Let me expand on the last post a little. In my other life I moderate a reloading forum and we get to dissect our fair share of “unexplainable” blowups.
Keep in mind I am NOT suggesting all these behaviors were exhibited here.
But this is how it often goes.
Firstly, the idea that the handloader made a mistake is examined and usually discarded by the person analyzing the blowup. What we do know for sure is that person and no one else made the ammo. That is food for thought. The subsequent blown up gun and the person making the ammo have a direct relationship.
Second, in analyzing the cause of the kaboom, almost invariably multiple factors happening concurrently are blamed for the cause of the burst gun. As I said before, in reality if multiple things have to happen to blow the gun up the less likely they are to happen concurrently. And the less likely they are as a plausible or probable cause.
The simple ideas have to be run to the ground first. Adding layers of complexity adds layers of improbability.
One guy, writing for Handloader’s Digest on the subject of burst guns, entitled the piece, “It Isn’t Always Handloads......But That’s The Way to Bet.”
In all fairness, jon acknowledges he was using handloads and has tried to dissect it from that angle. The way to bet is that something was wrong with the handload and not with the gun.
Kudos to him for approaching it from that angle, as most people in my experience don’t want to accept they had anything to do with any problems, but I think a simpler rather than a more complex explanation as was found in the first post of this thread is much more likely.