun blew up soon after Bridges was fired by Savage.The gun pictured was most likely destroyed by an overload with the bullet setting well off the powder.
http://hpmuzzleloading.com/Alert.html
A big piece of the barrel was blown off at the threads. Note how that piece was bent backwards before breaking. Look at the other pieces of the barrel and how they are cracked well forward of the breech.
http://www.gunblast.com/Muzzleloading.htm
Quote:
I want to preface my following thoughts on this matter by stating that I have no dog in this fight, and this is just my opinion, after investigating this matter as best as I could. There are, however, a few facts that pertain to the relationship of Toby Bridges and Savage Arms. Mr. Bridges worked for Savage, with the job of testing and promoting the 10MLII muzzleloader. He has fired more rounds through Savage muzzleloaders than anyone to my knowledge. After a few incidents that are none of my business resulted in Mr. Bridges having a falling out with the inventor of the rifle and a run-in with the law, Mr. Bridges also was fired by Savage Arms, for failure to perform his job, and having a really poor attitude. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Bridges suddenly had a 10ML blow up while he was supposedly testing it. The gun was utterly destroyed, but the shooter was not scratched. He was supposedly shooting a safe load in the gun; one which in fact I have exceeded many times. Now Mr. Bridges declares the Savage unsafe. This is, keep in mind, after he was let go by Savage Arms. I have seen pictures of the destroyed rifle. There is no way short of a divine miracle that someone could have been sitting behind that rifle with his cheek pressed to the stock, and have not been seriously injured. My opinion, and it is worth what you paid for it, is that the gun was intentionally blown up.
It sure looks in that Toby Bridges picture that the point of failure was well ahead of the breach plug and is right around where the bullet would sit. I wonder if any engineer could look at his theory about the threads on the breech plug and comment on whether you would expect that outcome. Doesn't seem intuitive that it would fail that far forward if the problem was the breech plug design that is well rearward of the point maximum destruction.
If you read the entire huntingnet thread, one of the posters states that barrels tend to bulge behind barrel obstructions, and the remains of the barrel are bulged a couple of inches ahead of the breech plug, right where a bullet would be expected. Everything points to a massive powder overcharge - nothing to do with the breech plug.
Firearms failures are very rare and usually due to a powder overcharge or a barrel obstruction (semi-autos have their own unique additional modes of failure). Those that fail due to a design or manufacturing deficiency are exceedingly rare, so I always take a report of a failure blamed on the manufacturer with a grain of salt.
Powder detonation is caused by a powder charge that is too small for the space it is in. The same thing would be caused by the correct powder charge in a space that was too large, which would be caused by a bullet not seated properly.
The powder is no properly ignited and smoulders, releasing its nitroglycerine content as a gas or vapour. When the nitro ignites, it detonates and takes the strongest gun with it.
Not properly seating the bullet on a blackpowder charge can bulge the barrel. Doing the same thing with a smokeless charge can blow the gun to bits. Both are bad.
