by 1ShotTV
(00:00):
What's going on guys? Welcome back. Thanks for watching today. We have another experimental video for you guys. These are always my favorite videos to make, so this should be a good one, but today we are testing how dangerous is a squibb load. If you don't know, a squibb load is basically when you fire an underpowered round that doesn't make it out of the barrel. They're kind of rare with factory ammo, although they do happen much more common with hand loads. Someone either puts not enough powder in the cartridge or more often they skip the powder entirely, which can cause the bullet to get stuck in the barrel. Now obviously the catastrophic malfunction happens when you fire the next round after the squibb load with a projectile stuck in the barrel, that's going to create an unsafe amount of pressure and could potentially even blow up the gun.
(00:45):
Personally, I've never had this happen, which is a good thing, but I know several people who have and 99% of 'em were with hand loads. So today we're going to put this to the test and see how dangerous a squibb load actually is and what happens when you fire a live round with an obstruction in the barrel. Let's do it. Now, initially I was going to use a high point for this video because obviously they're one of the cheapest handguns in the world, but because of the way they're designed, I don't think it would be an accurate representation. I'm sure you've all seen videos of people trying to destroy high points with barrel obstructions and usually nothing really happens, and that's because it's a direct blowback pistol and the barrel doesn't lock up like it does on other handguns. So instead we are going to use a Glock 17. This is a short recoil operated pistol and the action does lock up. It's one of the most common handguns in the world and a very similar design to most modern polymer frame pistols. So these results should be universal just to show you that the gun does work and there's no damage to it.
(01:50):
Fired all five rounds, cycled and locked the slide back. Now believe it or not, creating a squibb load is not the easiest thing to do because it requires the perfect powder charge. I was just going to shove a bullet down the barrel, but I figured we might as well try and create one organically. So I've got a couple different hand loads here. Shout out to B Fff for making us these. One bag has a primer and a slight powder charge, and the other bag has just a primer with no powder charge. We're going to see if we can create a squibb load. If not, I'll just shove one in the barrel first. We'll go ahead and try the round. That does have a little gunpowder in it. See what this feels like.
(02:32):
That's scary. I think it worked. So I just ejected the shell casing and I did not see a projectile in it. Okay, you can see the slides locked back. I'll go ahead and show you what it looks like looking down the barrel. Hopefully you can see there is no daylight and that's because there's obviously a projectile in there. I will say, I don't know how anyone could fire around like that and not know that something was horribly wrong. If you chambered another round and pulled the trigger after that, you're probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But either way, we've got our squibb load. Let's do the test. Alright guys, obviously I'm not going to hand fire this one. Sorry if that disappoints some of you, but I definitely want to keep all my fingers. So I'll go ahead and show you the setup that we have for this little experiment.
(03:22):
I have our Glock 17 attached to a sawhorse. By the way, this is a very old pistol. It's probably got 50,000 rounds through it at this point, so it's on its way out already. I'm not ruining a brand new handgun. And then I've got concrete blocks on and behind it so it doesn't flip over when we pull the string. And then we have a ballistic dummy lab head directly behind the pistol. So that will be our shooter and we'll see if anything actually happens to him. I've also got a paper target stapled to the backstop so we can see if it fires either of those projectiles. And keep in mind, this is a nine millimeter pistol. Obviously the higher up you go in caliber, the more pressure there is and the more catastrophic the damage would probably be. But I don't have any rifles that I'm willing to destroy right now, so we're going to use a handgun.
(04:11):
Hey guys, before we go any further, I want to take just a minute to thank our sponsor for today's video, pard Scopes. So this is the TD 32 70 model and we've had this thing for several weeks. I believe we've already used it in at least two videos at this point, the six five creedmore and of course the Trump assassination attempt. And in that one I actually made at 130 yard earshot, very first try on a ballistic dummy lap head. So I think that kind of displays the capabilities of this thing. You can use it for spotting, hunting, target, shooting, pretty much everything. And probably my favorite feature of this entire thing, which you will see in this video is it actually allows you to take photos and videos through the scope itself. And then when you get home from your trip to the range, you can watch the footage back as you saw it, looking through the scope, which obviously as a video creator I am a huge fan of.
(05:02):
So to learn more, check 'em out@pard.com. That's PAR d.com. And again, I want to thank Parge scopes for sponsoring today's video. Okay, we have our barrel with the squibb load stuck in it. You probably can't see it, but trust me it is in there. And this is the live round we're going to use. It's a 115 grain plus P gold dot. Just to give it a little more pressure. Now, honestly, I don't even think it's going to be that bad, but just to be safe, I am going to hide behind my truck here. So let's see what it does.
