Toby's Pipe Bombs

[Jon]

Ralphy, I would at least get some of the book loads and try it. You may decide to sell the disk. I admit the disk is a great gun but not in the same league. If you decide to sell the savage they go quick. What price do you want? Best of luck.

Jon

[whyohe]

ralphy what bullet sabot you shoot out of your knight? if it a SST or of the like you can shoot them oout of the savage with book loads and they are usually pretty accurate. so all you'd be out is a pound of powder.

[Indianahunter]

Is it "Groundhog's Day"?

[iowamuzzleloader]

Ralphy-

But can your Knight do this?

And I'm not even close to one of the best shooters here. Let me know if you wish to unload it!

[artjr338wm]

Edge, try as I might I could not find where I read TB claimed to have not one but two 10MLs blow up on him, but I without a doubt recall reading about him saying so in a published statement.

Maybe someone else remembers reading TB saying something similar and can help me out.

Regards,
Arthur.

[huntingmike]

Dec 1, 2009 0:31:45 GMT -5 artjr338wm said:

Edge, try as I might I could not find where I read TB claimed to have not one but two 10MLs blow up on him, but I without a doubt recall reading about him saying so in a published statement.

Maybe someone else remembers reading TB saying something similar and can help me out.

Regards,
Arthur.

Toby is claiming someone else from Canada had one to blow up recently. WWW. SAV10ML.com and follow his link and you can read it for yourself.

[Hunt]

If the breach plug is indeed a poor design, I know a simple way savage could change the design that would eliminate any chance of gas leak and that would put an end to TB complaint and the this thread.

[mike.dawson]

Well, what is the simple solution you speak of?

Mike

[ozark]

Toby's complaint will never die so long as he can keep it alive. I haven't heard anything about it. Sure have read a lot though. LOL

[Hunt]

All it would take is changing a few lines in the G-Code on the machines at Savage and a fully threaded breach plug with a proper seat angle would be produced on the BP and a corresponding chamber. The vent liner and other dimensions could stay the same.

[sw]

Dec 26, 2009 0:08:06 GMT -5 Hunt said:

All it would take is changing a few lines in the G-Code on the machines at Savage and a fully threaded breach plug with a proper seat angle would be produced on the BP and a corresponding chamber. The vent liner and other dimensions could stay the same.

This sounds(reads) reasonable. RB's breechplugs are made this way, most others' PBs are made this way, why aren't Savages'? I do expect there is a reason other than, it is cheaper to make it this way. The original Ball BP was fully threaded IIRC.

[pcgolfer]

One of the guns had an estimated 7500 rounds through them.... many experimental, including rounds layering different types of smokeless powder, which is strickly forbidden by Savage. I have researched this, and there were reasons stated for the change (not just economical). I believe these are stated on Randy Wakeman's site.

There was another similar failure in Canada, and you will see graphic pictures of a man with his hand blown apart. I can't say for sure, but the man only had about 100 rounds through the gun. It appears the most likely culprit was double loading powder/bullet... powder/bullet.

Most people are suspicious that one man could have two guns blow up alone. The odds of that are pretty high. The odds of it happening twice without injury... I can't see how. Many outrightly state they believe the man intentionally blew up the guns. He was a former employee of Savage and did extensive testing. Despite what he says, Henry Ball did approve of the breech plug change.

In short, I agree with the previous poster... user failure. I honestly believe the Savage is the strongest muzzleloader ever built. That being said, stay within the powders and charges listed by Savage. It's fully capable of shooting designated powder. Not every powder and any load.

[randywakeman]

Like an unstaked vampire, somethings never die. If you'd like the real truth of the matter, here it is:

randywakeman.com/HowToBlowUpASavage10ML.htm

[ET]

RandyWakeman

Have read your article but only have one area that puzzles me (Peak Pressure) and hope you can shed some light here.
You stated that “Peak pressure in a muzzleloader happens nowhere near the breechplug at all, it always follows the base of the sabot.”

The face of the breech plug and space between the sabot in the bore is sort of a pressure chamber. How can the generated pressure not be equal in that chamber considering the start of the pressure rise is at the breech plug where the powder is initially ignited?


Hope you can clarify this for me.



Ed

[randywakeman]

The pressure is not at the breechplug at all, it is at the base of the saboted bullet.

