Broken Lane Shark – Lessons Learned
So a few weeks back, we had an incident down on the rifle range. The Lane Shark we use suffered what can only be described as a catastrophic failure.
I don’t want to be dramatic but unfortunately when one looks at the damage, and thinks about what could have happened, there are no other words to describe it.
From the pics you can see the blade assembly detached and ricocheted on three sides of the box, before dropping straight down on the ground.
As for why? Hate to say it, since this is also dramatic, but it’s from user error. Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job keeping everything torqued down. However looking back on how things were going in the days before the failure, I believe we have ID’d a symptom that should be known to all current and future Lane Shark owners.
Before the failure happened, we started to randomly experience something never before seen when using the Lane Shark. Sometimes, and seemingly randomly, one or both of the blades would get folded back on each other; jamming them selves into the carrier or each other.
At the time, I attributed it to the fact we were really getting into some major stuff and working the Lane Shark at the top end of it’s performance envelope. That was my assumption.
Now looking back on it, what was happening was we were causing the bolts to lose torque way sooner than normal. Which was resulting in enough play in the blade carrier to jam the blades every once in a while.
From now on, no matter how few hours are on the unit since we last torqued everything down; if we experience any blade jams, that is a BIG RED FLAG to stop, go back to the barn, and check torque on everything.
Big Boy Tools come with Big Boy Rules.
Hope my experience can help fellow Lane Shark owners in the future. And for the record, I still love the Lane Shark. Need the Lane Shark. And couldn’t keep our gun range open without it.
Sincerely,
Marky
www.John1911.com
“Shooting Guns & Having Fun”
Areas of focus: Defense and National Security, Modern Light Weapons, Small Arms, Weapons Training.
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