Most insane ? or situation you have ever

[txgho1911]

From Speer website faq
A friend gave me a paper bag with about half a pound of powder. The powder is shiny black and looks like small pieces of pencil lead. How much of this stuff do I load with a 180 grain bullet?

Unlabeled powder cannot be reliably identified and should be treated as scrap. Its non-approved container is also a safety hazard. Discard the powder in a manner consistent with your local disposal regulations.

and
I need oversized primers. After firing cases with a pet load that my brother-in-law figured out, new primers are too small for my primer pockets. They fall out.

You are on thin ice! You have produced a handload with so much pressure that you've deformed the case head. Pressures have to be at least 20 percent over safe levels for this to happen. Stop, scrap any remaining ammo, and use published data from now on.


Any THRers know some big don'ts that have been done or attempted?

 

[griz]

Supposedly a hunter went to the store to get powder for his muzzleloader. It said "black powder" so he checked to make sure the powder in the can was black. He got Bullseye or some other fast pistol powder and used his adjustable black powder measure to get 80 grains (volume).

Just in case this gets read by somebody who doesn't know it, doing that is about the same as making a small bomb that you trigger right next to your face. Do not use smokeless in a muzzleloader.

 

[stans]

 

[Maxinquaye]

Ahhh...the sweet smell of natural selection

 

[Black Snowman]

I misread a label and loaded WC820 when I ment to load WC846 and blew up my FAL. That was a little more excitement than I would have liked.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Unlabelled gun powder makes good lawn fertilizer.

 

[sm]

Heat of the Summer...

Widow of 20 yrs mentioned to some of us her husband was a shooter, upon his passing she and her sister took a bunch of "gun stuff" up to the attic.

Naturally we inquired and she said he "made his own". Red Flag went up, a few of us went over, eased down the ladder, eased up, took one look....

We did not put the ladder up, We did call the Fire Dept, and waited outside.

I was distracted , I only counted 8 kegs of Blackpowder! It was only 102* that day....Fire Dept was real polite about the whole deal....and REAL careful.

Bunch of smokeless powder, ammo, and such....as well....

 

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

Loud Booms on my civilian Range

One day while moonlighting as a rangemaster on a civilian range there were some exceeding loud booms from the far end of the rifle range and as I went to look some shooters had picked up their stuff and were moving away from two shooters that were creating the booms with loud raucous talking.

They were shooting while the other was watching the target in a large spotting scope.. When I arrived they had just started acting like they were celebrating some good shooting and what was occuring was that with their high powered .22's they said they had succeeded in vaporizing some bullets before they reached the targets. The one with the spotting scope was making sure there was no visible bullet impact in the dirt bank behind the target to make sure his buddy was not shooting to one side of the target.

I sent them packing.

Fitz
Police Rangemaster

 

[Gewehr98]

Aw, heck, Fitz!

I've done the same with a couple wildcats, like a .22-06 and even a .220 Swift. Now if they were doing it with a .22 Hornet or .223 Remington, I myself would probably have sent them packing. But it's nothing for a big overbore centerfire .22, especially with lightly-constructed bullets intended for chamberings like the .22 Hornet. Chamber pressures are well within specs. I have a Vais muzzle brake from George Vais. The last time I talked to him (he went back to Greece), he had assembled a pair of .22-378 Weatherby Magnums for the purpose of a barrel erosion test article in Precision Shooting Magazine.

Insanity?

A gunsmith friend of mine was curious about the relative strength of the Carcano action. Long-time lore has predicted that the Carcano would disassemble the bolt and send the striker assembly into the shooter's face if there was a blown primer or overpressure round fired.

He bought one of the Springfield Sporters $39.00 late-war 7.35 Terni Carcanos that had been rechambered to 8x57 Mauser, courtesy of the Germans. If any gun was a hazard to the shooter, it had to be this one. I made two rounds of 8x57, using 170gr Hornady RN bullets, and filled the cases with a compressed charge of a popular fast pistol powder, left best unnamed here at THR. Each of the rounds had the bullet painted blue as a reminder.

We built a test stand using a wooden rifle crate on car tires, with sandbags holding the whole thing down. The front of the box had the muzzle of the rifle protruding, pointed into the 100-yard berm. The string for the trigger left a small hole in the back of the box, and went many yards to the concrete shooting benches, which we tucked behind after setting the video camera rolling. We gave the string a healthy tug...

The video shows the box actually jumping up off of the tires momentarily. It stayed intact, so it contained the mayhem inside.

The rifle split and ejected chunks of the front receiver ring, which were found inside the box. The barrel was located forward, protruding further through the muzzle hole in the containment crate. The bolt was still locked in the receiver, and the striker remained solidly assembled inside the bolt. (Myth Busted!®) The box magazine was blown down from the bottom of the bolt, and the stock was shattered in the area of the front receiver ring. The entire inside of the receiver from the bolt face forward was essentially brass-plated. The bore was clear, so the bullet made it somewhere down range as hell broke loose behind it.

That's insane. In a controlled sort of fashion.

 

[BHPshooter]

This happened to my friend's dad:

One year, while reloading for shotgun, he noticed he had just a little shotgun powder left in a big can. For the sake of space efficiency, he put the rest of it in a smaller can, that still had the label for smokeless [rifle] powder. I don't know why, but he didn't put a new label on it, or anything.

The next year's Deer Season rolls around. He starts loading for his deer rifle.

He goes to the old range (which now no longer exists) to sight in his rifle, when
BOOOOOM!!!

The rifle exploded, literally, and left part of the forestock sticking through his left forearm. He drove himself to the hospital to have it taken care of. The remains of the rifle are now used in the local Hunter's Safety program.

ALWAYS make sure you're using the right stuff.
Wes

 

[molonlabe]

Unlabelled gun powder makes good lawn fertilizer.

Really? I was going to burn mine.

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

Yes, just scatter it and water it in, lawns love nitrates.

A couple come to mind: A local gunsmith has a blown up 1903 Springfield that had been a 25-06 sporter. Seems the owner waited until 11:00 pm the night before Pronghorn season to load up a few rounds. He grabbed a can of 3031 instead of 4831. Next morning he fired at an antelope and saw nothing but a ball of fire. The barrel was about 100 feet in front of him, the scope had been launched and the stock was blown in half by the action. Two of the locking lugs were broken and the third one was cracked. The guy was lucky to only have some wood and brass shrapnel in his hands and arms.

Another one told to my by a local gunshop owner. Guy with a Super Blackhawk loaded up some rounds with 22 grains of Unique, brain fart I guess. First round split the cylinder, and broke the backstrap. The gun owner had the shop owner send it back to Ruger, and they fixed it and sent it back to him, no charge.

 

[crawfish]

Unlabelled gun powder makes good lawn fertilizer.

That is no fun!!!!

Really? I was going to burn mine.

That's no fun either.

I feed my unusable powder to my chickens so that will lay HAND GRAND EGGS