tube magazine blow ups

[ebb]

Can any of you guys link me to pictures of tube magazine detonations of ammo in the tube with pointed bullets. There is a discussion on another site and many are down playing the danger. I would like to post pictures but cannot for the life of me find any.

[Froogal]

Can any of you guys link me to pictures of tube magazine detonations of ammo in the tube with pointed bullets. There is a discussion on another site and many are down playing the danger. I would like to post pictures but cannot for the life of me find any.

And I'd like to know if those bullets were actually POINTED bullets or if they were round nose bullets?

[JoeJames]

I saw an episode of Forgotten Weapons where the tube in a Henry type repro blew up when there about 5 rounds in it - flat nose bullets. But he let the magazine tube follower slam down on the rounds. He was lightly injured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDuoj7KR-CA&t=678s

[Rockindaddy]

My friend Kent Lomont who mentored under Elmer Keith took a Winchester Model 71 receiver and rebarreled it to 450 Alaskan. The recoil on this Model 71 was violent with full house loads and heavy jacketed flat point bullets he was loading. One day while he was shooting, the magazine and forearm exploded. His left hand needed extensive surgery to reconstruct it. For the rest of his life until he passed away he had limited use of his left hand. When we talked about it he thinks there was a high primer, not fully seated that went off even with a flat point bullet. Two cartridges detonated in the magazine tube. Elmer Keith's 1886 Winchester 45-70 pet load was 53grs of 3031 and a 400gr Speer flat point. I have shot this load in a Marlin 1895 45-70 for over 40 years. But the 450 Alaskan is a much more powerful round than the 45-70 Govt. Don't think I need the punch of a 450 Alaskan (348 Winchester Base) in a lever gun tube magazine. Personally, I would never load a pointed projectile in a tube magazine rifle. I shoot Marlins, Winchester, 11mm Reichspatrone 1871/84 rifles, a Remington Keen in 45-70, and Swiss 11mm Vetterli's. All have tube magazines.

[Froogal]

I have shot many, many round nose .38 special and .357 magnum in a lever action rifle with NO incidents. Quite a few of the shooters in our cowboy action group also shoot round nose bullets with never an incident of any kind.

Maybe because we all load on the mild side?

[dverna]

I might be wrong, but I am not aware of any commercial ammunition used in lever action calibers that has a pointed bullet except the FTX and is a "soft" polymer tip.

The majority of old timers "know" not to use a pointed bullet in a tube magazine. Maybe newer reloaders have not heard the "old wives tale" and may do it but the younger crowd seems more interested in stuff like 6.5 CreedLess than .30/30's. It is doubtful many pointed bullets get reloaded in lever action calibers.

[Bmi48219]

I always wondered about the Remington 30-30 Accelerator round that had a 55 gr. pointed lead tip jacketed .223 bullet in a sabot. It was available in the late 70s - early 80s. Can’t recall if there was a warning on the cartridge box but I don’t doubt some would have ignored it.
I gave a box to a friend in 1990.

https://cdn2.armslist.com/sites/armslist/uploads/posts/2014/10/18/3616654_02_30_30_remington_accelerator_am_640.jpg
https://ammo-art.ch/images/stories/virtuemart/product/IMG_91734.jpg

[tunnug]

I seem to remember some 30/30 pointed rounds specifically made with soft rubber points to get the accuracy/velocity of pointed rounds without the danger of detonation in the tubes.

[longbow]

There are many threads here on this same subject:

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?391906-Magazine-chain-fire-test/page3&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?377291-Tubular-magazine-answers&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?328416-How-small-a-metplat-still-safe&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?298586-Magazine-primer-explosion-worries&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?212773-THe-old-tube-magazine-debate&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?73196-how-flat-is-flat-nose-for-tube-mag&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?156655-Lee-s-round-nose-design-in-a-levergun&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?96215-Feeding-round-nose-in-a-lever-action&highlight=pointed+bullet
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?179497-RN-bullets-in-levergun&highlight=tube+magazine+blowup

Not arguing that it can't happen but I shot thousands of Lyman 457124's out of my Marlin 1895 and never had an issue and these were mostly loaded to 1895 max. load level so substantial recoil.

