I'm familiar with his channel but he's not one of my regulars. Impressive carnage and an incredibly lucky fella.
The video isn't anymore graphic than the thumbnail, he does show his stitched up chest, and goes into detail about his wounds and plugging the hole, but there's no gore.
"Just Put A Thumb In It."
I had a friend text the other day after he discovered a live round in his burn pile. It was a 7.62 and the casing got him. He said it felt like a 400lb body builder punching him in the chest, which I can’t imagine, but he happens to be a 250lb body builder so I guess it makes sense to him. Anyway, it’s a good reminder of the power locked up in there.
I don't have sound on the work computer, so I didn't catch the why of it, but I am amazed he survived that. Truly blessed.
In reply to P3PPY :
The firefighter videos for ammo fires would lead you to believe it's not that big of a deal. I mean getting popped while wearing full turnouts, jacket, mask, and helmet, is probably a little different than say a tee shirt, but 400lb body builder punch? Hyperbole?
In reply to 03Panther:
KY Ballistics fella thinks it was an inadvertent overcharged round. Bought surplus sabot rounds from a supposed reputable vendor (didn't name names) but they must have been reloads, and too much/wrong/all of the above powder.
I've never been a fan of the RN-50, always thought it was pretty cheesy, but Mark Serbu generally knows his stuff. KY Ballistics guy talked to Mark about the failure, he said a typical 50 BMG round is ~55K PSI, Mark said it would have taken 85K to sheer the threads off the breech.
One thing I've seen brought up else where, but not mentioned in the video, is that the sabot rounds need a longer freebore throat which the RN-50 doesn't have. So possible instant squib over pressure? He didn't show any of the brass, I'd like to see the the spent brass from the shots before the boom.
Wow. That was insane.
In reply to Lee :
I would not be able to identify anything during a root cause analysis, but I am able to understand your description of theirs. Looking at the fireball, i would lean towards the over powdered.
Not familiar with the RN at all; lokes like a toy, but I'm sure its built well enough despite that. The threads looked stout enough, before the picture of them stripped.
Incredibly lucky to be alive. And I hereby award him with the quote of the day,
"You can't tourniquet a neck"
Quoted for truth, buddy.
In reply to 03Panther :
I know just enough about 50 BMG ammo to follow along and understand most conversations, no first hand experience with any of it though.
Stuff he was shooting was like the 3rd & 4th from the right (back row big bullets) in this picture. Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP):
I can't corroborate, the random poster on the internet's claims, but Google lead me to this little nugget:
"The downside is that the SLAP round is not compatible with some rifles because its greater length will not allow it to chamber or can cause damage to the throat. I've also heard stories of plastic sabot bits gumming up muzzle brakes or being blown back on spotters. The bottom line: before firing SLAP ammo in your rifle, know for certain that it fits your chamber and is not a hazard to fire." - The Ultimate Sniper.
That sounds like one nasty, nasty round!
BTW, to anyone following along, 3 and 4 from right, on my view of picture!
A friend sone once got to fire a few rounds of 50BMG through a sniper rifle. Said it was better than sex! I can not confirm.
Are the linked rounds .308, by chance? And the single one of the straight walled .50's?
In reply to 03Panther :
I forgot to hold my hand up and make the L to remember left vs. right. I fixed it.
In the foreground is various 5.56x45, from left to right (my left, your left?), ball, tracer, incendiary, last two are armor piercing. Lone chubby fella is a S&W 500 Magnum.
I watched it yesterday. A lucky, lucky man.
One take away was just how much force those cheesy little safety glasses took. Sure he broke some bones, but they likely saved his eye.
He is so fortunate to be alive right now! The safety glasses, having another person there, jamming his thumb in his neck, etc. I'm glad he was prepared and knew what to do.
.50 BMG is an insanely powerful round. You can cut trees down with it, pierce thick armor with it, cut people in half with it.
Shooting a .50 BMG with only earplugs is really tough on the ears. And that compensator directs a lot of the blast towards the ears. And I really could not see the earplugs, I'm just assuming that is what he had.
One observation: Back in the Viet Nam era one of the dirty tricks the S.O.G. spooks did was "spike" some of the rounds in cases of 7.62x39 ammo and leave them for the Viet Cong to find and hopefully blow up their AK-47 when the "spiked" round entered the chamber. (Spiking a round was just removing a projectile, doubling the power charge, and putting the projectile back in to the casing.)
So its possible (probable?) the enemy did the same to our stuff while it was sitting in storage depots, some of it made it to the surplus market after the war, possibly from Viet Nam taking over US warehouses after the war, collecting the ammo, and selling it on the world ammo market. US is probably the only place its legal for a civilian to own a .50BMG rifle, so here we are, one spiked round in one unlucky guy's rifle.
Side note: One of my good friends had one of these rifles. He shot a few rounds through it wearing ear plugs and ear muffs. He got a terrible headache, instantly, which lasted almost a week. He sold it shortly thereafter.
He kept saying there was no way to know that that load was "spicy" - actually you can weigh the rounds. A double load will weigh more. You have to use a gram scale of course. I shoot older guns with surplus rounds and always used to do a sanity check when buying imported rounds. I find the swiss make the most repeatable rounds. ;)
Lee said:KY Ballistics guy talked to Mark about the failure, he said a typical 50 BMG round is ~55K PSI, Mark said it would have taken 85K to sheer the threads off the breech.
The manufacturer apparently claiming that the catastrophic failure pressure is barely more than 1.5x the 'typical' pressure, and I only see ~4 threads of sheared material. Based on those two alone, I would not be inclined to trust that rifle.
