Odd Question about dynamite and shotguns

Status
Not open for further replies.
F

FuzzyBunny

Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2007
Messages
690
Location
Texas
Hope this is the right part of the forum.
In my long ago youth I loved to read westerns.

One story I recall from time to time is about a group of good guys being surrounded. This was during the building of the contental railroad. They were under seige by indians or radical chinese workers or some such.

Ok, here is the gun part. They had a box of dynamite with them. One guy came up with the idea of pouring the lead out of a shell and putting a stick/sawed off broom handle or the like in the barrel and attaching a stick or 2 of explosive with a fuse on it. He would light the fuse and fire it like a mortor behind the rocks where the bad guys were hiding.

First I have no idea how he attached it to the stick, no duct tape so I guess bailing wire or somesuch, not important. But would that even work? Seems it would be a heck of a pressure buildup and could shotguns of that era do that without blowing up?

And the last question is did anyone else read this book and recall the name?
 
It possibly could work with the black powder shotgun shells of the time.
Pressure would not be too extreme with a broom stick instead of the shot I would guess.
Way more then one ramrod has been shot out of a black powder gun over the years with no harm.

The other one I remember seeing more often was throwing the dynamite stick and shooting it in the air with a sixgun right over the bad guys.
Roy and Gene did that a lot!

That definitely won't work as a bullet from a handgun will not set off a stick of dynamite.
Even if Gene or Roy could have hit it.

rc
 
Last edited:
It would work as long as it didn't fit too tightly. People have done similar things with muzzleloader ramrods or cleaning rods. And with muzzleloaders you can easily adjust the powder charge to get the range you want. It'd work just fine as a "rifle grenade" if done halfway right.
 
Have not heard of this incident, but it is not unlike the way M1 Garands used blank cartridges to propel rifle grenades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M7_grenade_launcher

By removing the shot from a shotgun shell, you basically have a blank. Sticking a stick into the shotgun barrel, dynamite attached, is similar to a rifle grenade on the front of a rifle.

That being said, I would not be the guy to actually shoot it. :eek:
 
If one had a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook back in the day, there was an illustration of a "shotgun mortar" operating on just this principal.
One was supposed to use the thing to propel not dynamite sticks but rather Molotov cocktails.... It occurred to me that if the stick didn't fit the neck of the bottle REALLY well, you were going to have a rather messy time of it.
 
Plenty of ramrods have been launched over the years, but I'm guessing that a broomstick with a couple of sticks of dynamite added would be quite a bit heavier. I wouldn't want to be near it.

Sounds like a good Mythbusters idea though...
 
Sure it would work, if designed well. Subjecting an explosive to shock or pressure when you don't want it to explode is not advised though. Dynamite was nitroglycerin made stable with absorbent material. Nitrogylcerin by itself is very shock sensative and can go off just by dropping a vial of it.
But absorbed in some material was more stable.
It could sweat over time and deposit crystals or nitroglycerin on the outside that were very shock sensative.
Being based on nitroglycerin I wouldn't want to be subjecting it to shock each time I fired it off.


Most items intended to be launched from guns sit in front of the muzzle and are not fired from within the gun. As a result the payload would not be subject to the same pressure or friction that a projectile travelling down the bore would be. Though it still needs to be safe and stable enough to survive the shock of launch.


They launch rifle grenades and lines from ships all the time using the same principal.

Before underbarrel grenade launchers most rifles used what was simply a metal cylinder that encircled and extended past the barrel.
These are on many civilian owned surplus firearms for example.
There is also shotgun varieties.

Most used a special blank round that wouldn't produce excessive pressure with the large payload. A grenade was then fitted over the end and launched.




There is also a variety of similar improvised weapons.

For example Che Guevera mentioned in his book firing what amounted to molotovs using a wooden rod in a shotgun. Between the rod and the molotov was some rubber.
These were fired at 45 degree angles and fitted with an improvised bipod that combined with the buttstock fired them at the correct angle.
He felt it was quite accurate out to 100 meters, so close to 100 yards.
A widely followed Communist fighter his following was large and so tactics he mentioned were adopted by many (and countered by many) so you should be able to find examples of its use.


To go back even further in history many cannons firing exploding cannon balls and other explosive projectiles used wooden fuses. These were actually fired down the bore, and so anything that exposed the internal explosive to the pressure, heat, and combustion in the barrel would have prematurely set off the cannon ball. Wooden fuses could be constructed that sealed them shut, but still reliably burned and set them off down range.


Using regular fuses in dynamite would pose a few potential problems. One is the muzzle blast lighting it near the explosive and setting it off prematurely, amounting to lighting the fuse hole on firing.
The other is the airflow during flight causing it to burn differently, faster, or go out. The fuse would also need to be in securely enough for flight.
 
