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Very stupid, very lucky

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That's what you can get from the 8th comment down when viewed on you tube but may be just that, a comment by somebody that does not really know, that's how rumors start and then get perpetuated .

I got my info from the video explanation, not from the comments. Regardless, someone was very stupid and someone very lucky. Thanks
 
It's likely he graduated from the School O' Hard Knocks. This kind of dumb is eventually self-solving, but the sad part is that most of the time these types hurt other people along the way to their last trick. An old friend of mine used to say, "Y'know -- It's too bad that `stupid' ain't painful. It'd be a lot less popular."
 
I got my info from the video explanation, not from the comments. Regardless, someone was very stupid and someone very lucky. Thanks

I see it now, I looked at the comments below that. Like you said stupid. It's not an isolated case ether as there is a bunch of people testing the Forest Gump theory .
 
I came across a man snapping caps on a new CVA "Kentucky" rifle during deer season once. I stopped to see if he needed help, and sure enough he did. It was a brand new rifle - a gift from his son - and he had never fired it before. Or cleaned it. The breech was clogged with grease as it turned out, and a truly lucky thing that was! The gentleman was in his 60's, and he had gone to the store where his son bought that rifle for some advice on loading it. The clerk had sold his son a powder flask with a 60-grain spout on it and a pound of powder, a sack of .440 round balls and some pre- cut patches, and a tin of percussion caps. When the new owner asked about how much powder to use, the clerk told him "Put 4 or 5 of these spout fulls in. You can't over-charge a muzzleloader. If you put in too much the extra just blows out of the muzzle."
I had a ball puller that fitted his ramrod in my hunting pouch, so we pulled his charge. When we got the patched ball out I tipped the rifle and dumped the powder out onto a big leaf --- and dumped --- and dumped. My best guess is, he had loaded close to 400 grains of powder into that rifle. I looked at it, then poured a little into my palm from his flask. Yep! It was all FFFFg!
We got his rifle cleaned --- I had a jag that fit his ramrod too --- and I whittled a "field-expedient" powder measure from a piece of cane I cut nearby, and trimmed it to take 50 grains. My belt pistol uses 25 grains, so two of those. Loaded the cleaned rifle and he fired it at a mark right there. When I was sure he had the loading sequence down, I went on my way, having given him enough 2Fg from my horn for a few charges and explained why the clerk's advice was wrong AND DANGEROUS!
He was horrified.
A couple days later I told the NH Field Rep for the NMLRA about that incident and he took it to the NH Fish & Game folks. The result was the beginning of the Muzzleloading Hunter Safety courses in New Hampshire, which spread to other states in New England and was finally adopted by the NMLRA as their own ML Hunter Safety Program nationwide, all because some clerk repeated an old myth about black powder and the customer got lucky and survived the experience.
My father used to say, "Y'know --- Every once in a while, even a blind hog stumbles across an acorn." I expect this was the kind of acorn he was talking about.
 
What I cannot understand is that the makers of these firearms -- produced to get increased sales because of an extended "Primitive season" -- didn't ensure that they were CLEARLY marked "BLACK POWDER ONLY"
Well if Joe-Sixpack isn't reading the manual that came with the rifle or the label on the powder, I'm not sure a label on the gun itself is going to
affect anything.

LD
 
Hm, all of the Muzzle Loaders made after 1985 I owe are marked Black Powder only.

Not marked in that way are those made prior to 1900 and for example the Belgian Made Centaure of the time 1959 to 1973.
 
I have a neighbour who read about a long-obsolete air rifle that was designed to be used with a squirt of some kind of flammable oil in the chamber. It was some German-made high-quality rifle, and the release of the spring generated enough heat to ignite the oil and create a super-powered pellet gun. Against all better judgment and advice, he is currently experimenting with squirts of engine-starter spray into a $40 Chinese piece of junk pellet gun.

I've called dibs on some of his tools.

It’s called dieseling and can happen from an overlubed gun or one that has a bit of oil in it still. :)
 
Late 1980's and I was taking the classroom course to become 4-H Certified so I would be allowed to coach the muzzleloading discipline for the Minnesota 4-H Shooting Sports program. The instructor related one of his very own 'very stupid, very lucky' moments.

A friend was visiting and was being shown the various items in the instructor's large, built-in, glass-fronted, gun cabinet on display in the living room. While being shown a .50 caliber percussion rifle the instructor proceeded to snap caps to show the visitor how the ignition system worked. (You can see this coming, right?) First cap - nothing. Second cap - plenty. It was pointed at the cabinet and a round ball hunting load made a direct hit on the floorplate of a very ornate unmentionable.

Talk about chaos in your living room.

It smacks of being a tall tale - but the fact he says he's the one who did it makes me believe it.
 
It’s called dieseling and can happen from an overlubed gun or one that has a bit of oil in it still. :)

That's the term! I'd forgotten. The point is that dieseling is normally considered a harmful and dangerous problem with airguns; that German gun, a HW Barrakuda I think, was an unusual exception to that rule. But there are always folks who latch on to the exception...rather than the rule itself...and then get themselves, or others, into trouble.

You see it all the time on internet forums. A beginner asks a question; 50 posters come on and say "No! Dangerous! Don't do that!" The newbie comes back and says "But I think..." and finally one other know-nothing pipes up and says "You should be okay..."

Invariably, the next post is the original newbie: "Okay, I'm gonna try that; wish me luck!"

:doh:

People hear what they want to hear, no matter how long it takes...
 
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My story occurred in Santa Rosa, CA. A man bought his powder, and rifle from a store and wanted to see it go off. He went out to his porch, poured powder down the muzzle from the can, and then stuffed a wad, a large wad, of toilet paper down the bore. He put one hand on the fore stock and pulled the trigger. The wad of tp didn't eject, it just scrunched up into a beautiful bore obstruction. As they say, the rest is history.
 
That's what you can get from the 8th comment down when viewed on you tube but may be just that, a comment by somebody that does not really know, that's how rumors start and then get perpetuated .

^A good lesson on how any video can be misread or misleading.

It’s called dieseling and can happen from an overlubed gun or one that has a bit of oil in it still. :)

Named after Rudolf Diesel, who used the principle to invent his popular engine.
 
Poor Diesel went missing though.. suspected either murder or suicide.


Back to muzzleloaders - does anyone else wince when they see someone smash the ramrod down a hundred times whilst saying between hits “you..have..to..make..sure..it’s..seated..firmly..against..the..charge” lol
 

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