A friend of mine bought a new CVA single shot rifle with interchangeable barrels. It came with both Black Powder and a centerfire barrel chambered in .270.
He was naturally eager to try it out, and spent around 30 rounds of factory loads in it (some Winchester and some Hornady) and was complaining that it didn't seem to be doing anything consistently.
I looked the spent casings over and all of them had extremely flattened primers, a few showed signs of gas leakage and one had blown completely out. I told him to send it back, but I began wondering what was causing what looks very much to me like overpressure.
Could a short lead cause high enough pressure for this result? Headspace came to mind because of the break open action, but I don't know if it would cause these signatures. Is it plausible to think that the bore could be undersize due to tooling wear?
I know CVA has some blemishes on their reputation from some exploding black powder barrels in the 90's, but depending on who you believe, that might have been their loading suggestion in the manual.
dl26c
He was naturally eager to try it out, and spent around 30 rounds of factory loads in it (some Winchester and some Hornady) and was complaining that it didn't seem to be doing anything consistently.
I looked the spent casings over and all of them had extremely flattened primers, a few showed signs of gas leakage and one had blown completely out. I told him to send it back, but I began wondering what was causing what looks very much to me like overpressure.
Could a short lead cause high enough pressure for this result? Headspace came to mind because of the break open action, but I don't know if it would cause these signatures. Is it plausible to think that the bore could be undersize due to tooling wear?
I know CVA has some blemishes on their reputation from some exploding black powder barrels in the 90's, but depending on who you believe, that might have been their loading suggestion in the manual.
dl26c
