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50 Bmg Blow up....
- Thread starter frank320
- Start date
Based on the video post above, history suggests otherwise.
Man, that's an ugly looking rifle! Looks like something a drunk plumber would make!
No one is debating that, but most rifles would vent that pressure safely without sending steel shrapnel into the shooters face.
I personally still believe that Scott shot a sabotage round. Let's be serious here. He himself is not all that bright and I'm sure his staff is very minimal.
Now we have video proof that when this "rifle" fails it does so in a way that is deadly to the user.
I am sure that now that we have video evidence that mark being the responsible gun maker that he is will now fix all of the problems that there are with his pipe bomb.
I am sure that now that we have video evidence that mark being the responsible gun maker that he is will now fix all of the problems that there are with his pipe bomb.
Words Fail.
I realize that this was only done for the clicks, but WTF? If you are going to blow up one of these things. Why couldn't some effort to gain some actual knowledeges been made?
Why no thought to pull one of those suspect rounds down? Perhaps have an analysis done? I bet an ammo manufacturers would had done that for him.
Why not use a pressure transducer? That could have provided at least a relative pressure difference between known good ammo, and this crap he was shooting.
Why not chrono to see what kinds of velocities were being achieved?
And then there were the "safety barriers." Wow.
And I don't know a lot about explosives, but I do know that the pressure wave from detonating stuff in a confined space is a lot more lethaler than in an open area. Every time he loaded the pipe bomb up again it gave me a chill.
Now I will give the Serbu a few points. It tried really really hard to tell him he was over pressure. I was also thinking that running a no go gauge after each shot would have been interesting to see if there was any noticeable stretching happening.
Nope! None of that.
And it is still a bad design that fails in a horrible way.
Oh, and i love the part at about 24:00 were the big chunk of metal shoots out the side of the ballistic gel head.
I realize that this was only done for the clicks, but WTF? If you are going to blow up one of these things. Why couldn't some effort to gain some actual knowledeges been made?
Why no thought to pull one of those suspect rounds down? Perhaps have an analysis done? I bet an ammo manufacturers would had done that for him.
Why not use a pressure transducer? That could have provided at least a relative pressure difference between known good ammo, and this crap he was shooting.
Why not chrono to see what kinds of velocities were being achieved?
And then there were the "safety barriers." Wow.
And I don't know a lot about explosives, but I do know that the pressure wave from detonating stuff in a confined space is a lot more lethaler than in an open area. Every time he loaded the pipe bomb up again it gave me a chill.
Now I will give the Serbu a few points. It tried really really hard to tell him he was over pressure. I was also thinking that running a no go gauge after each shot would have been interesting to see if there was any noticeable stretching happening.
Nope! None of that.
And it is still a bad design that fails in a horrible way.
Oh, and i love the part at about 24:00 were the big chunk of metal shoots out the side of the ballistic gel head.
His true genius is at the 12 min mark when he oils up a cartridge to make it easier to extract.......
Heard and understand. It be interesting to see how other designs handle it. Personally would not want to be behind any 50 CAL with a sabotaged charge like that.
Have you seen the abuse that Edward does to his 50
Motor oil in a confined space with a primer in a round you know has the potential to leave the headstamp on the inside of the cap. Yes. Brilliant. Can't possibly go wrong. Also can't possibly go right.
Remember when a Desert Tech didn’t send shrapnel into anyone?
At least he's learned the proper way to fire a Serbu.
II’d be curious to see how other rifles react to one of Kentucky ballistics “proof rounds.”
I bet that Pepsi challenge marketed through the right YouTube channel could turn a profit.
I bet that Pepsi challenge marketed through the right YouTube channel could turn a profit.
Really wish instead of shooting all 12 he sent them off to an ammo manufacturer to see what they pressures were to get some actual information.
Probably would not have mattered as none of the other rounds appear to have enough pressure to cause the threads to fail.
Seems he picked the ++++++++P round filming the first video.
After watching both videos I will never shoot an RN 50 or stand near anyone that does.