I will admit that was mostly through ignorance in that I never thought about it. These days I would opt for an RNFP

Since I read some of these threads I decided to see if I could get a primer to detonate by using an ACWW cast NOE 316299 (clone of the Lyman 314299) round nose bullet and a hammer. I donned some safety gear, got some pliers to hold the cast bullets and a hammer then put a primed .303 British cartridge in my vice and proceeded to hammer. I was unable to set off a primer after many attempts. In fact I wan't able to even badly deform a primer but the boolit noses mushed. My conclusion was that a primer is not likely to be set off by recoil with a round nose bullet of ACWW being jammed into it.

Now, if the bullet was more pointed and made out of linotype and in a heavy recoiling cartridge it might be a different matter.

However, I have said it before, it there was any significant chance of a round nose bullet setting off a primer in a lever action gun then factory ammunition would not ever have round nose bullets loaded because the liability would be too great yet:

Hornady makes round nose bullets for .30-30
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010477433?pid=382697

and Remington makes factory loaded ammunition using what appear to be round nose bullets
https://arsenalforce.ca/products/remington-core-lokt-30-30-win-170gr-sp-20rds/41C86B0E19C6E8ABCF4D2149E062B1C13326F58F

Most of these have flat points but Remington and Winchester show round nose bullets as factory loads
https://thebiggamehuntingblog.com/best-30-30-ammo-for-hunting/

Also, as an observation, I do not recall seeing reports of tube magazine blow ups using factory ammunition, just reloads. Could it be a high primer? Could it be a large pistol primer in a rifle cartridge?

Not trying to poo poo the seriousness or possibility of a chainfire happening in a tube magazine but personally I doubt that a large radius round nose bullet of ACWW or softer lead will set off a primer under recoil of anything up to hot .45-70 anyway.

YMMV

Longbow

[Hick]

Some years back the Mythbusters show tried very, very hard to make rounds detonate in a tube magazine with pointy bullets-- and they couldn't do it. I have read of a couple of other cases where people tried and couldn't. My personal opinion is that it can happen, but you need to load the magazine tube to the max so that the magazine spring is "bottomed out." If you don't load the tube to the max, then when you fire the rifle the recoil just makes the ammo slide forward in the tube under the pressure of the magazine spring-- which isn't enough to set off the rounds. The trouble, of course, is that none of us wants to test the theory in our own firearms. In my case, I shoot flat nose and round nose in my levers, but when I shoot spire point bullets I load them singly in the chamber.

There have been one or two cases of reported 'magazine' blowups where the receiver was blown out and the stock blown off. Can't find the sources-- but I have to say that since the mag tube is weak, if you damage the receiver it is more likely a double charge not a magazine tube problem. For some reason blaming it on the bullet in the magazine seems more 'convenient' than admitting to a reloading error.

[Texas by God]

Why give Murphy a head start?


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[hangman1]

When I was young back in the early 70's .I had a marlin 336 in 35 Remington and shot a lot of the 150 gr. pointed remington bullets at woodchucks . never had any go off in the tube maybe I was just luckly .

[stubshaft]

I have shot tens of thousands of rounds through lever guns. I've always heard about this and been fearful of it, but NEVER seen it.

[Hannibal]

All this over a guy shooting a lever action at 1K yards with pointed bullets he loaded individually.

Oy!

[muskeg13]

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?73196-how-flat-is-flat-nose-for-tube-mag&highlight=magazine%20tube%20explosion

Here's another thread to view, with pictures. While it didn't occur with pointed bullets, it certainly did happen. Play down the danger if you like. In my gun safe there is a jar containing a former front tooth and bullet and case fragments, plus the blown up magazine tube. They are a reminder every time I open the safe door that safety can't be taken for granted.

and another: https://levergunscommunity.org/viewt...hp?f=1&t=45773

By the way, my incident involved a Rossi Puma (M92 clone) .44 Mag, loaded with 6 rounds in the magazine. The load was 200gr Flat Nose plain base commercial cast that was supposed to be a soft alloy suitable for black powder loaded in new unfired cases over 10gr Unique with Federal 150 primers.

