You have to see this! (PICS)

[ColoEnthusiast]

My diagnosis is: catastrophic failure.
In seriousness, I would guess possible squib load and inattentive shooter. Devastation looks too complete for just a hot load, but I guess either scenario could be the cause.
I saw pics of another revolver that happened to, with ignition of adjacent rounds and all. Bet that hurt like hell, even without shrapnel. Lot of immediate downward force.

[rondog]

That was a feller over on gunandgame.com. He says it was a new gun he was trying out, using fresh factory ammo, .44 mag. Doesn't know if the gun was faulty or the round was overcharged, it was only the 2nd or 3rd round he'd fired. Got a decent gash on the forehead, so he said. Knocked him silly for awhile.

http://www.gunandgame.com/forums/smi...s-w-629-a.html

[Batteriesnare]

Wow, I'm glad he's okay though.

[GreenScoutII]

Ouch!! I'm willing to bet that guy needs a new pair of drawers...

[Irving]

Wow! I was going to guess that someone baked it in an oven.

[Dr_Fwd]

Wow! I was going to guess that someone baked it in an oven.

that was my first thought.

[GreenScoutII]

I looked at the thread on that other board and the guy claimed it was a brand new revolver. He also claimed he was using factory ammo and the detonation occured on the second round ever fired through the gun. No way to confirm one way or the other, but I kind of have my doubts. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it would be highly unlikely. My best guess would be he dropped the box of ammo, projectile side down, causing one or more bullets to be shoved further down into the cartridge than it should have been. Kind of like what SAFriday was talking about in his thread the other day. Only a guess on my part though...

[SA Friday]

That was a feller over on gunandgame.com. He says it was a new gun he was trying out, using fresh factory ammo, .44 mag. Doesn't know if the gun was faulty or the round was overcharged, it was only the 2nd or 3rd round he'd fired. Got a decent gash on the forehead, so he said. Knocked him silly for awhile.

http://www.gunandgame.com/forums/smi...s-w-629-a.html

Thanks for the link Ron. Wow, are there some really mis-informed people on that site....

Sounds like the shooter did the right thing and took it to a smith to figure out what went wrong. The end of the cylinder chamber not being reamed to the right dimention and being too tight would definately kaboom the gun like that. The pressure would be worse than a double charge.

[rondog]

I have no idea what actually happened, we may never know. Could have been a metallurgical fault of the cylinder, a machining error in manufacturing, or faulty ammo. No telling. But given how easy it is to make an error in handloading, using factory made ammo that's cranked out by the millions by automatic machines has always made me nervous. Shit happens ya know.

[Jer]

Fake! We all know wheel guns are the most reliable contraption ever invented by mankind!!