Worst thing you've ever done to a gun???

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redneck2

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So what's in inexcusable sin that you've committed to a fine (or not so fine) firearm???

Saw off the barrels of a fine Parker??? Home re-blue a 1st Generation Colt??

My worst...bulged the barrel of my Springfield loaded stainless. Still don't know how I did it, but something was in the barrel...so yours???
 
Hmm...I've done several bad things to some rather good guns...here goes.
MANY years ago, I had a Colt Commander, series 80. Parkerizd gun, carried it IWB during a very hot summer. Came home and found the entire slide had rusted from my sweat. Got out the dremel, polishing wheel and compund and figured I'd de-rust the gun. Turns out I de-finished the gun and wound up with THE WORST looking 2-tone setup ever imaginable.
Next, a friend of mine gave me 100rnds of reload .45acp ammo and asked me to try them out and tell him what I though. About 40rnds into things, my P220 went BOOM. Cracked frame, extractor gone, and badly damaged slide. Figured I may have had a squib and didn't realize it, I continued firing the rounds thru a custom Springfield 1911. Hit the 90th round and the 1911 lost its ejector, extractor and locked shut. I didn't know much about firearms at this time in life, however i examined the brass and many of them were blown to hell. Asked my friend what he did, and he said he was trying to make factory ammo "better" by "modifying them". Basically he had no clue, I took his word on things and it cost me about $2,000 to learn the lesson about backyard reloads.
Last (and most recent) I have a two-tone P220, nickel plated slide, I carried it as an LE duty weapon until recently. About 2 years ago I was assisting a local boro with a house to house search and had my weapon out. I slipped on ice and braced myself against a brick wall. Braced myself with my gun\gun hand. After work I was putting my P220 in my off-duty rig and noticed I had ground the nickel plating off the side of the gun against the brick wall. Needless to say I was peeved bad, cost $75 to get it brought back to speed. Those are the best ones I can recall...:)
 
Back in 1987 I was walking to go get the mail in my apartment complex late at night and tucked my beautiful MkI Belgian produced Browning HP in my waistband. Tripped on an uneven sidewalk and the pistol fell out and slid down the concrete sidewalk.

Picked it up and felt sick to my stomach. HUGE scrapes all down the side, scuffed front sight. I loved that pistol and could pick off a 12x12 steel plate at 75 yards consistently.

A good gunsmith I knew did an admirable job polishing out the DEEP scraps and rebluing a deep, lusterous blue but the rollmark was forever changed.

Being a poor, recent college grad, I sold that pistol in 1989 (for $300...idiot) and to this day regret that decision.
 
dropped my walther P99 while it was loaded. (coming out of the holster at the end of the day an it slipped.) talk about pucker factor no damage though.


i rolled a jeep cherokee on a dirt road an had a hell of a time cleaning NV desert sand out of my S&W915 an thrashed Moss 500.

by far the worst was splitting open the barrel on my Moss 500.
it was a 20inch bbl 12 ga. what a pain to get a new one.
 
I didn't know much about firearms at this time in life, however i examined the brass and many of them were blown to hell. Asked my friend what he did, and he said he was trying to make factory ammo "better" by "modifying them". Basically he had no clue, I took his word on things and it cost me about $2,000 to learn the lesson about backyard reloads.

I see reloaded ammo for sale at auctions sometimes. This is one good reason I won't touch it. My own stuff I trust, Bubba's reloads, not.
 
My mistake was believing Pyrodex was without corrosive properties and neglecting to clean a dirty firearm in a reasonable amount of time.

My first BP rifle, a nice Hawkins-style .50cal was rusted so horrendously after letting it languish dirty in its case for nearly a week that I gave it away in disgust.
This experience did permanently overhaul my shooting/cleaning habits for the better though, assuming there's a silver lining.
 
I have an m44 Mosin nagant that I bought fro really cheap. It shot patterns wider than a cylinder bore shotgun. There was almost no rifling at the crown so I tried a home counterboring job. I used a power drill for this and I had to drill about 1/2" to get some good rifling. I tookmy time and drilled really straight, but on the last little bit I wanted to remove, the drill bit seized up, the rifle spun in my hand and the front sight tore my hand open. I pulled the drill out and found that the new bore became oblong and the muzzle was fubar.

Oh well, cheap lesson learned, I'll never attempt it with an expensive rifle.:eek:
 
On my first Romanian AK, I tack welded the hand guard to the barrel after I busted the pin that usually holds it. It was a quicker solution then waiting for a pin to be ordered in... but I won't be getting it back off again. :)

AKPainting-XX-Oops.jpg

AKPainting-XX-OopsWeld.jpg
 
I once took the trigger pack out of my 10/22 to clean it. I played with it a bit (cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger), when suddenly, parts flew EVERYWHERE. It took me a couple hours, a long look at the instruction manual, and a lot of work with probes (read: fine screwdrivers) to put it back together. It fires fine now, though.

