We need a new category... Blunders and miscues?

[Crash_Corrigan]

I'm back with another stupid episode. I moved last summer from my tin trailer into a lovely rental home here in Las Vegas. However for many reasons I have yet to fully unpack my stuff properly.

I fell in love with a Mihec mold recently and bought it. It is supposed to cast 130 gr 9mm boolits without lube grooves. It is designed to allow easy powder coating of the boolit and thereby negate the lube that smokes up so badly.

I got busy and cast about 600 or so of these babies in the 8 cavity mold. They were beautiful. I then PC'd about 500 of them in a nice Bacon Grease color coating. I was proud of myself for doing such a good job. I then set up my new Dillon XL 650 press and proceeded to load 300 or so with a loading of 5.6 Gr of AA #5 and a OAL of 1.075. After I had boxed the last of 6 boxes of new ammo I decided to put one into the chamber of my Browning Hi-Power.

It went in until the last 1/8 of an inch. There it stuck. The boolit was too fat. I had not found my calipers yet. I searched in vain for days in my overflowing garage in the miserable heat of Las Vegas. I finally just ordered a set from FS Reloading and they arrived in two days. My boolits were coming up as anywhere from .362 to .364 in diameter and as such did not fit at all. I looked for my cage gauge in 9MM and my sizing dies in .357. Again no joy and I ordered new ones. While awaiting the arrival of these I put away the Browning and forgot about it.

Some days later I ran across the Browning and noticed that the slide was not in battery. I pushed on it and it was sticking. I was thinking ahead(too much) of having this weapon looked at by a gunsmith and anticipating another expensive repair when I managed to close the slide. Now I then tried to pull it open, without success. Somehow I managed to get the pistol to work.

Yes! That fat boolit worked just fine....the Browning belched out that boolit to my surprise from the business end of the barrel. The round went through the opened door of the room. It made neat little round holes through both sides of the wooden interior door and continued into the adjacent wall.

It made a neat hole in my side of the wall but a nasty hole on the other side of the wall which happened to be my kitchen. It missed the cat relieving himself in the cat box and plowed into the floor about 6 inches from the edge of a built in cabinet. The cat erupted from the toilet facility with a major yowl and hiked himself into the bedroom and was not found for hours and hours.

The boolit was not yet done...it gouged out a 2 inch chunk of the linoleum and concrete floor spattering the kitchen with pieces of lead, flooring and powder coating flakes as far as 8 feet away as it punched into the wooden cabinet at about an 1 inch altitude. It apparently stopped there as nothing exited from the base of the cabinet adjacent to the refrigerator.

Anybody got a decent way to fix the gouge in the floor and camoflauge the damage so I do not have to pay to have the kitchen refloored? The holes in the wall and the door are a easy fix with the right sized corks and spackle and paint. The floor not so much.

Hey at least I missed killing the cat...........

[DerekP Houston]

Yikes!

[MyFlatline]

Dang, now that's a story.

[groundsclown]

First off, glad you & your cat are ok & the only victims are some flooring, cabinets & walls.
Obviously wood putty for the wood work & Spackle for the drywall will take care of those.
The linoleum I'd start by looking behind the fridge against the wall & see if you can cut a small square to fit what you'll need...then simply push the fridge back & hopefully no one will be the wiser.
Cut out the damaged, fill with filler then glue down your newly acquired patch.

Many many years ago when I was young & dumb (now I'm older & wiser) I broke my left arm at the wrist. 2 weeks went by in a cast and I was about 2 weeks away from beginning the police academy. Knowing full well they wouldn't allow me to begin classes with the injury, I cut the cast off...<rolls eyes> & thought it would be a grand idea to see if I could handle the 92f that I planned on using. Dropped the mag but didn't check the chamber...sent a speer gold dot thru the bedroom wall, into the kitchen, downward into the cabinets, thru the Tupperware (unknowingly) and came to rest somewhere on the other side in the exterior wall.
I managed to hide & patch all the damage before my better half came home. Only the dog & I knew what happened & he wasn't going to rat me out...But the damn Tupperware spilled the beans. Frags of gold dot actually. Weeks later my wife went to get a container & asked why a hole & pieces of copper jacket was in her Tupperware....DOH!!!!

[Tom W.]

Gotta watch where you put your fingers...

I'll bet the cat looks at you somewhat askance now.....or maybe just glares......

[runfiverun]

cat'll never use the litter box again either..:lol:

the best your gonna do with the linoleum is to cut a patch from somewhere else, match it in and glue the whole area down nice and smooth.

[308Jeff]

Yeah, that linoleum isn't hard to do, just takes patience to make it look good.