[muskeg13]

I saw an episode of Forgotten Weapons where the tube in a Henry type repro blew up when there about 5 rounds in it - flat nose bullets. But he let the magazine tube follower slam down on the rounds. He was lightly injured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDuoj7KR-CA&t=678s

Good video. Thanks for posting. Actually Ian may have it wrong concerning the Henry open tube construction making the effect of the explosion worse. If the tube had been solid and encased by a wood forearm, the gas generated by 2 exploding rounds would have been contained in the tube and not be allowed to bleed out through the follower slot. This could have been much worse, as it was in the case of my explosion. With no where for the gas to go, all the rounds in the mag tube could have gone up. When I reconstructed my rifle after the explosion, I drilled a series of 1/8" gas relief ports the entire length of the forearm, thinking if there was ever another explosion, I'd rather deal with wood splinters than metal fragments.

[FergusonTO35]

My friend Kent Lomont who mentored under Elmer Keith took a Winchester Model 71 receiver and rebarreled it to 450 Alaskan. The recoil on this Model 71 was violent with full house loads and heavy jacketed flat point bullets he was loading. One day while he was shooting, the magazine and forearm exploded. His left hand needed extensive surgery to reconstruct it. For the rest of his life until he passed away he had limited use of his left hand. When we talked about it he thinks there was a high primer, not fully seated that went off even with a flat point bullet. Two cartridges detonated in the magazine tube. Elmer Keith's 1886 Winchester 45-70 pet load was 53grs of 3031 and a 400gr Speer flat point. I have shot this load in a Marlin 1895 45-70 for over 40 years. But the 450 Alaskan is a much more powerful round than the 45-70 Govt. Don't think I need the punch of a 450 Alaskan (348 Winchester Base) in a lever gun tube magazine. Personally, I would never load a pointed projectile in a tube magazine rifle. I shoot Marlins, Winchester, 11mm Reichspatrone 1871/84 rifles, a Remington Keen in 45-70, and Swiss 11mm Vetterli's. All have tube magazines.

To each his own, but if I needed something with that kind of power level I would just go straight to a bolt gun. For me at least, a lever action should be light and handy with modest recoil.

[458mag]

If you have an accurate pointy bullet load for your lever gun use it. Just dont put more than one in the tube. One in the chamber one in the tube and make the first shot count.

[sukivel]

If you have an accurate pointy bullet load for your lever gun use it. Just dont put more than one in the tube. One in the chamber one in the tube and make the first shot count.

That’s a poor man’s double rifle!


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[missionary5155]

But if it works then Bully for the poor man being smart enough to use well what he has.

[missionary5155]

Then there are variables to add to the possibility. Small pebble for some reason gets on a bullet nose and centers on a primer. Or a grain of sand on a primer.
What we know is it happens. The hows may always escape us. Follow the long time "Standard Operating Procedures" and maybe the primer gremlin will leave you alone.

[indian joe]

Good video. Thanks for posting. Actually Ian may have it wrong concerning the Henry open tube construction making the effect of the explosion worse. If the tube had been solid and encased by a wood forearm, the gas generated by 2 exploding rounds would have been contained in the tube and not be allowed to bleed out through the follower slot. This could have been much worse, as it was in the case of my explosion. With no where for the gas to go, all the rounds in the mag tube could have gone up. When I reconstructed my rifle after the explosion, I drilled a series of 1/8" gas relief ports the entire length of the forearm, thinking if there was ever another explosion, I'd rather deal with wood splinters than metal fragments.

interesting ......I have had maybe ten original 92's and a couple original 73's .... all of em had magazine tubes made from what I would call old fashioned electrical conduit = steel tube with a split seam ...always thought it was because that was what was available those days (least cost use whats out there) ...maybe there was more to it???

[muskeg13]

interesting ......I have had maybe ten original 92's and a couple original 73's .... all of em had magazine tubes made from what I would call old fashioned electrical conduit = steel tube with a split seam ...always thought it was because that was what was available those days (least cost use whats out there) ...maybe there was more to it???

My Rossi Puma M92, purchased in the mid-1990s, had a solid magazine tube (no seam). The mag tube is just slip fit into the receiver, not screwed in with fine threads on the outer tube circumference and in the receiver, like on my Miroku Model 1886. The Rossi's mag tube is held in place by a screw in the front barrel band. The whole works quickly disassembled itself, assisted by the gas produced by 6 rounds partially and/or fully going off in the enclosed mag tube.