Last edited:
Sounds like the writer didn't know much about dynamite.

I don't think dynamite circa 1870's was something that would take the shock of being fired from a shotgun, much less take the heat of the black powder charge.

Dynamite (in the 1870's) was merely nitroglycerin mixed with sawdust and clay to try and keep it more stable than plain ole liquid nitroglycerin. Long term storage of dynamite would cause the sticks to "weep" or"sweat" and if not turned regularly the nitroglycerin would sweat and form crystals......not good.


Teddy Roosevelt used a dynamite cannon in the Spanish American War, powered by compressed air.

The movie Sorcerer with Roy Scheider was about transporting old weeping dynamite through the jungle.
 
I read somewhere that Che Guevara used a similar setup with a grenade instead of dynamite and even wrote a manual on how to build something like this, since he was planning to "spread" revolution after he was done with Cuba. Ah radicals...
 
That definitely won't work as a bullet from a handgun will not set off a stick of dynamite.
Even if Gene or Roy could have hit it.
Click to expand...
I know it true just saw Django do it and blew bad guy all to pieces :rolleyes: Movies don't lie at least not those made by Q T
 
But would that even work?
Click to expand...

Like a short round it would fall dangerously close and kill/maim/wound/scare the poo out of them.

The masses are simply too different to produce the needed range even if the barrels didn't flower.
 
You said it was an odd question, but it was more odd than I anticipated.

But, I enjoyed the chuckle. I have no idea if it would work or not, but it was odd enough to be funny.
 
Years back they had what they called "ditching dynamite". When you wanted to build a ditch you drilled a hole in the soil and dropped in a stick moved down about 12 ft, driil another hole and loaded it and so on till the end of the ditch, no caps were necessary. The only cap used was on the first stick. When the first stick blew, the concussion set the others off and it traveled down the line blowing out your ditch.
This stuff was quite unstable and it had to be handled carefully. It would go off if it was shot with a rifle. my dad and uncle did it a couple times when removing tree stumps.
The story was told that some market hunters used it to kill ducks by tying it to a decoy and shooting it with a rifle and killing large flocks of ducks.





'



''
 
Zoogster said:
To go back even further in history many cannons firing exploding cannon balls and other explosive projectiles used wooden fuses. These were actually fired down the bore, and so anything that exposed the internal explosive to the pressure, heat, and combustion in the barrel would have prematurely set off the cannon ball. Wooden fuses could be constructed that sealed them shut, but still reliably burned and set them off down range.
Click to expand...

This works because a spherical object is inherently strong, and cannot really break or deform as long as it is kept spherical. Being in a cannon bore, the bore keeps it from expanding at the sides, perpendicular to the point of pressure, so it cannot deform or break. You see this same concept in paintball guns today. A dramatically undersized paintball may explode when fired because it is not kept spherical, but one that is properly matched to the barrel will maintain its shape and remain intact when firing.
 
I would not try this with C4 much less dynamite. With C4 you need heat and pressure. Both those things can be found in a gun barrel.
 
A better use of the broom handle would have been as a throwing lever for the attached dynamite. Much like the German "potato masher " stick grenade. It would have given yon cowboys at least as much distance and a great deal more certitude.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2
 
bolthead said:
I read somewhere that Che Guevara used a similar setup with a grenade instead of dynamite and even wrote a manual on how to build something like this, since he was planning to "spread" revolution after he was done with Cuba. Ah radicals...
Click to expand...
Yep, Che Guevarra provided illustrated instructions on how to turn a cut-down single-barrel shotgun into an improvised grenade launcher in his book, Guerrilla Warfare.
 
"With C4 you need heat and pressure"


Not exactly: With all high explosives you need VELOCITY, which is normally the velocity of the shock wave produced by the blasting cap (or det cord) that initiates the charge. This is why C-4 is insensitive to a rifle bullet (and which is why dynamite isn't). If I remember right, the initiation velocity for C-4 is about 20,000 FPS. Been thirty years since that school though, so someone else might want to correct the figure.

Straight Dynamite will detonate when shot with a high velocity bullet.



Willie

.
 
You can light a tiny bit of C4 and cook with it.
You better not stomp on it while it is burning.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

C
  • Locked
Question about Point of Aim??
Replies
19
Views
746
rangerruck
R
M
  • Locked
Two questions on Remington Model 31.
Replies
15
Views
3K
simmonsguns
S
G
  • Locked
Some questions about ramping a 9mm bolt
Replies
6
Views
753
GE-Mini-Gun
G
D
  • Locked
Questions about Wilson case trimmer
Replies
7
Views
496
joneb
joneb
I
  • Locked
Some musings and some questions - a combo gun?
Replies
9
Views
834
Iain
I
Back
Top