[308Jeff]

Oh yeah, I assume that username was earned. :)

[frkelly74]

Replace the floor make your repairs. It's called tuition.

[samari46]

Wife dropped a hot frying pan on the kitchen floor. We had those peel and stick tiles on the floor. Used a box cutter to cut out the melted areas and since I had extra tiles cleaned off the old glue with acetone and made a patch out of one of the spare tiles. came out almost invisible as far as matching up the pattern. Frank

[Tom W.]

cat'll never use the litter box again either..


Probably won't need to for a while......

[Crash_Corrigan]

The poor cat's name is Sir George. I am thinking about changing it to Sir George III. I would say it as Sir George da turd. He still won't look at me!

[Thundarstick]

I have a friend who, while preparing to clean his 380, put a HP round through his left hand!

[kungfustyle]

well at least the cat was in the right spot when you scared the **** out of it. I bet you had to change your shorts too.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Cats have it too easy. If you are generous enough to want your landlord to remain serene and untroubled, you could carve a hard knot out of a similar piece of wood. Drill the bullet hole a little smaller, ream it with some kind of blunt rotary... er... thing, to make the grain swirl around the hole, hammer the knot in tightly with a little glue, and finish off flush.

In the early 1990s I had a couple of interesting experiences with the Portuguese Guedes, which has a hammer with fixed striker inside the breechblock. In my relatively youthful innocence I used a small charge of slow powder, because slow sounded safer. One or two shots showed very modest pressure indications, but then a small piece blew out of the centre of the primer, which I can only think was due to a very brief hangfire allowing the hammer to bounce. The hammer broke the fiendishly complex mainspring, so now I know I can carve and heat-treat a replacement from a piece of truck spring.

I later worked up a very reassuring load with Reloder 7, but that still went nowhere near filling the case. My standard practice was to use a kapok filler, from cigarette filter tips, which I still think was the right one. But kapok positions the powder, and doesn't influence the volumetric ratio. So I thought "What about a denser filler which burns away on its way down the bore?" So I filled up the case with some really bad black powder which was available in the UK then. I reasoned that a feeble load plus part of a feeble load wouldn't add up to more than a moderate load, and indeed the primer and case deformation, and chronographed velocity, agreed with that.

But... With the first and only two shots I fired, the case necks, made from modern .348 Winchester, were wrenched off and carried down the bore with the bullet. This was an almost excessively interesting experience. Dr. Franklin Mann, in 1910, obtained the same result by the experimental use of sand, presumably in a condemned barrel. It is known that dry sandbags will stop a bullet in less distance than damp ones, into which it is harder to poke your finger at finger velocity. I suppose that in the absence of lubricating moisture, it has more of a tendency to momentarily lock together, and into brass.

We live and learn. Both, preferably.

[OS OK]

I have a friend who, while preparing to clean his 380, put a HP round through his left hand!

Did he get good expansion?

Yep, have a friend up country from me...took the little and ring fingers off the left hand, 1911.
There is a procedure for handling weapons especially a semi auto pistol...you break it, well...
You have to handle an auto like your handling rattle snakes...elsewize, the day is coming and your gonna get got!

[bedbugbilly]

Just two words . . . . "dummy round"

And I don't think there would be enough server space of the forum you suggest . . . .

Glad no one got hurt but the cat only has 8 lives left now.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I have a friend who, while preparing to clean his 380, put a HP round through his left hand!

If a man can't put a bullet through his own hand, whose can he? Unless it hit solid enough bone for a fragment-extracting session (What fun!), I doubt if the hollow point made any difference.

[runfiverun]

I think Crash just wants to see me get another 5-K posts telling about the dumb stuff I have done. :lol:

[popper]

I suppose the thread would be limited to gun stuff - else the 'forgot to put the drain plug in' and 'flying W' stuff will show up too. I did take out a chunk on floor with a 308W cast from 6". Never found any sign of boolit. Got some concrete splatters though. AR10 will slam fire.

[Hickok]

Long ago in my teenage days, and my first time out with a cap and ball .44 Colt, I learned the importance of proper fitting percussion caps and nipples/cones.

Chain fire! [smilie=w:A BIG cloud of smoke, and hand numbing recoil. The ball at the 6 o/clock position jammed into the loading lever. I don't know where the other balls went, but I don't think they followed the same direction as the one that went down the barrel!

Loose caps, and the fire jumped across the back of the cylinder. I never believed the stories of chain fire due to flash jumping the balls at the front of the cylinder, but I do know that loose caps not fitting tightly on the nipples/cones can cause a chain fire.

