Very glad you are OK.

I had a early 90's Glock 10mm Kaboom in my hand and posted about it here in GD. Most people said it had to be reloads that caused the KB.

I bet money a dremel was used on that gun. That left barrel doesn't look factory to me at all.

I've got a beautiful Ultra-Brite stainless Colt Delta Elite.  I still prefer the G20 for daily carry.

Although for now I'm carrying a 45 caliber G21.

If the ammo was in SAMMI spec and Glock sent out that barrel in the pistol then Glock is at fault. Yes it's quite "generous" in it's ramp but if Glock did it then they deserve the blame. That said, you don't stomp on a rattlesnake barefoot and wearing shorts.

See this post HERE

Exactly why I didn't come here bashing anyone.

Even if Glock made a bad barrel, or DT made bad ammo, the responsibility lies on my shoulders because I pulled the trigger knowing full well there might be an issue.

I knew it was going to be a glock.

Yep.

I have seen 3 Kabooms in my life. All have been Glocks.

One of the benefits I've discovered about living in AK is I got real comfortable shooting while wearing gloves.  Now every range trip, no matter how warm it is, I wear gloves.  This has a side benefit of making range trips with heavier calibers more enjoyable.  

That brass and that unsupported chamber looks vastly different from anything I have seen with my year old 20SF.  I've probably put 1000 rounds of Doubletap, Silvertips, and various practice rounds through it, and only found the smallest of bulges(all the way around) on a couple American Eagle 180Gr practice rounds.  

Glad you're OK...considering you were using factory ammo and a stock pistol, I bet you'll be taken care of.

look on the bright side, one moar Glock off the streets.

ouch

 

I have my 1991 G20 barrel in front of me.  It has over 30k rounds through it, and looks nothing like the OP's factory chamber.  Mine has had no work done to it, and I have only shot factory ammo through it.

How does yours compare to the photo I posted?

Again, more than one person has replied to this thread saying their barrel looks identical to mine.  

Much more like yours.  His feed ramp is all wallowed out and looks like it has tools marks compared to mine.

Did you purchase the Glock used or brand new from a Glock Dealer?

I am thinking it was used as my barrel looks like the one on the right.   To me it seems the world is passing by the 10mm in favor of the big three: 9mm, 40sw, and 45acp.  I suspect it will stay this way until we move away from metallic cartridges to some new technology.

Here is my Gen 2 G20.  Serial UMXXX Date on the box says March 1993.  

This is the barrel emply




This the barrel with a round in it.  




This is a KKM G23 barrel i use in my G32 for comparison.  




And here is the side by side.

I would say you got Glocked!

Has anyone else ever seen a factory Glock barrel that has that "idiot with a dremel" look to it?

Doesn't look right to me

Glad the the OP got away with just a sore paw,for that matter glad that he got away with a paw

Mistakes were made here

I have been shooting 10mm 180gn Gold Dots over 11.0gn Blue Dot for a long time.   Never seen anything even close to what the OP posted.

The first sentence of the original post:  "I bought my 10mm Glock model 20 new in 1994."

My barrel was also relived but it was perfectly symmetrical and looked factory.   Not like what the OP has posted.

They theoretically come at night, theoretically.

Another photo of a G20 chamber I've found:

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_5_13/116628_Do_10mm_Glocks_bulge_the_cases_.html&page=1#i1206173

It is identical to mine, except mine is in better focus, and shows tooling marks.

24# recoil spring is perfect for really stroked 10mm loads in a FULLY supported barrel.....Storm Lake or KKM barrels work great

10mm is a pretty decent hunting round. 100 yards isn't a problem at all.

He actually gets paid for it.

+1, putting a known defective part back in the gun and firing it is just plain

Should've sent the gun back to Glock before, would have gotten a free factory barrel out of it. Now you have PAID for 2 barrels, and now you have no gun to put them in.

Considering the injuries, you got damn lucky with this little experiment.



 

Double Tap ammo wasn't even around when the 1st gen Colts developed stress cracks in the frames over the slide lock notch. Colt's solution was to machine away that area (not needed) and voila, the cracks went away. I have no knowledge of what problems the Witness has/ had with cracks.

My Colt DE has a born-on date sometime in '90-'91 and it had the normal non-ramped Colt barrel. It has plenty of chamber support, but I still bought a BarSto barrel because it has the most chamber coverage in a non-ramped barrel I ever saw (I like to load HOT, plus I like Double Tap for the same reason).

