A member on the Kifaru forums posted about their FN Five-Seven going kaboom recently. Apparently a round fired while out of battery blowing the pistol to pieces and injuring his hand pretty badly.
Last week my FN Five-Seven blew up causing severe damage to my left hand (I am right handed). There are 6-8 pieces of shrapnel deep in my thumb and palm area which severed the nerves to my thumb and a portion of my palm. Surgery is required in an attempt to repair the hand by harvesting tissue from my leg. Wish me luck.
The “explosion” occurred on the last round of a 30 round mag loaded with the factory 40gr v-max stuff. On this particular day I only had three loaded magazines (70 rounds total) with me for the Five-Seven but had several other handguns to shoot after the Five-Seven. I began with a 20 round mag loaded with hand loads, then a 20 round mag loaded with factory ammo and finished with the 30 round mag with factory ammo. It was the very last round of 5.7×28 in my immediate possession that ruined my day ……. and a whole lot more!!
I have fired (600-700 rounds) both factory and hand loads through the pistol with zero issues since purchasing new in 2/2011. There are reports of the Five-Seven firing out of battery (OOB) which appears to be the case here but I am no weapons forensics expert. I am not a novice to shooting, handguns or reloading and have 20+ years of extensive experience with shooting and reloading.
I have been completely straightforward with FNH (i.e. Browning) so will now wait and see how they respond.
You can read more about it at kifaruforums.net, stay safe everyone.
A link to the final conclusion of the exploding 57.
http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/general-firearm-discussion/49139-fn-fiveseven-warning-picture-heavy-2.html
An update on the 57 pictured above.
The explosion was caused by a handload at twice the powder charge. Reloaded by the shooter.
It was duplicated exactly by FN.
The shooter accepts FN’s opinion, and has had the pistol replaced free of charge by FN as a gesture of good will.
As I recall from seeing discussion of this KaBoom a few weeks ago, the consensus seemed to be that the pistol fired IN battery, and the case blowout resulted when the action started to cycle before chamber/barrel pressure had subsided to safe levels.
Keep in mind that it’s a delayed blowback pistol that does not have a locked breach. Thus, in all likelihood, it fired IN battery, and given the over-pressure moved out of battery early.
There was some pretty lively discussion at The Firearm Blog a few weeks ago; that post is here: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/02/27/fn-five-seven-kaboom/
Wow that’s brutal, hope he makes a full recovery.