Yeah, there’s a particular recent one but let’s leave the questions at least partially in the abstract.
I have seen exactly one 1.25” tube split to its end, saved by a tuner, meaning the barrel effectively had no hoop strength in that circumstance.
I have seen a dry oak log touched off by a perfectly placed wedge. It all but neatly stacks itself. I have also seen a log of a different consistency spit a triangular wedge 10 feet straight up after being struck, and practically close up that hole.
And then the 90% of all logs. You smack the wedge several times and the log fights less and less, until the end, with a predictable wedge recovery. Technically this is all wood, but then again for purposes of splitting it with a wedge, it is not the same.
What are we working with in these typical 400 series SS barrels? If we lubed up and hammered a cone shaped tool steel punch into the chamber of these barrels, are they supposed to be ductile/malleable and grow to accept it or banana peel? Does the answer change with round count?
As a child laborer
in my grandfather’s manufacturing business, I routinely (helped) opening thin walled SS tube stock on hydraulic rams. In the most extreme cases, a mouth was stretched like a snowman to accept two near-original pipes, which could be soldered into place.
Point being, warm stainless stock would plastically deform when overstressed and didn’t tend to split, and a split didn’t run.
But on the otherhand, what looks more like shattered glass than the alligator skin of a barrel that has endured many heat cycles.
This is the most famous example of brittle metal failure or metal fatigue, that’s safe to see at least. I understand the crack slowly grew and grew from vigorous ringing, a relatively sedate stressor. I can accept that in any material, there is a latent, generally unobservable weakest spot, and then a failure path. It’s predestined as it cannot all be “perfect”.
But the big question, the one that potentially affects so many of us is whether a regular load, unobstructed, can cause a barrel to all at once completely let go, such that even the stock will shatter, or, is the material we use, again, assuming a regular load, going to start with tiny cracks, (and they all have tiny cracks indeed) that only gradually open through repeated normal cyclic use?
Gas ports are an intentional unreinforced weak spot but we don’t see that becoming much of problem at all in barrels. I would opine as a thought, NOT DO or experiment, that if I were to drill a 1/16” inch hole in a match barrel, literally anywhere, it’s not going to cause the barrel to split end to end. I just don’t think they are running that close to the edge. We have all seen how thin some magnum featherweights are. Which makes me wonder how large a flaw or weak spot needs to be for a split, or if it’s uniformly weak, how it ever got that far as in the case of proven match barrel. We have also seen revolver cylinder gaps, the shock on the weak edge doesn’t create runners in the steel.
Of course, some will say normal pressure cannot cause splits, and/or bar stock consistency does not vary much and that may be the answer. It seems hard to imagine an over pressure situation that doesn’t leave traces in the brass or action, only the barrel though.
I have seen exactly one 1.25” tube split to its end, saved by a tuner, meaning the barrel effectively had no hoop strength in that circumstance.
I have seen a dry oak log touched off by a perfectly placed wedge. It all but neatly stacks itself. I have also seen a log of a different consistency spit a triangular wedge 10 feet straight up after being struck, and practically close up that hole.
And then the 90% of all logs. You smack the wedge several times and the log fights less and less, until the end, with a predictable wedge recovery. Technically this is all wood, but then again for purposes of splitting it with a wedge, it is not the same.
What are we working with in these typical 400 series SS barrels? If we lubed up and hammered a cone shaped tool steel punch into the chamber of these barrels, are they supposed to be ductile/malleable and grow to accept it or banana peel? Does the answer change with round count?
As a child laborer
in my grandfather’s manufacturing business, I routinely (helped) opening thin walled SS tube stock on hydraulic rams. In the most extreme cases, a mouth was stretched like a snowman to accept two near-original pipes, which could be soldered into place.Point being, warm stainless stock would plastically deform when overstressed and didn’t tend to split, and a split didn’t run.
But on the otherhand, what looks more like shattered glass than the alligator skin of a barrel that has endured many heat cycles.
This is the most famous example of brittle metal failure or metal fatigue, that’s safe to see at least. I understand the crack slowly grew and grew from vigorous ringing, a relatively sedate stressor. I can accept that in any material, there is a latent, generally unobservable weakest spot, and then a failure path. It’s predestined as it cannot all be “perfect”.
But the big question, the one that potentially affects so many of us is whether a regular load, unobstructed, can cause a barrel to all at once completely let go, such that even the stock will shatter, or, is the material we use, again, assuming a regular load, going to start with tiny cracks, (and they all have tiny cracks indeed) that only gradually open through repeated normal cyclic use?
Gas ports are an intentional unreinforced weak spot but we don’t see that becoming much of problem at all in barrels. I would opine as a thought, NOT DO or experiment, that if I were to drill a 1/16” inch hole in a match barrel, literally anywhere, it’s not going to cause the barrel to split end to end. I just don’t think they are running that close to the edge. We have all seen how thin some magnum featherweights are. Which makes me wonder how large a flaw or weak spot needs to be for a split, or if it’s uniformly weak, how it ever got that far as in the case of proven match barrel. We have also seen revolver cylinder gaps, the shock on the weak edge doesn’t create runners in the steel.
Of course, some will say normal pressure cannot cause splits, and/or bar stock consistency does not vary much and that may be the answer. It seems hard to imagine an over pressure situation that doesn’t leave traces in the brass or action, only the barrel though.
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