No saboted bullet, no significant pressure. You can try pouring in, lets say, 42 grains of 4759 with no sabot or bullet-- no ignition and no pressure. You can do the same thing with an empty sabot on top of the powder-- no proper ignition is likely. You can try it with a half-charge of 4759-- often not nearly enough pressure to sustain ignition, so you have a "blooper" . . . and a barrel full of unburnt powder.

You can also try a super-flyweight bullet, say a 125 grain bullet with that same charge of 4759 . . . not enough pressure to sustain ignition, so another "blooper" is likely. This happens all the time with faster burning flake powders as in shotshells-- a bad reload with a half charge of clays, a blooper-- the wad may not even clear the barrel.

There is a value called "shot start" pressure, used contingent on bullet jacket materials that might be 4,000 - 5000 psi in a guilding metal jacketed .308 bullet fired through a .30 bore. It is this resistance to movement that begins and controls the pressure curve.

There is a "shot start" pressure for sabots as well-- what it takes to get the saboted bullet moving and the ignition sequence to commence. It is typically just 300 - 500 psi, as you might expect from a material soft enough to be loaded from the muzzle with a very low coefficient of friction.

It does take pressure to move an oversized bullet. We can try loading a .30-06 from the muzzle-- not easy unless you have a hydraulic press with you at the range.

For a sabot, though, it takes scant little to move it. We can dry load a sabot in a muzzleloader, take out the breechplug, and easily move it with a little shove from a pencil.

I wouldn't say "no pressure"-- after all, we can blow through a straw and get "some pressure." Blowing up a balloon takes "some pressure," just not very much of it. You can use your air compressor to blow a sabot out of a barrel if you want, CO2 unloaders are sold for that purpose as well.

But that is a far cry from significant pressure, much less "peak pressure" that happens far downstream from the breechplug and always follows the base of the sabot.

[ET]

RandyWakeman

Thanks for your response. Okay here is what raised that question.
In my line of work sometimes-pneumatic pressure testing is required on piping, ASME requirement. The whole internal part of the pipe once the pressure rises, is equally pressurized throughout. Gauges confirm this at both ends. If for any reason pressure drops from a leak again both gauges respond equally & simultaneously.
So when I look at what is happening inside a bore and pressure response I can see the pressure being the driving force against the sabot but can’t see pressure not being equal throughout in the resulting chamber behind the sabot whether pressure rises or falls.



Ed

[Jon]

Et, I agree with you. I would like more info on this. Or atleast a more understandable explination for us layman?
Jon

[randywakeman]

My background includes industrial fluid power transmission and pneumatic work.

Given time, pressure equalizes. That's why I mentioned, "The complete bullet travel time of a saboted projectile in a Savage 10ML-II is very, very short-- less than 1.5 milliseconds. It takes 300 – 400 ms for the average human to blink an eye. Let's say you are a fairly fast eye-blinker at 300 milliseconds. In that period of time, 200 shots could have traveled the full length of a Savage 10ML-II barrel and exited. "

Prior to the shot, the pressure in the barrel is ambient, or 14.7 PSI. Just 1.4 milliseconds later, it has "equalized"-- right back to 14.7 PSI.

It is a pressure wave. If instant pressure equalization was possible, your tin-can 209 primer would be flattened into a pancake after every shot. After all, there is a very open pressure channel going straight to the primer. Primers don't get blown to bits or flattened like pancakes, though, as they see no significant pressure.

One of the dinkiest breechplugs I've ever seen is Doc White's breechplug used on White Rifles. There isn't much to it at all. Yet, that breechplug has been used for decades with some of the heaviest, nastiest bore-sized conicals ever shot out of a muzzleloader. The heavy White "Power Punch" .504 conicals are a big, nasty 600 grains. My shoulder hurts just looking at those things.

Yet, despite these radically heavy slugs, extremely high-pressure levels (exceeding some Savage smokeless loads), no little dinky White breechplug has ever failed. The reason is the same-- the breechplug does not see significant pressure compared to what follows the bullet.

As a matter of fact, breechplugs see so little pressure that one "not so clever" company decided to put out muzzleloaders that had breechplugs with NO threads at all. This "quick-release" breechplug was a production item in H & R muzzleloaders, a break-action version based on the old "Topper" shotgun.