In reply to Driven5 :
That's just what it took to shear the threads though, Serbu didn't mention it, but KY Ballistics pointed out the ears on either side of the hammer are a really snug fit to the breech cap. The breech cap has to be fully closed tight or those ears won't let the gun close into firing position. One of those ears is what shore off and went into his neck/lung.
85K PSI for the threads to fail, but how much for the threads and both receiver ears to shear off?
I too think it's cheesy design, but it is pretty much the cheapest way to play with .50 BMG. Maybe there's a reason you can buy eight and a half RN-50s for the price of one Barrett, get what you pay for?
Not a gun guy here so I might be way off.
Metal fatigue is a real thing. How many "big but still within parameters" rounds can something handle before it can't anymore?
In reply to Lee :
There looks to be a visible gap between the cap and tabs in photos and videos I have seen. If that's indeed the case, I would argue that those tabs then serve two functions. First, they act as a go/no-go gauge that the cap is at least most of the way on, but not necessarily all of the way. Second, they 'hopefully' catch (or in this case, just slow down) the cap down after it has already failed. With a gap there though, I don't see them doing anything to actually help prevent the cap from failing.
Based on what I have seen so far, I am not particularly surprised by what happened. And while I'm no lawyer, I wouldn't be surprised if Serbu might also have a difficult time defending against their liability and/or negligence from what could be presented as an inherently flawed design execution, were anybody to sue them for injury or death resulting from this type of failure. I do think that for not much more money, they could have built something on the same general concept, but safer and more robust.
Having sent many rounds downrange with a Barrett, I can say in all honesty say that it is an Experience. Although it's a propellant and not trying to be a bomb, the round packs the equivalent explosive force of a hand grenade. One time we were firing prone, on a bipod, and decided to lay a blue tarp on the ground to keep the dust down. Well the muzzle blast is... extensive. The brake works really well at managing recoil, but a typical, new condition, std blue tarp, is um not up to the task of keeping the dust down under these conditions. It just adds confetti to the dust. The more I think about it, the luckier this guy gets. He had a hand grenade go off in his face and could make a video about it.
In reply to Driven5 :
I've said it a couple times now, I don't like the gun either. I am a bit of a Mark Serbu fanboy though, been watching his YouTube channel for a while and enjoy seeing the design process, prototypes and how-tos. Mark's not just some guy with Solidworks and a CNC, he's a pretty talented engineer.
There's a lot of things that could have happened, maybe should have happened, but either over charged round, sabotaged round, or SLAP in a gun not meant to shoot it, substitute any budget .50, Saftey Harbor, Armalite, Noreen, in place of that RN-50 in that same situation all of them would have probably failed, maybe not as catastrophically or as life threatening, but still failed.
I never wanted an RN-50 before, sure don't now, but am second guessing the BFG and Saftey Harbor I've had my eye on for the past few years. Maybe Kevlar vest and neck gator should be recommended PPE for them?
I bet there's a disclaimer/warning about using SLAP rounds for all of them soon.
Lee said:In reply to Driven5 :
Mark's not just some guy with Solidworks and a CNC, he's a pretty talented engineer.
In the immortal words of Clark Griswold: Hmm, doesn't show.
Lee said:In reply to P3PPY :
The firefighter videos for ammo fires would lead you to believe it's not that big of a deal. I mean getting popped while wearing full turnouts, jacket, mask, and helmet, is probably a little different than say a tee shirt, but 400lb body builder punch? Hyperbole?
Hyperbole for sure. I used to shoot a lot of USPSA and it was always just a matter of time before a round got dropped in just the wrong way that the primer would strike something on the ground and the round would ignite. The bullet typically doesn't move much, but the brass fragments and scatters. I've been hit with that at least three times. It can hurt if a piece of the brass hits something soft and fleshy, but certainly not a punch.
Kendall_Jones said:He kept saying there was no way to know that that load was "spicy" - actually you can weigh the rounds. A double load will weigh more. You have to use a gram scale of course. I shoot older guns with surplus rounds and always used to do a sanity check when buying imported rounds. I find the swiss make the most repeatable rounds. ;)
When I first started reloading, I thought this would be true. I tried weighing rounds to confirm the powder charge in cases where I wasn't 100% sure...turns out it's not really possible in smaller calibers due to the variation in brass casing weights. There's a huge inconsistency from one brass manufacturer, and even a lesser inconsistency in brass from the same company.
With 50BMG, I bet you could get a better idea if you're weighing all the same headstamp brass given that there is so much more powder...but I still believe this statement is false. There isn't even the case volume to truly double the powder charge, but that's dependent on the powder you're using. This is more likely a case where the round was seated too deep, thereby reducing case volume and increasing pressure...and possibly not enough headspace, as has been mentioned by others.
I certainly won't refute your comment on Swiss quality surplus though. GP11 is some of the best sutff out there.
I'm gonna arm chair engineer this a bit. I've always been taught that to get full strength out of a threaded joint you need to have the thread engagement equal to the diameter of the bolt. Dosent seem like that in this design. The designer could also use some trickery with thread shape to help make up for lack of engagement but the design gives me the willies.
here's a video of him talking about the design As a dude who Spent 6 months as an engineering intern in remingtons barrel shop This dude says some things that lawyers would love to attack. " I didn't hear treat the breech cap" "only 25k psi " hmmm
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Watching that video there's no way I'd shoot a gun he designed.
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