Over the years with our little charter arms .22 revolver, my family has always pulled on the ejection rod to open it, never on the lever on the side of the reciever. Somehow, sometime, the little lever just stopped working and now the only way to use it is to pull the ejection rod.

Though not an actual firearm, I did something or other to my paintball gun (I don't know what) so that when a gas cartridge is put in, it discharges all the gas at once.
 
took a ruger mk2 pistol to the gunshop to have the receiver tapped because i had tried different mounts and couldnt find one just right so i had it tapped.apparantly,the guy tapping it didnt use the right tools because the mount was now at an angle and the smiling guy said.."its the best i could do,its close".so i pay a different guy to fill in the boogered holes and refinish it.nice..black receiver with nice silvery solder smeared all over the top.ended up sending it back to ruger,looked great.but the color looked purplish now and a black barrel.flat out wanted to throw it in the lake.sold it for 100 bucks and got another with the holes already there(the slabside). on a beautiful antique rifle-blew the barrel in half from a gunsmiths reloads.was an old ballard/williams patent gunhanded down from a deceased relative.octagon barrel,beautiful wood.smith said he could make some light reloads for it and it was safe.instant trash.i personally ruined a gun,was a 44 cap/ball revolver.one of those 35 dollar kits sears used to sell.didnt seal the cylinder nuff and had a chainfire.threw it barrel forward the second it started and hot footed it behind a ditch.not much left.threw it in a hollow tree trunk on my way back to the car in disgust.
 
When I was in High School I sanded all those silly stamp marks off my Dads M1 Carbine stock and refinished it for him.
Couldn't find anything to use for a stain so I used brown shoe polish. Actually, the shoe polish looks pretty good and has held up real well.
 
Ruger vs. Truck

I had the misfortune of being the first person that a responding police patrol team saw upon their arrival at the front exit of my friends family's restaurant that was being burgled. I was armed with a .44 Ruger semi rifle. Small town dispatcher neglected to inform the two officers of my whereabouts so the friendly officers pointed their weapons (later determined to be a .357 and a 12 ga.) at me while demanding that I disarm. I promptly and carefully complied with their instructions while concentrating on controlling my bladder. After being allowed to stand back up and wipe the dirt out from between my lips and the boot print from the back of my neck, I was shocked to see my friends father, the restaurant owner, drive swiftly into the gravel parking lot and run right the HECK over the shiny new Ruger. The gun was trashed but still functioned. I on the other hand was not trashed, but was changed in other ways, mainly in that I would always, after that incident, try to look ahead and figure out how a situation would develop and what my best course of action would be.
 
Leaned my dads .22 Speed Master against a truck. It fell in the gravel driveway and split a chunk of wood from the foreend. I bought it, fixed it and made a holster for it, for my dirt bike. It worked fine except a bolt on the shock rubbed threw the holster and wore a deep grove into the receiver. Fixed it again and used a cheep do it your self-rebluing kit, it looked good for about a year but the finish didn’t hold up. I ended up painting it black; it looked good and lasted for years. I over lubed it and shot about a thousand rounds in it, until the spring fell out of the extractor, because the grit had worn a hole in the bolt. I made a new spring that lasted many years (it's still working) I decided to repaint after doing a detailed strip, clean, two cotes of paint and reassembling …I discovered that I was using baby blue paint that looked black under florescent light. That gun was a tack driver and served we well from 12 years old and up. I'm glad I got all that out of my system while I was a kid.
 
Tried my hand at gunsmithing. I wanted to tighten the slide on a Colt officers stainless, so I took a hammer and started "tightening" that 'ol slide.
Ended up breaking off the left rear corner of the slide! Gun still works but....... Dohhhhhhh!!!! what an idiot I am
 
In my younger and (more) foolish days, I bought a Remington Rand 1911A1 (1942 or '43 production) and had it customised into a carry gun... great carry gun, but ruined the collector value. (Admittedly, at the time - early '80's, in South Africa - there WAS no collector value, and these guns were selling dirt cheap. However, if I had it here, now, it would be worth bucks in its original condition...)

Also in my younger and (more) foolish days, I learned the hard way that when you clean a gun, you need to keep count of the patches that go into the gun, so as to make sure that the same number come out! I ended up a cleaning session by swabbing a .270 rifle barrel with an oiled patch, then used two dry patches to soak up any excess oil. Unfortunately ( :rolleyes: ) I didn't check to see that the last patch came out... When I next fired the rifle, I blew up the barrel about 6" from the muzzle! Very scary and sobering moment... Fortunately, I wasn't injured at all, but I've learned since then to religiously count my patches!
 
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