Broken S&W revolver

[SeanCasey]

My friend and I were out shooting in BLM today and he was shooting his S&W revolver. Was shooting .38 special, mostly reloads. He fired about 19 rounds and then.... BOOM:

(He was having ammo problems as the mil-surp he was shooting with him M1 Garand was splitting as well.)

All of my stuff worked flawlessly and no one was injured in his ammo follies, but watching this happen was not cool at all.

[Oldnoob]

Holly #%#@, I'm glad no one was hurt but damn, where you buddy got his reload from?

[SeanCasey]

His garage.

[ScottB]

Isn't that kind of an unusual break for a split case? I would have expected the cylinder or top strap to fail. Was the barrel clear?

[SeanCasey]

That is what we thought too. The cylinder appears perfect, just the failed barrel. He is going to get it inspected by a gun smith before reparing it. Definately was not cool seeing the barrel land 8ft infront of him and that is a fairly heavy barrel.

[Mr. Beretta]

[trashman]

That's a crush-fit barrel; possible that it was over-tightened at the factory.

--Neill

[qbi2001]

Holy crap, time to change reload formula.

[G-Man WC]

Send it back to S/W. That does not look right. -g

[BigRich]

It is pretty certain that this was not caused by the reloads. That would evidence by a bulged barrel, bent top strap or blown cylinder (or all of the above together). I would put my money on a factory defect. Call S&W customer service and talk to them about it. They might balk because reloads were used but it sure looks like the barrel was either defective steel or over torqued. Show them the pictures.

[Acorn556]

IDK....Smith might not honor it since it's reloads but its worth a shot. less than having a smith do it.

[ponderosa]

Man, 686 with 8 3/8 barrel.... shame. I had one of those, w/ the hogue grips even, but sold it long ago to fund college. Idiotic move for sure...

Good luck with S&W, hopefully they'll take a look at it.

[ojisan]

Nice snubby.
Always fun to make them yourself.

[forgiven]

Personally I wouldn't mention reloads, at least not right off the bat. Call me morally defective, but if you want anything from S&W besides a polite "not our fault", that's a conversation stopper right there. If its a manufacturing defect, chances are they have seen it before.

[dfletcher]

I think so long as you go with "not shooting reloads" that you should call S & W and tell them what happened, they should pay the shipping to & from. Lousy reloads bulge cylinders and unhinge topstraps, they don't lop off barrels. It may be that the split case is just a coincidence?

I'll go with whoever said the barrel was overtorqued, although if the gun was severely out of time I suppose that could eventually cause this problem - but to be so out of time as to cause this to happen I think you would have spent the last several hundred rounds being spit on by lead and copper and the forcing cone would be a mess.

Send the barrel with the gun Smith will be able to determine what happened from the fracture.

I think Smith also made 686 barrels of the two piece design (on purpose, not like yours ) and they are not liked from what I read. So I think it would be important for you to tell Smith you want the same type barrel on your gun as originally purchased.

I would definitely let Smith handle it from start to finish, they have very good customer service - just don't give them the opportunity to assign blame to anyone else by speaking of reloads or having another fellow work on it.