It sure makes a heck of a short range defense load!:bigsmyl2:

I now will gently file/dress my nipples/cones to fit percussion caps tightly on all my cap and ball revolvers.

[DerekP Houston]

I suppose the thread would be limited to gun stuff - else the 'forgot to put the drain plug in' and 'flying W' stuff will show up too. I did take out a chunk on floor with a 308W cast from 6". Never found any sign of boolit. Got some concrete splatters though. AR10 will slam fire.

I didn't forget the drain plug....but I didn't know you were supposed to tighten it.... whoopsie!

[Tom W.]

I was home one drizzlday call. "Come get me! I shot my foot off !"
Huh? Who are you?
" It's Tommy! I shot my foot off !"
Ok. I'll be there as soon as asI can. My wife will call the ER and let them know we are coming.
Fifteen minutes later pulled up in Tommy's yard and rush into his house expecting a bloody stump. Tommy had the sneakers on and his right foot wrapped in a towel. Seems he was in the back yard shooting a BP Colt replica and cocking the revolver muzzle down next to his leg ,then raising the revolver and taking the shot. The last time he fired it while raising the revolver and boom!

We got to the ER and the sheriff department had a representative there. The deputy looked at me and said " Tom, you didn't shoot him, did you?"
I told him it was self inflicted. He just called me because it wouldbhave taken the ambulance service an hour to get him to the hospital.

[Tom W.]

I hate trying to post with this tablet. I always get screwed up sentences.

Anyway the ball didn't get all the way through his foot. I saw the X-ray, and he put a crescent on the edge of his instep. He also made a necklace of that ball, complete with the bone fragment.


Oh, the deputy just left without saying another word or filling out any paperwork. They knew me back then.

[Eldon]

Unsafe with a gun and got handle wrong too.

It was "Wrong Way” Corrigan.

"look it up"

[Ballistics in Scotland]

A friend's wife told me how to make crème caramel by simmering an unopened can of condensed milk in water for five hours. The sugar content raises the boiling point above that of the water. But she made a bad mistake. She forgot to tell me not to go to sleep. It boiled dry and I was woken by the explosion, to find an oval saucepan and a oval pattern of crème caramel on the ceiling. What is more invisible traces were unremovable, and in the damp weather every winter I grew a crop of black mould. I ended up with a 1970s style expanded polystyrene tiled ceiling in the 1990s.

One of my ancient childhood friends told me about an army comrade who fell into suicidal depression on the plains of India in the days before air-conditioning or modern communications. As a soldier, however, he knew that head wounds are occasionally survivable. Probably he had never seen how different they are at muzzle-contact range, in ways you probably don't want to think about. So he adopted the traditional stratagem of filling the barrel of his Lee-Enfield with water. At the last moment, however, he became reconciled with this world, and took the muzzle from his head. But in his a nervous state he tripped the trigger by mistake, and removed most of his ear.

On waking up in hospital, he saw by his bedside the godlike figure of the regimental sergeant-major, a rank enlisted men achieve by a more reliable selection process than officers become generals. Suicide being a crime in those days, the patient asked whether he would go to jail, or be dismissed from the army. The sergeant-major assured him with utmost courtesy that there was no question of this for a foolish accident which had been its own punishment. He would remain in the service, and put under stoppages for five pounds ten shillings, to pay for the rifle he had destroyed.

There is always good in a learning experience, especially if it happens to someone else. The remarkable thing here is just how little obvious harm was done. The victim’s eardrum wasn't burst, which is surprising. It was also a great grievance of his that he had to part with several months’ pay. The rifle, although undoubtedly damaged after firing several hundred extra grains of projectile, had not failed in any dramatic way. I take this to be because a sudden check by an obstruction is much worse than resistance from the start.

[Ateam]

I made this mistake this spring and have not told a single person.

I was shooting some loads over my chrono and into wet newsprint to get an idea what was happening with some 250ftx out of my marlin 1895gbl 45-70. I find that the lowered position of the tailgate of my f150 is the perfect height to set my chrono. Well I shot two shots almost touching, and was about to shoot a third and thought better of it, if it went into the same grouping, it would likely destroy the other two captured slugs. While lowering the hammer, it slipped, and fell with enough oompf to fire the rifle which happened to be pointing at my tailgate. I got a nice 458 hole in one side and out the other, the holes are hidden when the gate is closed so it has escaped any ones notice so far. First accidental discharge ever.

It did clean out the guts of the handle mechanism nicely though. I got off cheap for as bad as it could have gone.

