Posted: 2/28/2009 8:42:54 PM EDT
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I posted this in the Taurus section as well, but thought perhaps it should be here as well as a reminder to be safe.
I was at the range with a group of guys, and a fellow was shooting a Taurus Millenium .40 cal. This was about the third round in the magazine. As you can see from the picture, the round blew out the bottom, and blew apart the magazine. The frame split, and a piece of shrapnel hit the shooter in the face (it stopped bleeding after about 10 minutes). This was factory Remington ammo. 
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Glock-tastic!
Just as a reminder of the operating pressures involved, I keep a blown .40 case like that on my loading bench. I have a couple of 1911 pattern 40's and haven't had any problems, but I did have a CZ pattern gun with a somewhat unsupported chamber caused by overly aggressive polishing of the feed ramp. Blew out the magazine floorplate when the case let go, no damage was done to gun or shooter. Kind of funny seeing a full mag unload itself from the bottom 
Nowadays, I am pretty religious about checking my 40 brass and chucking it if I have any suspicions. There's no .40+P for a reason 
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Quoted:
The person firing is a very gun savvy police officer, and he and I both think it was an out-of-battery strike. We were thankful nobody was seriously injured. Can you post a pic of the barrel disassembled? Putting a case in the chamber then and comparing it to the blown one would solve the mystery. |
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Wow, that's a shame. With factory ammo even. I agree, from what I see, maybe firing out of battery. Wonder if the recoil spring is/was weak or something? He gonna send it back to Taurus? Good luck on that...................  +1, a lady bought a small taurus handgun with special pearl grips from my local dealer, the next day she was back in, the grips had cracked - after firing 1 magazine, so he sent it into Taurus......that was in November - my dealer calls every Monday to try and see what's going on. He gets responses like "Sorry can't help we're doing inventory today" or "It's in the mail" or "It will be shipped..." over and over again, he said he won't be selling any more Taurus products, because of how they've blatantly lied. And through these 3 months this the lady still doesn't have a gun, Taurus sucks 
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True, they do.
SAAMI Pressures When I was looking for that I ran across a wiki article on 40s&w, they had an interesting bit: "While the .40 S&W is far from the only cartridge to suffer from case failures, it is more susceptible for a number of reasons. The .40 S&W works at fairly high pressures (33,000 psi/230 MPa typical, but 35,000 psi/240 MPa SAAMI max) for a large caliber handgun cartridge, significantly more than, say, the .45 ACP.[15] Since the .40 S&W is a wide cartridge for its length, and is often adapted to frames designed for the equally long but narrower 9x19mm cartridge, the length of the feed ramp must be longer to provide the same angle, which causes the feed ramp to extend into the chamber. This in turn leaves more of the case head unsupported. While this is not necessarily unsafe, it does reduce the margin of safety. When exacerbated by out of battery firing (leaving even more case head exposed) and potentially weakened brass (due to reloading) these factors appear to lead to the higher incidents of chamber failure. The number of case failures in the .40 S&W is serious enough that Accurate Arms no longer recommends reloading of .40 S&W cartridges for firearms without complete case head support." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.40_S&W Sounds about right to me. 
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Wow, that's a shame. With factory ammo even. I agree, from what I see, maybe firing out of battery. Wonder if the recoil spring is/was weak or something? He gonna send it back to Taurus? Good luck on that................... +1, a lady bought a small taurus handgun with special pearl grips from my local dealer, the next day she was back in, the grips had cracked - after firing 1 magazine, so he sent it into Taurus......that was in November - my dealer calls every Monday to try and see what's going on. He gets responses like "Sorry can't help we're doing inventory today" or "It's in the mail" or "It will be shipped..." over and over again, he said he won't be selling any more Taurus products, because of how they've blatantly lied. And through these 3 months this the lady still doesn't have a gun, Taurus sucks Yeah, you see alot of stories like that. I am a proud and very satisfied owner of a Taurus revolver, it's been nothing but good to me. But it seems most accounts of dealing with Taurus Customer Service end up being horror stories. Sad. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
The person firing is a very gun savvy police officer, and he and I both think it was an out-of-battery strike. We were thankful nobody was seriously injured. Can you post a pic of the barrel disassembled? Putting a case in the chamber then and comparing it to the blown one would solve the mystery. Unfortunately, I cannot. I returned the firearm to its owner for a potential resolution from Taurus. |
