I talked to the witness who saw the tube blow after writing the post. There were two people there. One died of natural causes around 10 years after the accident, he worked in a big gun store. The witness was a cowboy action enthusiast young lady. She said that the single round went off and luckily no one got hit when the tube burst. The rounds used might have had a shard of lead sticking up from home cast bullets And just dropping the next round down hit it just right. The guy, had the gun sent back to whatever distributor for Uberti, (I assume Uberti) dealt the firearm and they replaced the tube. That being the only part damaged. This firearm was used in matches I shot in. Functioned perfectly.
BTW I remember Danny Glover’s Henry/66. It was a head scratcher. The Guns he used in Lonesome Dove appeared more normal.
My thought was that Henry arms should put loading gates on all BUT the Henry clone.
“...My thought was that Henry arms should put loading gates on all BUT the Henry clone.” [Vaquero, post 66]
A notion I would not disagree with at all.
I guess that any time the tip of a bullet contacts a centerfire primer, there is some chance of the primer going off. No matter how flat the tip of the bullet is. Can’t speak to the safety record of Hornady’s Leverevolution polymer-point bullets.
Remington’s designers went to a lot of trouble 100 years ago, with the tube magazines of their Model 14 (and later 141) slide-action rifles: stamped helical ridges into them, to force the cartridges (25, 30, 32, and 35 cal) to line up off center, so the pointed bullet of any round would not touch the primer of the round ahead of it in the tube.
In 1899, the French military began loading their 8x50R Lebel cartridge with a 198-gr solid bronze bullet. It had a sharp point. To render it safe for use in their Modele 1886 Lebel rifle (which had a tubular magazine), they developed a crimp for the primer that placed a deep groove around it - a “ditch” as it were, that would catch the point of the bullet of the round behind, before it would slip across the head onto the primer. Never seen any numbers on how effective it was.
I’ve never heard of an incident with 22 rimfire, where dropping a live round down the magazine tube onto the rounds already loaded caused an ignition. Have you? Perhaps 22 rimfire rounds simply don’t have the mass to overcome the stiffness of the brass case, or the ignition-energy threshold of the priming compound.