[rintinglen]

Back in 1976, My good friend Warren bought a new 1911 and had "a super trigger job" done to it. We took it out to a rural area in North San Diego to test and had made a rest on the roof of my 1973 Pinto Station Wagon to do some accuracy testing. Turning to side to load it, Warren kindly and proudly having given me first chance at the deal, I drew the slide back and let it go. The slide slammed home, the ultra light hammer pull allowed the hammer to fall and my car door suddenly had a hole. Luckily, the case failed to extract and stove-piped, or I might have had a full auto event.
There were a lot of gunsmiths in those days...not all good.

[Hickok]

Bullet holes in vehicles got me chuckling!

My father-in-law once laid his .300 H&H across the hood of his nice shiny Plymouth Fury to get a better rest. Things apparently looked good through the scope. Nasty hole in the hood and out the fender.

He is 92 now, an old WWII combat vet, and the cuss words are still traveling through the atmosphere into space!

[Virginia John]

Crash, your story would make a great cartoon. Do we now know why they call you Crash? I am glad that you and the cat survived without injury.

John

[Crash_Corrigan]

Viriginia John: Many a moon ago (1967) in a place far away a young Police Officer was driving a NYCPD patrol car to the scene of an incident where a brother officer was in trouble deep and had called for help via the Radio by signalling 10-13 and his location.

You must understand that this radio signal had the highest priority of all. Any Police Officer in the NYCPD would immediately drop whatever he/she was doing to come to the aid of another cop as fast as he could.

It was during the response to this call for help that an unfortunate accident gave me the nickname of Crash. My last name is Corrigan anyway. While accelerating down West 78th Street to the East I encountered a Taxi who had stopped and parked alongside another car which was parked on the curb legally. The cab was stopped illegally and was blocking traffic. My emergency lights and siren were fully activated and I was only two blocks away from an Officer who was in deep doo doo. However as I came up the left side of the taxi with light and siren lighting up the street and blaring so loud to make your head sore the driver decided to exit the vehicle via the front door on the left side.

I was probably going about 50 MPH when I hit his partially opened door. I ended up removing that door and about half of the front fender and the left side of his bumper was also askew.

Did I stop to render aid (if required) and document the occurance. NO. I kept on motoring and when we arrived at the scene I ended up getting my left collarbone broken, face all bruised up and a black eye to boot. Upon returning from the hosptal with my left arm in a sling I got to the police station to find the little taxi driver screaming at the Desk Lieutenant about the Police Car that almost killed him. He wanted action and he wanted it now.

He got what he wanted. The Lieutenant asked me if his vehicle was blocking the street? Yes. Were my lights and siren in operation? Yes. Was I responding to a call of an emergency nature when the accident occured? Yes. Did I have the time to stop and issue a citation for failure to yield to an Emergency Vehicle to the Taxi Driver? No. The the Lieutenant suggested that I cite the taxi driver and prepare an accident report and remove the screaming driver out his sight.

From that day on until I retired in 1984 I was called Crash Corrigan.

[DerekP Houston]

Viriginia John: Many a moon ago (1967) in a place far away a young Police Officer was driving a NYCPD patrol car to the scene of an incident where a brother officer was in trouble deep and had called for help via the Radio by signalling 10-13 and his location.

You must understand that this radio signal had the highest priority of all. Any Police Officer in the NYCPD would immediately drop whatever he/she was doing to come to the aid of another cop as fast as he could.

It was during the response to this call for help that an unfortunate accident gave me the nickname of Crash. My last name is Corrigan anyway. While accelerating down West 78th Street to the East I encountered a Taxi who had stopped and parked alongside another car which was parked on the curb legally. The cab was stopped illegally and was blocking traffic. My emergency lights and siren were fully activated and I was only two blocks away from an Officer who was in deep doo doo. However as I came up the left side of the taxi with light and siren lighting up the street and blaring so loud to make your head sore the driver decided to exit the vehicle via the front door on the left side.

I was probably going about 50 MPH when I hit his partially opened door. I ended up removing that door and about half of the front fender and the left side of his bumper was also askew.

Did I stop to render aid (if required) and document the occurance. NO. I kept on motoring and when we arrived at the scene I ended up getting my left collarbone broken, face all bruised up and a black eye to boot. Upon returning from the hosptal with my left arm in a sling I got to the police station to find the little taxi driver screaming at the Desk Lieutenant about the Police Car that almost killed him. He wanted action and he wanted it now.

He got what he wanted. The Lieutenant asked me if his vehicle was blocking the street? Yes. Were my lights and siren in operation? Yes. Was I responding to a call of an emergency nature when the accident occured? Yes. Did I have the time to stop and issue a citation for failure to yield to an Emergency Vehicle to the Taxi Driver? No. The the Lieutenant suggested that I cite the taxi driver and prepare an accident report and remove the screaming driver out his sight.

