FIRST, THIS DID NOT HAPPEN AT THE QUIGLY but a shooter had it on his table for display.  45-70 loaded with smokeless powder.  Don't have the particulars so not going to guess what may have caused it.  This guy was lucky in that he was a left handed shooter which saved his face.  They never found the missing piece of the sidewall.

Barrel was probably sawed off for convenience.

The guy said it was a Pedersoli Highwall, but the casehardening pattern looked aftermarket to me.  I remarked to him that the broken metal looked what used to be called “crystallized,” like those notorious blown-up low-number Springfield 03s.

The teachers in the Color Casehardening class at Lassen College stressed that the process shouldn’t be applied to some of the modern alloys used for replica firearms, and if we didn’t know the analysis of the steel in whatever we were putting through the process, we were asking for trouble.

Casehardening puts a glass-hard “skin” of high-carbon steel over a core of mild machinery steel.  The skin resists wear, while the low-carbon core remains tough and resilient.  Casehardening an alloy which hardens clear through upon heat treatment makes it glass-hard all the way through the structure, and it can shatter like glass as well. Slap-happy smokeless loading practices in a gun heat-treated like that would guarantee a catastrophe, sooner or later.

A shooter named Itchkawitch down in San Diego had his refurbished original Highwall come apart like that, and I recall a Stevens 44-1/2 that had been surface-ground to remove pitting and then rehardened failed in the same way; the one sidewall blowing out and the block in place.  Leaving thin sections of mild steel in the hardening process too long would deepen the carbonized surface to a dangerous level, with the same outcome.

I refrained from asking the exact smokeless load used in the gun shown.  The guy at the Quigley a few years ago with the cracked and swollen Pedersoli Sharps got quite huffy at my “morbid curiosity,” and put the wreck away afterwards.  I don’t know what his problem was; the Institute Of Makers Of Explosives members used to report every detail of every incident to the membership in order to keep it from happening again.

Wow interesting pics. On the High wall I see that the threaded portion of the barrel is also severely distorted. It looks like it is mainly on the side of the receiver that failed. I suppose once the side of the receiver failed the barrel alone also gave way? In your opinion Would have black powder load levels been safe in this rifle ? or do you think it would have still failed?

ssdave wrote on Jun 25^th, 2023 at 8:03pm:


Thanks for the further info Dave! 
Once again a case where had you not added that info the blowup would be blamed on using smokeless powder, instead of someone not knowing how to safely reload.

We often use the term "black powder substitute" to refer to powders, such as pyrodex, which can be loaded basically just like black powder. The owner made a mistake, but it could happen to anyone. I admonish new reloaders to never us a load that is not supported by a loading manual, but I have to admit I have not always followed that advice. I started shooting a powder based on the recommendation of a forum member which was not listed in any loading manual for the cartridge which I used it in. So far, so good, but I dont think I would do it again. 
At any rate, I hope the owner knows how lucky he is: no one got hurt. The equipment can be replaced. 
Keep this in mind: familiarity breeds contempt. The more we think we know, the more likely we are to let our guard down, so the moral of the story is be as careful as you can at all times, whether re-loading, shooting, cleaning etc. There is little margin for error, and anyone can make a mistake, I have made more than I care to admit and have been lucky each time. 
Joe S

A side note on the powder ballistic programs; a novice reloader I knew was the first in the community with a program and was boosting about how he could beat the listed loads at first try. All was well until he landed on a load using IMR 4895. He came by one day with a frozen bolt, asked for assistance and after getting the bolt to release the fired case was swollen greatly and the primer fell out of the pocket. He showed me the powder program and after a review I finally remembered the old Powley slide rule calculator had caused similar problems because they never updated the changes to the powder. Modern day IMR 4895 is a much faster burning powder than that back in the day when the Powley originated and it was obvious the person that wrote the computer application used the Powley as their reference. One can only guess how many experienced similar problems but as always start low and work up when using new loads.

I'm sure this has been asked, but what programs are recommended by the folks here?

I don't know it it is a Pedersoli or not. It looks to be a leaf spring model by the lug on the barrel. If you look closely you can see how thin the metal was at the bottom of the barrel. Coil spring actions have a lot more metal in this area. The blowout on the barrel looks to be at the 7 o'clock position. I don't know if it was on overload, cracked receiver or brittle mat'l in the receiver. More info is needed to really know what happened.