Tuesday, October 17, 2006

A Helpful Home Gunsmithing Tip




Laser bore-sighters have revolutionized how we sight in our guns. Stick the laser into the end of the barrel and you get a precise red-dot point for us to adjust our scope. However, as these photo forwarded to me by ace competition shooter Bruce Piatt — and no, it's not is rifle! — clearly show, remember to take the laser bore-sighter OUT OF THE BARREL before pulling the trigger!

10 comments:

Firehand said...

Good God! Any idea what cartridge it was?

I've seen incidents before, but I've NEVER seen a 'banana-peel' barrel split like that. You need to send it to Mythbusters to show them someone succeeded where they failed!

Anonymous said...

So symmetrical it had to be fluted.
Not that an unfluted barrel would have been any cakewalk!

Anonymous said...

I was in the lane to the left of this guy when it happened and know the guy who took those pictures. It was up at Clark Rifles in Brush Prairie, WA the last Saturday in September of this year. There was a big bang when the barrel split. I looked over and around the baffel and got the shock of my life. The guy was pretty upset, to say the least. To my knowledge, the barrel wasn't fluted. The rifle was a Savage, but I forget the caliber. I know I sure to double check my rifles everytime now!

Tyler said...

HOLY COW! Mythbusters could not have done it better.

iainmcphersn said...

Mythbusters was using a 12 guage shotgun. Lower pressure.

Anonymous said...

Un-damned-believable.

Dr. Phat Tony said...

They also tried it with a 30.06 with a squib load and could get that result.

Anonymous said...

I'm Karl Leffler, and I took those photos. The weapon was a fairly ordinary Savage bolt-action, older, with a conventional barrel. I believe it was in .30-06 or a related cartridge (i.e. .270). Higher-resolution versions can be seen at:

http://www.iguanasoft.com/~jeffersonian/blog0609#1284

Anonymous said...

Oops:

http://www.iguanasoft.com/~jeffersonian/blog0609.html#1284

Captain America said...

I actually know of this happening to an M-60 Patton Tank when I was at the NTC at Fort Irwin California. During a live fire exercise around 1986 one tank from my company split their barrel. The tank went to- I believe Divisional Maint. where it and the crew sat for a month while the rest of us continued on maneuvers. They had contractors come and take pictures of it and everything. I was quite a big deal.