Or they had one with a weak case head that separated which caused the rifle to explode. None of the slap rounds in the video had a case head failure but the one that exploded did so without testing that who knows if the case head failure would induce the same explosion with a lower chamber pressure.
Agreed.
Things that confuse me when going back and watching numerous older videos he made shooting his first rifle with both standard and slap rounds.
| First rifle | Second rifle |
| No stuck brass. One video even mentions how much easier it is to remove rounds with the custom chamber because it's "looser" | Stuck brass |
| No marks on the cap interior from the brass even after blowing up | Marks on the cap |
| No mention or video of the cap being difficult to unscrew | Cap is difficult to unscrew |
Time stamped link for mentioning rounds easier to remove. If this is a safe way to build the rifle, why not give everyone a looser chamber so they don't have to fight extraction? He mentions the 2nd rifle has the same chamber cut, but the behavior seems way different.
.maybe the old rifle failed due to fatigue. Repeated stresses weakened the rifle to the point where a hot round caused it to yield. There is no doubt the rounds he fired in this video were hot. Extraction issues,primers flying out, and hard cap lift (Heh). The new rifle took it where the old one succumbed to metal fatigue. I wonder how many rounds this guy fired in the old rifle.
What are the odds Mark sent him a standard chamber knowing it would show high pressure and make it look like the ammo’s fault?
That or he was too lazy to cut another machine gun chamber knowing it was going to get blown up so he sent him a standard one.
The case walls on the brass are not that thick and alone, unsupported would not stand up to much. They are not the structure to keep the case from stretching length wise, the cap is.
The extreme over pressure is cauing the failure, not the separation. My opinion.
Structurally the brass case walls aint really doing much. In my experience with case head separations, they weren’t that big of a deal because they weren’t overpressured rounds. It was worn out brass that should’ve never been fired in the first place.
Obviously a failure like this poses a potential hazard with the Rn/50s design, but I personally feel any firearm would be potentially deadly if you exceed the normal chamber pressure by 3.5 times. 190,000 psi, what that scott proof round was calculated to produce is a fuck ton of pressure.
A .50 has a .80” head diameter, which comes out to about half a square inch. That’s like asking those threads to hold 95,000lbs... when they’re normally made a whole 27,000 repeatedly.
Has any one else had an RN 50 grenade on them?
The extreme over pressure is cauing the failure, not the separation. My opinion.
Structurally the brass case walls aint really doing much. In my experience with case head separations, they weren’t that big of a deal because they weren’t overpressured rounds. It was worn out brass that should’ve never been fired in the first place.
Obviously a failure like this poses a potential hazard with the Rn/50s design, but I personally feel any firearm would be potentially deadly if you exceed the normal chamber pressure by 3.5 times. 190,000 psi, what that scott proof round was calculated to produce is a fuck ton of pressure.
A .50 has a .80” head diameter, which comes out to about half a square inch. That’s like asking those threads to hold 95,000lbs... when they’re normally made a whole 27,000 repeatedly.
Has any one else had an RN 50 grenade on them?
And if they did the fault would probably be because they put a hand grenade in the chamber, which is not a fault of the rifle or the manufacture.
That’s a user malfunction
The difference is that if the case head failed and allowed the gas to escape the case now that pressure is acting on the entire cap area instead of just the case head. Since force due to pressure is based on area and the id of the cap is approximately 1.5” you have essentially tripled the force on the cap with no change in cartridge pressure.
Once you get above the failure point of the cap the extra pressure is irrelevant as it is vented when the cap fails. So a test with a compromised case at normal pressures would have told us more than his 190,000 psi proof load. All that showed us is that given enough pressure the cap will fail possibly killing the user but not if a simply case head failure is enough to do so.
It’s one thing to knowingly shoot a ridiculously over pressured round, it’s another issue entirely if a bad piece of brass can cause the same failure.
It doesn’t help that the rifle doesn’t vent pressure properly to protect the shooter or any bystanders either.
Yes i get that 100%.
It just seems alot of people are hating on the manufacture, when the explosion was a user error/faulty ammo. Watching Edward seal the barrel off fire off a normal round. The breach didn’t fail the barrel did. Scotts irresponsibility owns that, not Serbu.