I was waaaaay back in the Idaho woods this year, I carried my CBOB and my wife carried my Delta for a reason.

"known defective part"?  

Nobody knew it was a known defective part.  I suspected it might be, but nobody still knows yet.

I still maintain it came from the factory that way.  And I'm waiting for other people to post pics of their early 2nd generation G20 chambers.

I still want one of these:

I'm glad you didn't get hurt any worse than what the pictures show, sorry to hear that it ruined your pistol.  

Hot ten mil, is still just a pistol round.  


Just sayin.

I decided to reply to this thread since I saw it on Glock talk.

I am a long time avid shooter and I very much appreciate AR-15s and many other models of small arms as well and as you can see I have been a member of this forum for quite some time.

For approximately 2 years I have owned a Glock G29 10mm.  During that time I have done a substantial amount of work with the gun, the 10mm cartridge as well as a ridiculous level of research on this particular pistol and the round.

I have hand loaded thousands of rounds of 10mm during this time and have tested it extensively.  I have analyzed and measured just about every aspect of this gun and the round and I can say without a doubt that my conclusion in all of this is that the Glock is a wonderful - if not simplistic - design for a pistol that a neanderthal would use.  

My point is that there is no other pistol where its user could go holster his weapon with the slide left open, go mud wrestling for an hour and scuba diving in a bog and come out with 6" of gritty goop all over the pistol including having the goop inside the chamber and barrel, chamber a 10mm round loaded to the typical .40 s&w velocities that the major manufacturers currently load to and it would fire.  Only a neanderthal would do this because only a very slow cave man of a shooter would ever be in a situation to get his gun that dirty.  Seriously, it is reliable to a fault.

That fault is the whopping giant chamber in the barrel and the giant gap of potential downward pressure into the feed ramp that is part of the original design of the Glock to make it function properly after a mud wrestling bout.

I have seen numerous KB! (KA-BOOM) documented in the Glock pistols and there is primarily one reason that causes this - and that is the chamber that is as loose as a Thailand hooker and a feed ramp that protrudes all the way into the chamber beyond the web of the case on the stock barrel.

Note that the O.P. has documented changes in his original barrel and the 2011 barrel.  My G29SF was made in 2009, and I am here to tell you that if you put a hot round into that stock barrel, it will guppy belly and bloat the living hell out of the spent case - and if it is a fairly stout round (but still within SAAMI pressure levels of this cartridge [</= 37.5kpsi], this poorly designed feed ramp may result in a case fracture which appears to have exactly been what occurred in the O.P.s picture.

To those of you who have answered that it's double taps ammo that caused this - I have news for you...I have personally chronographed stock double tap ammo and the box label is quite optimistic on the sample I tested.  There is no way on God's green Earth that this wimpy ammo would have been responsible for a blowout...of course, the manufacturing process is not without errors and anomalies, so the actual cause could be any part of the system.

...but I am telling you that I personally loaded this round up over 1,000 foot-lbs. of energy (135 grain noslers chronographed at over 1800 fps out of a 4.45" KKM barrel) and with the proper support of that aftermarket barrel, I had some primers back out of the cartridge and one even hit me in the forehead.  At that rate, we are one step beyond flat primers.

The original power of the 10mm cartridge was designed to throw a 200gr. bullet at 1200 fps out of a 5"; bren 10 pistol.  I have loaded my G29 with 4.45" barrel so that a 200gr. bullet ran 1300 fps AVERAGE (avg. 10 shot relay) at the 5y distance the chrono was placed to limit muzzle flash from giving false readings.

As a comparison, double tap's 200 grain "controlled expansion" rounds I tested rated at 1250 fps out of a G20 (4.6" barrel) ran 1180 fps with my pistol.
Buffalo Bore's 200gr. bullet rated at 1200 fps tested within 5 fps average of 1200 fps.

Double tap figures are optimistic.

The problem with the Glock is that the chamber is overly enlarged to ensure the pistol is reliable.  The solution to this problem (and a huge majority of KB! problems with these pistols) is to mil the chamber to reasonable specs.  Thankfully, we have aftermarket barrel mfgrs. out there who already know this and offer the solution for us shooters.

You see, early on when I started testing this pistol I saw some spent case characteristics I didn't care for - including the infamous "Glock smile", which is of course  due to a poorly designed feed ramp which gives a nice place for excess gas to push out the brass since there is nothing supporting it at that position.

