Serbu Firearms, Inc., Tampa, Florida

[markserbu]

But hopefully not using any sort of ammo that you'd come across. The guys who blew this gun up are professionals...don't try this at home! They do some sort of ammo development, and they won't tell me exactly what they're doing. This gun was fired from a test stand, so nobody was in the blast zone. The locking lugs didn't give way...the gun stayed locked up and the barrel is fine. I'm amazed at how the bolt material (200,000 psi tensile strength) so easily sheared away. That receiver tube is well over 100,000 psi tensile strength, and considering it was just GAS that ripped it open and bulged it, that's pretty amazing, too. Guess I need to ask these guys if the "powder" they were using had names like "C4", "RDX", etc.

[Frank Forthun]

Did they find that ball bearing? I always have the hardest time finding that little ball bearing. Normally I have to fire up my Roomba Dirt Dog and just sift through the dirt bin when it's done.
_________________
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes 5 seperate, distinct rights. The second amendment proffers only one. Our founders established my right to bear arms as being 5 times more important than Michael Moore's right to bitch about it.

[Eldon-1076]

What a waste of a fine firearm

[pfry]

Interesting! I'd love to get a closer look, or an analysis.

- Where's the bolt handle?

- Offhand it looks as though the bolt face damage occurred due to the gas forcing the (burst) case away from the bolt face, pulling away the extractor claw. (I wonder where it is.) If that's the situation, the pressure behind the case would probably only have to hit 50kpsi or so... although how it would reach that vs. the pressure within the case... At any rate, considering the apparent gas leakage, the damage appears to be minimal.

- I wonder what the remains of the case look like.

- I wonder if that was an obstructed bore test.

I've seen some other unusual failures, like the time an old surplus round in a Garand ignited sufficiently to cycle the action, then blew up just as the bolt opened. It extracted OK, with no apparent damage to firearm or shooter, but was a heck of a pop. I'd hate to have the same thing happen with a .50.

[markserbu]

I'm revisiting this because I got an email from a friend in the industry asking: "What the hell happened?!" So I figured the picture was getting around without the explanation and decided to put at least a bit of it right on the pictures. The pictures were arranged (by me) and the bolt handle isn't there because I just didn't put it in the pictures. I have to stress (to educate the extremely dense) that this gun was NOT blown up with standard ammunition. You could not load enough of any sort of .50 BMG powder to cause this. There is obviously SOMETHING which could be loaded into a cartridge to cause this because...well....there it is. I have to wonder, of course, if this blow up would have injured a shooter had the gun actually been in the hands of a shooter when it happened. It looks like the only part which flew off of the gun (on the bolt head) occurred inside the action, so that wouldn't have hit anyone. The receiver came apart and the lower got blown off, but I'm guessing the velocity of those parts wasn't very high after a lot of energy was spent in breaking some very strong welds and tearing some very strong steel. So I'm guessing that a person would have walked away shaken, but not stirred. Damn James Bond....they probably wouldn't have been hurt. Maybe a hand, wrist or arm peppered with a bit of small fragments at the most. Sure there was a large blast which ripped the receiver open but I'm guessing most of its energy was expended during the ripping and that not much overpressure was left to do damage to a person. This is all academic, of course, and I'm glad that's the case!

[Al B. (SOCAL)]

Maybe 4" of det cord in the case...KA-BOOM! I seem to recall throughout the years that hostile forces would leave booby trapped ammo behind that friendly forces would attempt to use and injure themselves. But that is surely an interesting way the rifle "broke". As far as damage to the shooter...there would certainly have been some blast overpressure in close proximity to ones brain bucket, so organs of special senses (vision and vestibular/balance) would have been vulnerable. If fired off of a concrete shooting bench on a covered firing position and a hard surface on the ground would have kept some of the blast bouncing around the shooter. If it had been fired prone off the deck...even more concentration of blast effects. But....like you said, it was a test of some kind and not a shooter induced error! And....it doesn't look like a peeled banana like Wiley Coyote would have had...so you do make one damn tough rifle! Al B. (SOCAL)