I thought I'd take a moment and tell you how my hunting buddy shot himself last week.  He's o.k. now (he'll recover anyway...).  It was a "shop" accident not a "hunting" accident.

He was preparing his CVA Apollo muzzleloader for Muzzleloader season and had a charge that did not fire. (Note: The Apollo does not have a removable breach plug)  So he 1) Removed the percussion cap and tried pulling the ball (bullet and sabot) unsuccessfully with a ball puller.  2) Removed the nipple and tried blowing out the powder with an air hose.  3) He doused the powder chamber through the nipple hole with penetrating oil.  Then a few days later he thought he would soften the plastic sabot using heat and try removing the ball again.

He was at work.  His boss used the acetylene torch to apply heat.  He held the barreled action in his left hand as the heat was applied.  The boss turned to put the torch down.  He started to walk to his tool box when there was a pop (not even as loud as an acetylene torch being shut off incorrectly).  He continued walking to his tool box, when he arrived he noticed his pocket change fell out onto the floor and now his pants and long johns were on fire.  He patted the fire out and noticed his leg was getting wet.  You can assume the rest: trip to the hospital, talk with the cops, and now he's on Vicatin.  (By the way he was sure the muzzle wasn't pointed at his leg, but obviously it was.)

No major damage done considering the worst possible scenario.  Bullet entered at the center of his left thigh at the base of the pocket traveled down at about 45 degrees and exited center of his leg on the back about 5-6 inches above the knee.  Missed major arteries, and just missed the bone.  The bullet was traveling slow enough that it never expanded (very fortunate), so he had just a .45 caliber hole drilled in his leg.

There is no way of knowing for certain what happened.  The assumption is: either the oil didn't soak all the powder or the heat dried some out.

Note to self:  Always pay attention.

Hope you have a better Christmas than my hunting buddy.

WITH A TORCH?

That reminds me of the guy that used a .22lr in his trucks fuse box, and got shot in the foot.

I hope Mr. Dumass recovers.

These hassles are the #1 reason I won't get in on the early muzzleloading rush.

That story makes one of those co2 clearing devices seem like they would be a worthwhile expence if you were a muzzleloader.

WOW!  Thats a great story.  I can 100% catorgize that as a true Accidental Discharge.

I can see how he assumed that apply heat was safe at that stage since he assumed the powder was neutralized by the oil.

Glad he's okay

SGtar15

Ouch! That had to be painful. My 1st thought would have been doesn't oil burn? I always clean it with warm soapy water so soaking the powder with water won't hurt it. Anyway I'm glad you,..er, your friend will be ok.
Here's a good story for you.




The Hole In The Wall

I am sure all of you must have realized by now that this workshop is not run by a bunch of geniuses. If you get the impression that all the members of this team should probably be trying their hands at something more in tune with their abilities, you are probably right. I am not going to mention some of the very generous suggestions we have received of what we should be doing – one of the them was that we should be watching grass grow, as that apparently suits our combined abilities more than anything else. Whoever suggested this must be an expert at it by now.

We tried that, we then discovered that there was very little we can do to grass to annoy people with. And as it is natural in any human being, we try to do things we are good at. And believe me, we ARE very good at annoying EVERYONE. We might not live in a democratic country, but we are most definitely are democratic in our behavior towards each other. We really have no choice, as this crew consists of many different nationalities, different religions, different creeds, different colours, different sizes – especially in the brains. One of our doctor friends mentioned a while back that he could probably fit the combined brain power of this whole team in a 22 Hornet case! That was not very kind of him, of course, as all we did was try to get him to practice with our 577 Tyrannosaur for his upcoming hunting trip to Africa. All he did was dislocated his thump, bruised his shoulder and his nose looked a bit off center, not to mention the pint or so of blood that came pouring out of his mouth after he fired our rifle. We even offered to lend him the rifle to take hunting with him, and provide him with all the ammo he might need, all free of charge. But I am afraid all our efforts came to nothing. He decided it might be better for him to stick to playing golf. We then offered to make him a custom made gold club, as he mentioned that his handicap was improving quite well, until he fired our rifle, and then it started getting worse. Apparently his golfing partners are making quite a few snide remarks about his game now. He declined our offer, but I will not mention his exact words of what he thought we should do with our golf club, as this is a family oriented site.





None of us is a specialist in any field. This makes life quite interesting any time a new job comes up, as everyone wants to do it. This happens to all jobs except triggers. Walter is our undisputed genius when it comes to triggers, and we tend to leave them to him. Problem is, this has got into his rather thick head, and he used every opportunity to ram this point down our throats.

