This forum thread claims it was reloads, not Chinese ammo.
S&W 44 magnum accident
Simply posted what I received.
Maybe it was Etruscan-made ammo, that would explain much!Rule 1 of the internet: If it's a forwarded email like that, it's not fresh, it's practically Etruscan in age.
an article that Mike Venturino
did a few years later where he had a Colt single action do the same thing &
he resolved that it was a under grain load rather than
a over load due to the fact that a double charge wouldn't have allowed the
bullet to seat in the brass due to the excess powder charge.
With a properly seated bullet, LESS powder equals LESS pressure. Mike's excuse makes no sense at all.
This theory only goes so far. At a point, the powder has enough air to Explode in stead of burn. I think this is fairly well known in reloading. This is why a lot of manuals have minimum loads.
If you load with a "minimum" load, the bullet isn't just fallling out the end of the barrel, minimum loads still have lots of energy. If you go too much below this, and you're really unlucky and hit a sweet spot in the air/fuel(powder) ratio, you get an explosion instead of a nice powder burn.
Why buy Chinese when Korean is so cheap and good?
I'd like to further the legend by claiming I heard it wasn't the gun or the ammo, but the solvent used to clean the gun. The solvent was made in Iran...
The original post here is apocryphal. I used to shoot Norinco in my Makarov. It was like shooting black powder, dirty and smoky, but never hot.Have seen a lot of Chinese ammo around at the last few shows have never heard this story about it, but have heard enough not to ever buy it.
I agree. I used up most of my Norinco 9X18, and it was smoking and DIRTY. Using it meant I learned early to clean the gun after every use. I guess my Makarov is in such good shape because I used this stuff in the past. Got about 50 rounds of it left. I think I will use it all up this weekend to be done with it.The original post here is apocryphal. I used to shoot Norinco in my Makarov. It was like shooting black powder, dirty and smoky, but never hot.