Soon after I saw that, I purchased the KKM barrel I KEEP in my Glock 29 so that I can go shooting and not have to worry about getting a nice blood blister and blackedned up hand and cracked plastic frame and busted mag, thrown extractor, etc. when I shoot the REAL, non-wimpy 10mm round as was designed or a tad hotter.  

I would not for a new york second even consider putting that poorly designed unsupported barrel into the gun and firing it with anything.

It is the poor support of your barrel that cause your gun to blow.  That I am 100% confident of.  I know these pistols all too well.  It was a poor design for the 10mm cartridge (and the old Glock 22s were even worse & caused a great deal more KB!s as well).

To the O.P.: Glad you got out alive and not hurt too bad and thanks for sharing this KB! story on the 'net.  I'm sure that was a fun experience, but not sure if it is worth the pain and hassle of shipping your gun in (oh and by the way, please do ship that gun into Glock and demand a replacement - since you can be fairly confident it is their fault - and they will probably remember that batch of barrels if the tech has been around since then).

The rest of the gun is designed okay, but some other upgrades I personally made were the 23# wolff springs and SS guide rod + the 'FORGED match grade slide stop made by T.R. Graham.  This is a critical safety piece of the barrel linkage that Glock stamped and threw in there to make it "good enough".  It's not, so I changed it.

Overall, it's a good pistol design, but like many profit-interested companies, Glock turned out a production pistol that is great with watered down ammo made by the major manufacturers out there who are scared to put out real 10mm ammo because of Glock's unsupported barrels.  Every reloading manual production company will warn you about "unsupported barrels" and they won't say Glock, but that is exactly who they are referring to.

Bottom line, take home message: If you want to shoot real 10mm ammo in your Glock, change the barrel out to a safe barrel such as Lone Wolf, KKM, Storm Lake, Bar-sto, etc.  

Best of Luck,
T_W

P.S. to those of you who are 1911 lovers - I'm with ya, but Glocks do have some advantages that 1911s are lacking - trigger is not one of them.  :-)

Glad you're ok.

If brass looks that bad, cracks, swells, jumps, dents, or anything else that doesn't look right - for goodness sake have the gun looked at.  I have about 250 Glock 22 and 27 that I look after/inspect every year (I also clean up the brass on the range) and in 15 years of doing this have only had one catastrophic failure (obstruction in the barrel = bulged barrel - gun still stayed together).  

With ANY manufacturer you will eventually have a sloppy chamber (cutter gets worn, might be sloppy but still "in-spec"), use that cutter as long as you can!  This may very well be exagerated in the10mm as it has a little more pep to it but that is only guessing on my part.

Every now and then a clunker makes it out of every factory, regardless of the manufacturer.
If you get a clue something is wrong, seek out qualified assistance to diagnose the problem.
Be safe, and enjoy the sport!

Bet he limp wristed it.......seriously, glad you still have 5 fingers on that hand

Oh yeah, and Fuck Barack Obama and Glock

Yes, and even better, namely the SW 1006, 1076, etc. (read American Stainless Steel).

Those 3rd Gen Smiths are built like steel reinforced brick shit houses.

I use my 1006 to hunt deer. 170gr Hard Cast SWC lead bullets behind blue dot = good medicine for deer inside 25 yards.

I have never seen a Glock barrel that looked like that

Is Glock going to replace that frame?

You are not being realistic if you actually believe that a steel framed firearm is going to come apart with as much or more force and violence than a plastic firearm will.  Plastic firearms fare far worse and I'm sure you realize that, plastic tends to break while steel tends to bend and IF a firearm is going to kB in my hand I'd rather it were steel to minimize the damage.  I stated it in the beginning and I stand by it, the 10mm belongs in a steel framed firearm, DoubleTap ammo may or may not be the culprit here in the OP's kB, the feed ramp does look suspect but either way, a steel framed firearm would have most certainly contained the kB much better than a plastic framed Glock...  Early Delta's did have some issues with frame rail cracks which was corrected and I don't recall DT ammo even being available during that time period.  I'm not hearing of cracking issues with current Delta's, DT ammo or not.  If someone wants to run nuclear grade 10mm ammo that's great, go have at it, but don't be surprised when a polymer gun that features a partially unsupported chamber comes apart more violently than a steel gun...

+1. Sorry, but you know what they say about curiosity......?

Glock+ Hot Ammo = Pull pin, throw.

I'll just keep slumming along with Mr. Browning's design.

Good write-up, op.

Scientific methodology applied to M. Glock's FRAGMENTATION GRENADE.

40/200/1000

If you know the meaning of the numbers, you are probably gtg.

I like 45/200/950 myself.