We all set out to teach him a lesson, and one day the opportunity presented itself. I was installing a trigger into a Hall action, and as anyone familiar with this action would know, there is a little contraption that the trigger fits into and then screws into the action. You have to install this one way for it to work, as if you turn it upside down – which is very easy to do, believe me – then it will not work at all. The sear does not contact the cocking piece on the bolt, so you would think the trigger goes off as the bolt is closed.


The trigger on the left is correctly installed in the hanger, the one on the right is installed the wrong way
We installed the trigger into this action, making sure that it was installed the wrong way. We gave it to Walter to adjust, and as you can imagine, he spent a couple of hours trying to get the trigger to work, which it did not. He then decided that the trigger was faulty, he also added a few choice names to Mr. Jewel who made the trigger. A new trigger was given to him. He removed the old trigger, and installed this one in the holder the wrong way too! Another couple of hours passed with him having a real battle with it. Eventually he managed to find out that something was not right, especially as everyone was offering him some advice. We thought he was going to get real mad at us, but he had another idea, he started laughing with us at himself, saying that he would NEVER allow us to make him mad, NEVER!

Well, as you might have guessed, this was paramount to waving a red flag to an enraged bull. Every one set himself up to make Walter mad.

A few months passed, but we all have long memories, and none of us would give up on getting Walter in an uproar. One day he was doing his favourite job, adjusting a trigger on a factory Remington 700 rifle. He had the rifle clamped in a vice upside down, without its stock of course.





He was just cocking the bolt, adjusting the trigger, and trying to get it to the right weight. The rifles muzzle was pointing to a brick wall about 3 feet away. We decided that we have a perfect opportunity to get him going, so one of us went outside, and called Walter on his cell phone. Walter went over to answer the phone call in the next room. We then loaded a life round into the chamber of the rifle and waited for Walter to come back. It did not take him long to return, as it was a WRONG number! We all stood there with our fingers in our ears as far away as we could. Walter cocked the bolt and pulled the trigger! The rifle went off, flew out of the vice and landed at his feet. He did not say a word! He just walked past all of us, got into his car and drove away. We never saw him for a whole week! Eventually we all had to go and apologize for this. As no one would admit to being the culprit. It would not have made any difference anyway, as he was REALLY MAD at all of us.



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Last updated 11 May 2000

OUCH!!!  Oil does NOT inactivate powder.  Smokeless or black.  Priming or powder.

There still is chemical oxygen in the powder and you just added more fuel.  Its not as powerful bu still has power.

The only way to do this safely is to WASH the powder out with water but you never know if you got all the powder and guess what, water doesn't inactivate powder.  Once it dries, its good to go.

I made a puller out of some 7/16" cold rolled steel rod.  Drilled & tapped for a screw stud (used in furniture to amke a joint, wood screw on one end, machine on the other).  I turned down a length of the other end to fit a drill.

Just chuck this in a drill and after depriming the rifle, screw it into the bullet.  Then pull.  Works EVERY time.

Why were to cops called? I cut my leg on a chain link fence once and the cops never showed up.

Oil/Diesel fuel is good for [b]desensitising[/b] smokeless propellant and Water great for Black powder!  

What kind of propellant was the guy using!!!  If he was using those Pyrodex sticks, then trying to get that stuff out of the nipple hole would be real tough!!!  

Moral of the story, ALWAYS KNOW THE RELATION OF THE MUZZLE TO YOU AND OTHERS!!!!

Cops have to be called, when someone shows up at a hospital with a gun shot.

It's a law (I think)

I can relate.  I hope he heals well.

mohabie.

Darwin award candidate.

All firearm accidents require a Law Enforcement investigation of some sorts!

Yup.  My best friend had a bullet jacket lodge in his face once and the sheriff had to do a report.  My friend was standing too close to some steel plates when he shot it with a 30-30.  Not the best idea in the world, mind you.

They will investigate a BB gun accident also.
I got shot with a BB near my ancle when I was 18 and when I went to get it removed I was interviewed and when the cop was done she  said she first interviewed my wife (girlfriend at the time)and other friend to see if I was going to lie to her.Sneaky women.

As I understand it he was using loose pyrodex.  I will share the "oil does not kill powder" info with him.  I believe he got the idea that oil would kill it from all the tales of loads being rendered inert by oil in the barrel of muzzleloaders and oiled cartridges being rendered inert.

Kent