Bellm TCs

	Barrel-to-Lug Weld Failure. The weld on a barrel should be strong enough that the frame or the bottom lip of the barrel lug will fail before the barrel comes off the lug.
	The top example is a recent failure of a TC Encore factory barrel. What you see is the remains of the lug inside the frame. It appears there was very little penetration at all on the left side. A number of rounds were fired before the force from the barrel apparently ripped the right side off the barrel lug. If you look closely at the left side you can see perhaps a half inch of weld that has been pulled apart while the edges of the weld bead are undamaged all the way forward where at the front it is hard to see from the photo whether the damage to the weld area is from the barrel ripping off or if there was some weld torn. In my 30 plus years working with TC barrels, I have never seen anything like this happen. I have seen and heard of a number of weld failures where the barrel blew off, but never saw a lug rip like this. Ammo was .25/06 factory ammo, and fired cases all appeared normal except the one in the chamber that blew the head off when the barrel came off. The close up photo of an Encore barrel and lug below is another example of weld failure that is not the first by one of the bigger names in afermarket barrels. The interesting point is that the owner of the barrel was accused of running excess pressures shooting cast lead, and the company who made the barrel had to be shown that the weld penetration was inadequate! A neat weld is not necessarily a good weld. We prefer to see neat welds, but I would rather see a less than perfect appearing weld with adequate penetration, which should be close to 80% of the width of the barrel lug contact area. In this weld, the penetration is probably 20% or less! The weld must also not be hard and brittle. It must be ductile so it will give instead of fracture and break. Note the very thin line of weld along each side of the lug.