From that day on until I retired in 1984 I was called Crash Corrigan.

Man that is an epic story, what a way to earn a nick name. Thanks for sharing =).

[Geezer in NH]

Glad you are not my tenant. Hiding damage.

Glad I sold all our rental properties.

Must be real proud to ask how to hide your damage.

Name the new category won't say it here.

[woodbutcher]

:) Reminds me of an old saying"There you sit so spick and span,where you was when the fur hit the fan?:shock:"
Good luck.have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I knew someone in an administrative job on a very large air defence contract in the Middle East who used to be a flying instructor for the firm. One day he explained to a student how there was an interlock to stop you raising the undercarriage while the aircraft was on the ground. "If you pull the lever like this," he said, "nothing will happen." Then he pulled, and it did happen. It was found that a mechanic working on the aircraft had forgotten to reconnect the interlock after working on it, and it was only a basic jet trainer. So he got his lateral career move, and the name Wheels-up C_______ for evermore.

[Big Boomer]

Walked into the local gunshop several years back and in another state and the proprietor had a huge bandage on his left hand. I said, "Homer, how did you hurt your hand?" Homer dourly informed me that some nutty guy had a stoppage with his cheap .25 Auto and brought it into the gunshop to get it unstopped and working again. Know-it-all gunshop proprietor proceeded to have his hand in front of the muzzle and put a .25 Auto round through his hand. No, I'm not going to tell any of my miscues. Big Boomer

[jimb16]

Other than having a hammer slip from under my thumb and putting a nice hole in the ground, that is about it for me. But unfortunately, it has happened twice. Call me "butter thumbs"....

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Long ago in my teenage days, and my first time out with a cap and ball .44 Colt, I learned the importance of proper fitting percussion caps and nipples/cones.

Chain fire! [smilie=w:A BIG cloud of smoke, and hand numbing recoil. The ball at the 6 o/clock position jammed into the loading lever. I don't know where the other balls went, but I don't think they followed the same direction as the one that went down the barrel!

Loose caps, and the fire jumped across the back of the cylinder. I never believed the stories of chain fire due to flash jumping the balls at the front of the cylinder, but I do know that loose caps not fitting tightly on the nipples/cones can cause a chain fire.

It sure makes a heck of a short range defense load!:bigsmyl2:

I now will gently file/dress my nipples/cones to fit percussion caps tightly on all my cap and ball revolvers.

In the UK people used to waterproof a cap with soft rubber tubing, in the days when it was called bicycle valve tubing. (They modernised the valves about fifty years ago.) If you do get caught with revolver nipples undersized for the only caps you have, this might prevent a chainfire and also stop them falling off. It can also be caused at the front end of the cylinder though. Tighter balls and grease certainly stopped it for me once.

I have only had one case of what the British army terms a negligent discharge. Normally it is bad practice but not very dangerous to rest your finger on the trigger of a newly fired revolver, while you examine the chronograph. The double-action pull is too heavy to fire without intending to. Not if it is the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver, though. It was within a few inch of my knee, and it was the eggcup-shaped manstopper bullet too. Of course I wouldn't have pointed it at any part of my person. I was foolish, not brain-dead. But it makes you think.

[rmark]

I had a friend with a defective percussion revolver that required the cylinder be turned by hand when shooting it. After turning the cylinder I proceeded to fire it with my hand next to the cylinder gap, tattooing my fingers with burning black powder. Have not repeated this for almost 40 years so I guess I learned something.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Gas is almost perfectly elastic, so like the spring in your ballpoint pen which can catapult itself across the room, it can acquire far greater than bullet velocity.

[Smoke4320]

couple years ago had a customer bring me a Chippa 22 Beretta M9 copy .. Said it would slam fire

did the normal things .. made sure the firing pin was clean clear and functioning properly ..
for the next 4 days several, times each day, I would load a mag go outside and cycle the action
cock, drop the side, eject the rd, recock slide and repeat thru the whole mag
not once did it slam fire ..
just before calling the customer to pick up I loaded one rd in the mag . Did not go outside .. standing by the phone on the counter I dropped the slide and shot the credit card machine
now keep in mind at this point I had cycled at least 100 rds thru the gun without a single slam fire
taught me a lesion I hope to never repeat

[Hickok]

Smoke, I bet the Mrs. was proud of you!:bigsmyl2:

[Ballistics in Scotland]

One round? If the slide contacts and presses down the round after the one it is chambering, it may soften its forward movement. Next step, if you think it rates a next step, would be to remove or tie back the hammer, and see if it slamfires due to poor control of the firing-pin's inertia.