I remember that in the 90s, a reenactor was accidentally shot with a ramrod during a film shoot. If I remember correctly they were filming a battle scene and the director wanted to make it look more realistic by having everyone go through the motions of ramming their load. One guy forgot to return it to the thimbles and accidentally shot another reenactor in the chest. He was seriously injured but I believe he survived. Reinforced the reason why we never rammed our cartridges
Actually the "film" was a made for TV movie called
The Broken Chain.
It was not a reenactor, it was a
movie extra, that was hurt. So was the shooter.
You see when reenactors are hired by film production companies, they become "extras". This was and is important because folks hear about these accidents and suddenly want to ad all sorts of weird "safety" regulations at living history sites. Right after the event some odd things were suggested at Fort Frederick State Park, and I had to calm down "the powers that be" by pointing out that it was a movie extra involved in shooting a scene, NOT a reenactor at a reenactment doing a battle demonstration.
What happened was the fellow was portraying a Native American. He had a trade gun, with a wooden ramrod, and a brass ramrod tip, but they tend to be wider than the ramrod, and are often called "buttons". The fellow and several other guys portraying Indians had just been shooting a scene where as you mentioned they were running the ramrods down the barrel between shots.
Time was running short, and just as this particular fellow was ramming down another shot, "CUT" was called and then the assistant director started yelling for the "Indians" to run over to another spot so they could get a good camera shot in the fading light. The fellow replaced his ramrod and ran over to the next location, maybe 100 feet away, and there he paused with some other of the extras.
Another Indian pointed out to him that he'd lost that brass button off his musket rammer, as the group was waiting behind the trees while the assistant director got the opposing side set up for the scene. Then "ACTION" was called and the Indians started firing, with white guys firing back. They weren't aiming at each other, but the camera angles made it look like they were, and a fellow extra, about 45° to the side of the fellow shooting, got hit in the chest by some sort of projectile. Away he went to the hospital, and the x-rays showed it was a ramrod tip.
In the haste of moving to the next scene location, the fellow had replaced his ramrod but had not been looking at the tip when it was extracted from the barrel. The tip had come off the ramrod when it was in the trade gun, and he had assumed it had come off as he moved through the woods. He had pointed the trade gun in a safe manner, but..., odd shaped objects don't fly very straight, and apparently a button type ramrod tip positively curves when launched.
LD