(05:42):
It fired. Okay, there's our gun. It did fire the round and it even looks like it locked the slide back the barrel. Yeah, it's not perfect. Something is wrong in there, but there's really no damage to the gun at all. I figured the magazine would probably blow out and we would have some structural damage. So far I don't see anything. It did not eject the shell casing, which is kind of interesting, but it did lock the slide back. It looks like our ballistic dummy head has no damage whatsoever. And looking at our paper target, I see bullet holes. I assume that is probably one and then that is the other right there. Alright, we've got the gun out magazine is in perfect condition. Did not expect that it is locked up though. And one thing I noticed looking at the slide lock is that slide did not make it all the way back. At first I thought it just cycled perfectly and locked the slide back, but obviously it did not. And I assume there's probably some swelling in that barrel if I could ever get the thing apart. Okay, so whenever I pull the slide back, it just sticks. It looks like the barrel is probably not allowing it to go all the way back. All the internals in the frame look perfectly fine.
(07:48):
Magazine spring, perfectly fine. There's the damage. Don't know if you'll be able to see that. Hopefully you can. There's a big bulge and a crack in the barrel about halfway down right where that squibb load was that it blew that barrel apart. That is a lot of pressure. Trust me, these barrels are very hard metal and they're designed to withstand tens if not hundreds of thousands of rounds. So it definitely ruined the barrel. And on the slowmo you could see it was a lot more smoky than a regular nine millimeter would be, but I bet if I replaced the barrel and put it in this frame, it would probably operate perfectly. I don't see any damage anywhere else on the pistol. There is a little mark on the inside of the slide there right where our barrel bulged out. But other than that, been pretty in pretty good condition. All right, I went ahead and induced another squibb load. We've got a projectile probably less than a fourth of the way down the barrel this time. We're going to try it again. And this time I'm just going to use a regular 115 grain full metal jacket.
(09:03):
It's chambered. When I chose the plus pmo, it did cross my mind that that added pressure might have actually helped to push those bullets down the barrel and ultimately cause less damage to the pistol. I don't know if that's what happened, but we're going to try a regular nine millimeter and see if there's a difference attempt number two, see if there's a difference. And here's our Glock 17. It almost looks like an identical result. I don't see any more damage. The magazine is still seated. Once again, our ballistic dummy head has nothing wrong with him. And we have two more bullet holes on our paper target and those are actually pretty close together. That's interesting. There does not appear to be any new damage to that barrel whatsoever. We've got the same bulge in the middle of it where we did the first one, but that one did not do anything.
(10:17):
So I'm surprised by this. I thought we would definitely be blowing this gun apart, but the Glock is doing well. Alright, so far I am very impressed. We're going to try it one more time. For this one. I have the squibb load just barely past the end of the chamber about where it was when we actually induced one at the beginning of the video. And then behind it, once again, I have a 115 grain plus P gold dot. If this don't blow it up, we're just going to have to concede that Glocks are pretty dang squibb load proof. Now, from all the stories I've heard, a lot of guns do not handle squibb loads this well. So I'm impressed with the Glock so far. Let's see what this one does.
(11:05):
It looks about the same. Let's go check it out. And there's our Glock 17 on that one. The slide did not go back nearly as far, which tells me we might have a little more swelling on the barrel. Hopefully I can get it apart. And once again, it looks like our ballistic dummy head survived that one with no injury. I don't even see any gunpowder on that ballistic gel. So he's in perfect condition. Once again, our magazine does not appear to have any damage to it. Every squibb load story that I've heard, they say it blows the magazine out of the magwell. We have not had that happen today, at least with the Glock. Obviously the slide is stuck.
(12:03):
Okay, so all it did was make our existing crack worse. Hopefully you can see that it's damn near a hole at this point and I believe I can see all the way through to the barrel. But yeah, same crack, same bulge, it's just quite a bit bigger after that third squibb load. I'm impressed and I get to keep my Glock 17, which is kind of cool. Obviously I've just got to buy a new barrel. It also looks like the mark inside the slide is quite a bit bigger as well. But other than that, I see nothing wrong with it. So I got to be honest, I thought we were going to see a lot more damage to the pistol. Obviously it did blow out the barrel and lock up the action, so it's not like you could just plow right through and keep shooting after a squibb load.
(12:56):
But based off stories I've heard from other guns, I think we can safely say the Glock 17 handled the squibb load pretty dang well. And most importantly, our shooter was unharmed. And I also wanted to show you guys once again, we have two more bullet holes in that paper target. So that's three squibb loads, two bullets per test, and we have exactly six holes in that paper target, which means every single time it managed to fire both projectiles down the barrel and they were all on target. Kind of crazy. All right guys, there it is. How dangerous is a squibb load, at least with the Glock 17? It appears to be not that dangerous. Again, like I've said throughout this video, I've heard numerous stories from different people that have had this happen in real life and almost every single one of them got a much worse result than that.
(13:45):
Magazines blowing out the bottom of the gun, damage to the shooter, all kinds of stuff can happen, but at least with the Glock, it looks like it handled it pretty dang well, I got to be honest. Hope y'all enjoyed it. Hope you learned something. If you would like to see this with other guns down the road, maybe a different pistol or rifles, shotguns, stuff like that, let me know in the comments and I'll try and make it happen. As always, if you did like the video, please hit the button for me guys, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you all for watching and I'll see you next time.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GdAIjIYP9g
Credit: 1ShotTV