I wonder what such a high pressure round would do to other designs. Would there be enough force to sheer the lugs, sending the bolt back or would the gas vent. And what if any damage with that venting cause.
They should have sent the remaining rounds to be tested.
Either way you shake it it is a dangerous design of the rifle. It should vent pressure away from the shooter.
I would never purchase one or stand next to someone shooting one of these
Heard. I don’t disagree with that.
Maybe it did happen it just hasn’t been mentioned publicly. Mark seems like a decent guy, he stepped up and owned this.
I would assume after having this failure happen, he’s probably tried to re-create it. I know I sure as hell would
Once again, this is THE problem with the rifle design.
A so-called "160,000 PSI" round should never generate that type of pressure in practice. Once the brass fails, there needs to be a mechanism to vent excess pressure away from the shooter's face. Most conventional rifles do this gracefully (at least relative to the violence of the event) and protect the shooter from harm. Look at all the posts over the years where reloading mistakes have occurred or someone left a cleaning rod in the barrel or whatever; lots of broken parts, but generally only minor injury. Claiming "it's a 50 BMG LOL" doesn't make this design flaw any more excusable.
If you watch the slow motion from the side camera you can see the hammer open back up venting out the back of the cap.
I guess he should have checked the weight of those rounds to see how much difference there was in them. Maybe even pull them down and check the powder weight.
I guess he should have checked the weight of those rounds to see how much difference there was in them. Maybe even pull them down and check the powder weight.
I totally agree that I never said it is a safe gun. I would not own or shoot or stand near one being shot
It's perfectly safe to shoot a serbu you just need the right ppe
Yeah that’s kind of a big deal that if you were to get a catastrophic failure your odds of dying are pretty good.
Also sabot and muzzle brakes are never a good idea it can for sure increase the pressure amongst with other factors (deteriorated powder, etc).
Also I echo that just running some numbers in quick load to reach 190k psi is totally garbage. I can get QL to give me really big pressure in certain circumstances (ie loaded a heavy subsonic round with compressed pistol powder and it’ll overestimate the pressure by a sizeable amount)
Also sabot and muzzle brakes are never a good idea it can for sure increase the pressure amongst with other factors (deteriorated powder, etc).
Also I echo that just running some numbers in quick load to reach 190k psi is totally garbage. I can get QL to give me really big pressure in certain circumstances (ie loaded a heavy subsonic round with compressed pistol powder and it’ll overestimate the pressure by a sizeable amount)
The thing is that this was not a gas leak, this was the equivalent of the bolt lugs shearing on a bolt action rifle and the bolt becomes a projectile
and strikes the shooter.
1. Who has Mark Serbu cast blame on? From what I have seen he has been pretty straight about it.
2. Maybe. Or create more potential scrape metal. You can’t idiot proof everything.
It matters what others would do because people are casting judgment on this. Well, comparatively to other designs I wonder how they would fare if put in the same circumstances. I’d be interested to see that. I don’t see what’s wrong with that, equal playing field. I’m not aware of any other RN-50s blowing up, if they have enlighten me. I think the round that had enough pressure to destroy that gun would be dangerous in anything. But coming at me like I’m some sort of an asshole for questioning that... Ludacris.
I don’t know where Scott got that ammo but obviously it was not right. The ammo was source of the problem.
You can’t double charge a 50 Cal round by volume. There’s not enough room inside the case. So your hypothetical double charge is impossible. Overcharged yes , wrong powder/explosives yes, but not double charged. And at that point the ammo manufacturer would be liable. Not the rifle manufacturer.
I don’t care where you would spend your money and I fully agree with you that in failure that gun is extremely dangerous. But any gun has the potential to be. If you are going to trash someones reputation, at least provide some tangible evidence of other failures or other designs safety handling a sabotaged round.
Proof of that claim? Just curious.
He seemed to be aware of how much pressure it would take to sheer that cap off. 180,000 psi is what he said. Over 3x safety limit from a standard.50bmg.
Haters gonna hate I guess...
Well I guess the only way this thread can make 20+ pages is to have another defender of this face cannon.
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