The holes/gas relief ports I drilled in the replacement tube are concealed by the forearm.

The most interesting part of Ian's Henry mishap, was his conclusion that the force (jar) of releasing the follower/follower spring to slam into a column of loaded cartridges caused a primer anvil move internally and crush the priming mixture without the nose of a bullet setting off the primer in the more traditional way primers are detonated.

I believe something similar caused my mishap. That day at the range, I'd been topping off the Rossi's magazine after firing 3 to 4 shots, and I did that probably four or more times, so the six rounds I'd initially loaded in the magazine had been subjected to 16 or so recoil impulses. I think that proved to be too much for already very sensitive Federal 150 pistol primers.

[indian joe]

I had an early Rossi 357 mag that suffered an out of battery accident (the reason I got it cheap)
Bullet exited the glass panel above the entry door to Myra's gunshop in Broken Hill - cleared the buildings across main street and lost in flight someplace.

Turned out the firing pin had broken where the cutout for the lever lugs work - the two pieces had separated enough to cause the actual pin to protrude from the bolt solidly enough to fire a round as the bolt was closing

I have seen guys assembling 92's use a punch to drive the lever pin home and if everything is not aligned properly you can drive that pin into the thin part of the firing pin and likely the cause of it breaking. Get a bigger hammer is NOT the way to go re assembling......dunno ....just a surmise ....long time ago ....lots of things wrong with a loaded round being cycled in the customer section of a gunshop.

A mate bought the offending Rossi really cheap - passed it on to me - we fixed it with a original winchester firing pin from a gun that had been scrapped somewhere along the way.

Am wondering whether something like that could set off a magazine chain fire ????

[RyanJames170]

i have been thinking about this one for a while before posting but i think i they can happen when the primers are not seated deep enough and or the primers are soft enough, i think if a person used hard military primers ment for a semi auto i think the chances of it happening are much lower then if you used pistol primers. as i have seen several times people using wrong soft rifle primers in semi autos and having just the inertial of the firing pin set off the next round when it chambers it during the firing cycle.. the whole magazine detonation is why Russian primers are so dam hard and so deeply seated compared to anyone elses, (look at how deep primers are seated in russian made 7.62x54R) from what i understand when they were doing rifle trieles for what what be the M91 mosin they had a lot of them due to really soft primers in some sort of tube mag gun

[longbow]

While I have no doubt that if one primer detonated it would easily push a bullet hard enough to set of a primer in the next round, the question is why does the first primer detonate? As I said, I was unabvle to get a primer to detonate using an ACWW round nose bullet (Lyman 314299 clone) when holding it on a primed cartridge and hitting it with a hammer... hard!

So, I am wondering if anyone who has experienced a magazine chain fire or knows the details of one can say if it was handloads or factory loaded ammunition?

So far I believe all I have seen are posts about handloaded ammunition being involved in tube magazine chainfires or no info on the source of the ammunition given.

I can believe that a high primer could be responsible or a dirty primer pocket, maybe soft primers if there is really a difference. Could fine powder sift in under a primer not fully seated casing the primer to detonate when seated by recoil impact?

Point here being that if no-one has evidence of this happening with factory ammunition then it is likely a handloading error of some sort.

I still say that if there was the remotest chance of a tube magazine chainfire happening using factory ammunition in unmodified guns that the guns would not be sold as the liability would be too great. I see lots of posts complaining about lawyers and Marlin crossbar safeties, lawyers and powder manufacturer load data and lawyers and reloads in factory guns... and lawyers in general. On that basis, I would have to think that if there was any sort of liability that could be placed on the ammunition or firearm manufacturer that product would not be available.

Again, not saying that chainfires haven't happened or can't happen but I do wonder what the cause is and if it has happened with factory loaded ammunition or not. If anyone knows of an incident where factory ammunition was used let's hear it.

We all learn from these sorts of things when we have all the facts.

Longbow

[Texas by God]

The Remington 14 and 141 had tube magazines that were fluted like a drill bit to keep the cartridges askew.
Some of the Remington Rimless ammunition had pointed bullets - is why.


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