No threads at all wasn't a good idea. What happened was, in the event of an apparent "misfire"-- it was often a hangfire. After the supposed "misfire" the shooter would quickly break open his break action . . . and the hangfire would shoot the breechplug into the shooters skull. Not a great idea. As a matter of fact, this "quick-release" breechplug killed a Thompson-Center employee. The old H & R "quick-release" breechplug rifles are no longer available, as you might imagine.

[ET]

RandyWakeman

Lets look at the Savage BP and vent liner application. That small hole in the vent liner that is a specific distance from the primer not only feeds the powder with a flame but acts as a restrictor to volumetric back flow of pressure. Like cracking a valve on a pressured tank. The tank doesn’t empty quickly. Say a bottle of oxygen used for a cutting torch, it normally comes filled at 2,600PSI. But the rate the tank is emptied is dependant on how much we crack the valve open to allow a specific flow from the tank.

So you are right about the primer not being exposed to chamber pressure that lasts in milliseconds.

Then there’s the erosion lines on the mating surface of the Breech Plug to the bore.
The only thing I see causing these is high pressure trying to escape from the confinement in the bore. Granted there is very little escape but the presence of high pressure is seen from the resulting erosion lines. Even the vent liner orifice experiences erosion that I believe results from high pressure of hot gas trying to enter the space between primer and vent liner. Again this happens in milliseconds so it can’t be low pressure causing this.


Ed

[mountainam]

ET, Wouldn't the metal erosion on the plug and vent liner be due to temperature rather than pressure? I would venture to guess that different powders burn at different temperatures over different time spans. You touched on it above in your ox/acetylene analogy. The powders contains their own oxidizers and temperature is probably the highest at the point of initial ignition. Initial ignition??? Anyway, for me the most difficult part for my brain to process is the minuscule portions of time that usually don't come into play in any of my industrial related calcs. We were always taught that pressure is equal and opposite in all directions,but with a controlled explosion time definitely enters into it.

[Jon]

Et, I agree with you. Here is my take on it and only my opinion. Lets say you have a 1.5 powder column by .5 bore when you pull the trigger everything else being right you get a controlled explosion. Which I think is equal and opposite so initially is on all surfaces. Now you go to a pressure trace you can see the primer pressure then the explosion you can even tell if you have slow, fast powder or duplex. It falls off rapidly as the sabot etc. moves down the barrel. So you are only seeing peak pressure for a very small portion of a millisecond. Just my opinion. I think that is a misprint on the pressure in a oxygen tank is around 2600 not 26000.
Jon

[randywakeman]

Throat erosion happens in all firearms. It is a function of both pressure and heat. It is both normal and anticipated wear. That was the point of mentioning small diameter, higher pressure rounds like the .220 Swift, .22-250, and the .204 Ruger. They are all known to be barrel-burners when shot hard. Prairie dog fans can go through barrels rather quickly, not from a safety standpoint, but when accuracy drops off it is new barrel time.

Certainly you will get some erosion of the breechplug with heavy use. It is expected and considered normal wear: breech plugs are designed to be replaced. Most folks know that ever since Triple Se7en came out, the crud ring and stuck breech plugs have been an issue.

It wasn't all that long ago that Hodgdon called me and informed me that after 100 or so shots of Triple Se7en through an Omega, the breechplug and flash hole eroded enough so that Triple Se7en no longer had as bad of a crud ring. So, Hodgdon discovered what Doc White has known for many decades, and what Henry Ball spotted before he patented the vent-liner. You bet-- breech plugs and flash holes erode.

That's what a vent-liner is, just a replaceable flash hole. Neither are structural parts. The nose of the Savage breech plug does its job, that being protecting the threads of the plug. Has anyone ever seen erosion to the threads of a Savage breech plug? I'll guess not-- I sure haven't.

The Savage 10ML-II operates at somewhere half the working pressure of many centerfires, so actual barrel wear is minimal. I put upwards of 5000 rounds through one 10ML-II with the same breechplug and it took me over three years to do that. I sent the gun to Savage for inspection. It was air-gaged and still passed brand new rifle specs. That's far more shooting than any typical muzzleloading hunter would do in many, many lifetimes.

For Savage to recommend a powder, it has to go through the full gamut of Savage testing. There are some powders that obviously are inappropriate for the Savage 10ML. Savage of course can't possibly list them all, they just publish what is allowed. One powder that they do prohibit is Lil' Gun-- now that is one hot, nasty, erosive powder. The specific amount of erosion you might get is based on specific powder, amount of the powder, and projectile weight.

