[Cosmoline]

Well I got a little carried away today working up loads for the .54 smoothie flinter. The bore was getting really fouled and I got in a conversation with a fella as I was finishing loading. Short story short, I forgot to ram home all the way and the ball was only about 2/3rds back, with tons of space between it and the charge of about 90 FFFG. I thought I was holding the long ramrod but I was holding the short one, and what I thought was the top of the charge was a bunch of fowling.

On the plus side, it was a bullseye at fifty yards, which is darn fine for a smooth bore. But the rifle shook violently with a very strange kind of recoil I've never experienced before. My entire ribcage hurt and I had trouble drawing breath for a while. I'm not a small or vulnerable fellow, and I'm used to firearms with a lot of recoil. This was a different ballgame, though. To knock the wind out of me takes some very serious force, like a baseball bat or a small car.

The other plus is the rifle did NOT kaboom and the barrel has nary a bulge inside or out. Nor did the stock split, most likely because I used high end wood on the rebuild. My initial cruddy walnut stock likely would have cracked under that abuse.

Anyway, watch those conversations during the load!

[Oyeboten]

Yipes!


Glad it did not end up looking like a Snake who'd swallowed an Egg...or worse!



Good mention..."Ram-all-the-Way"...


Give that 'short' Rod the Heave-Ho...so no more mix-ups.

[madcratebuilder]

Glad your not hurt and your rifle is OK. Thanks for posting this, lot of guys wouldn't want to talk about it. This should be a warning to all of us that it can happen to you. No 'short rod' for me, not with the senior moments I have.

[alemonkey]

Wow, I'm glad you're ok. If a .54 kicked that hard it's a good thing you weren't shooting something really big, like a .72.

[BlackNet]

smaller balls or thinner patches. mark that ramrod for empty then for a proper load and proper seating.

[4v50 Gary]

Good point about paying attention. I'm glad you're not seriously hurt and that your gun is undamaged.

[Ratdog68]

Just yesterday... I got to droolin' over another's Sharps and didn't even catch that when he went downrange to set his target to begin shooting... put his target up on my station... and I had to start all over with my efforts. :rolleyes: Paying attention to the little things... we all forget to do so from time to time. Glad to hear it all turned out ok for ya though. I KNOW you feel good about the stock holding up too. :cool:

[BCRider]

It's great to hear that both you and the gun are OK.

It also lends credence to the warnings I've read about not including any sort of air pocket in with a load of BP. Likely because the powder had lots of room to lay down along the bottom of the barrel it flashed up along the top surface from end to end and thus burned far faster than it would otherwise where it would burn from the back to the front in a slower manner due to the packing. As a result you got a hellish pressure spike. What probably saved you and the gun was the fact that it was a BIG volume so the pressure didn't build to too high a value. High enough and fast enough to bust ya a good'un in the chops of course but not so high as to bulge or burst the barrel.

I'd be looking at dumping the use of a mid sized rod as well.