The peak pressure follows the sabot, is nowhere near the breechplug, and cannot be. Hartmut Broemel explains, likely better than I ever could:



You have a pressure wave that follows the saboted projectile. It isn't that pressure does not "want" to equalize . . . it does. It would, in a closed system. But that isn't at all how a muzzleloader works. What we have is a constantly, rapidly increasing combustion area at all times.

Yes, a pressure wave does partially form heading back to the breechplug. It doesn't come close to making it, though, as the bullet has already exited the muzzle before it has a chance to. The nose of the breech plug never, ever sees anything remotely close to peak pressure-- much less the important part, the breech plug threads.

[mike.dawson]

Randy

What a remarkable report! It was hard to get thru but it does paint a portrait of the truth and nothing but the truth. I know you spent a great deal of time putting to bed TB's story.

Witness marks are a gun saver as well as a life saver. I have put witness marks on my range rod and these marks have saved my bacon twice. When you at the range and you load and get distracted by small talk and they stop shooting to service target, it may be 15-20 min before shooting resumes and forget that the gun was already loaded, loaded a second time but the witness marks told me it was NOW double charged.

Some members on this board have bulged barrels on ramrods being left in, the bulged barrel on the Savage seems to happen, would you explain the PSI required to bulge the barrel rather than blow it up and just how close was an explosion rather than a bulge?

Great job!!!

Mike

[midohhntr]

Mr. Wakeman, thanks for the report. I've been following this incident for some time with some interest for I have been shooting M/L for 35 years or so and have never seen anything like this before. It has been my speculation from the start that the blow -up occurred from a barrel obstruction or double charge of some sort.

[ET]

RandyWakeman

Okay that now addresses my first question.
The propagation of burning powder generating hot gas in an oscillation pattern affects the pressure level location in the chamber.

Thanks for displaying Hartmut Broemels brief description.


Ed

[ET]

Jon

Thanks for the heads up on my error with Tank Pressure. My mind was thinking 2-zeros and my finger wanted 3-zeros early in the morning. ;D

Mountainam

Basic heat alone doesn't normally cause erosion by itself in most metals. Heat will soften the metal and flowing pressure will begin the erosion process. The hotter/softer the metal the quicker the erosion when flowing pressure is applied.

Ed

[Jed]

RandyWakeman,

Excellent article! I'm thankful that someone finally put together a formal, public, printable response to TB's accusations. You've demonstrated from both logical and physical evidence that what happened was NOT a result of a "book load." We who enjoy smokeless extend a big "Thanks!" to you.

[pcgolfer]

Randy

My name is Mike OConnor. I sent you an email recently after reading the post by that bozo Toby Bridges. I don't know if you recall my message, but I had a friend that was getting ready to sell all three of his Savages after reading this. I am glad to see your post on your site on how to blow up a Savage. I'd say primer, powder, sabot, bullet, powder, sabot, bullet would do the job on just about every muzzleloader out there.

Everybody needs to check out Randy's site. He covers about every topic on the Savage you could imagine.

[whyohe]

I will be the first to admit i dont truly under stand how the pressure works that way and why it does so in our MLers. but you see it in demolition with shape charges used to cut steel I beams in a direction so shrapnal does'nt fly into surrounding residential areas but in a safe direction. but the points made here are good!

[ET]

Whyohe

I have had some exposure to using explosives in industry for a process called detonation forming of specific shaped metals. While in this field for a short while I learned about other applications of explosives and was really impressed how the explosive application had more usages than I originally thought like one you described.

Hope I can help with this line of thought being provided by Randy Wakeman from Mr. Broemel.

Each grain of powder ignited generates hot gas in all directions and will push against each other as well before emerging together. This hot expanding gas accumulation when confined creates/produces pressure resulting in a push towards least resistance in confinement. Keep in mind the powder burning consumption is accelerated as the burn continues.
So if the breech end ignition is started first the initial production start of hot expanding gases is pushing the remaining main powder charge, not yet consumed, away from the breech end because the bullet is beginning to move, providing the least resistance path.
So the main coming burn of the largest un-burnt portion of powder for generating maximum pressure is starting to move away from the Breech end.

This is the basic gist I’m getting for an explanation.


Ed