Accident, explosion, injury !!

[superior]

I want to share this harrowing experience with everyone. I never imagined this might happen, but it did. After sighting in my new Rossi M92 stainless 20" in 45Colt, I decided to unload the remaining 5 rounds from the rifle. I opened a soft gun case and placed it on my work bench so I could softly eject the unfired rounds onto it. The first round flipped onto the open case, then the second. I had the rifle canted to the side for a sure throw. Then it happened. Right before my eyes, the third round flipped and landed with the corner of the meplat contacting the primer of the second round BA-BOOM !!!! I saw the fire and the blast about deafened my right ear. I shouted #$^%&@# and backed away as blood poured from my right thumb. A piece of brass shrapnel had blown completely through the top of the knuckle. I didn't feel much at first; I was too busy checking myself for other hits. Fortunately, that was the only injury. What a nasty gash! I was in shock (to say the least) and was extremely gun shy for 2 days after. Even though I understood how it happened, I was afraid to unload the rifle. I still cringe everytime I do it. A friend said " I bet you cant make that happen again", and I said, "I'll never try !! Has this happened to anyone you know? I feel so foolish for having been through it, and I'm still not sure of the best way to unload that gun. It really throws them out with force! I'll try to post pics of some of the recovered shrapnel and my boo-boo thumb.

[swheeler]

Strangest thing I've ever heard of, never heard of anything like that before.

[odfairfaxsub]

luckily i wasnt the guy who sold you my 45 colt rossi lol. glad your perfectly fine

[John Taylor]

Glad to hear you still have both eyes.

[superior]

Thanks. Any tips for safe unloading?

[btroj]

Holy cow! Glad ypu weren't seriously hurt.

Just shows that we can never take anything for granted around firearms. Never.

[7of7]

glad to hear you are okay... If you were using reloads, what primers? If not, what brand of ammo?

[superior]

They were CCI large pistol primers under 14gr h-s6 and a Lee 255RF. I shoot the same load in my Blackhawk. Very accurate in both guns.

[wgr]

man glad your ok

[muskeg13]

What a freak accident! Never heard of this before, but you shouldn't take anything for granted. When I started reading the thread, I thought you may have had a magazine tube explosion, like I did with my Rossi M92 in 2004. Glad you weren't injured any worse.

[superior]

More thanks... Ok..How to you guys unload your Rossi's ? With my 1895g, I genly cycle the lever until the round slowly flips over into my hand..OMG!! Is that safe? I reach over the receiver with my left hand, avoiding exposure to the open action, but can that blow my hand off? What about the rossi? Can I cup my hand over the top of the receiver and grab the round as it comes out (slowly of course) ??

[superior]

What a freak accident! Never heard of this before, but you shouldn't take anything for granted. When I started reading the thread, I thought you may have had a magazine tube explosion, like I did with my Rossi M92 in 2004. Glad you weren't injured any worse.

Uh...WHAT?? Magazine explosion?? WTH caused that ???

[44MAG#1]

Things happen. I bet you never think of the danger driving to and from the range do you?
We all get gun shy when something happens but you got to keep on keeping on.
Glad you weren't really hurt.

[superior]

Things happen. I bet you never think of the danger driving to and from the range do you?
We all get gun shy when something happens but you got to keep on keeping on.
Glad you weren't really hurt.

Thanks for the encouragement. I've loved everything about guns as long as I can remember, and I don't intend to stop now.
I just wish you guys would share your unloading techniques with me.

[greywuuf]

mine is pretty simple, work level point down range, pull trigger . Repeat till empty.
Sorry I know that is not helpful, but I have not hunted with mine in a Loooong while and I never leave the range with any rounds unfired.

[dmize]

I have unloaded thousands of rounds from Marlin 336,s 1894,s 1895.s and even a 94 Winchester just by running the lever and letting them hit the ground or by slowly cycling the lever and pulling them off of the ejector,never had anything bad happen.

[adrians]

:holysheepgood yo hear your o.k ,,,but it does remind you NEVER TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED WHEN FIREARMS ARE INVOLVED.
i will be a little more cautious when unloading my levers ( winchester and henry)in the future.
get right back on that horse and ride,,,,:evil:[smilie=b::twisted:

[jblee10]

I have read about (I think on this site) a 45 auto ejecting an empty onto a box of cartridges and setting off a round. Must have been with the rim. It's another reason to always wear glasses.

[Jailer]

Is there a reason not to pull them out of the magazine through the loading gate?

[jblee10]

I've never tried unloading a lever through the port. I think you would need tiny fingers to move the cartridge stop out of the way. What about just ejecting them onto the ground. Probably more of a chance of them hitting a rock or something, but at least they are farther away from you.
I have ejected them before and caught them in my hand.

[Mk42gunner]

superior,

Glad you weren't hurt any worse in this freak accident. While I prefer to download through the muzzle like greywuuf, dmize's way works for those times you can't fire the rounds in the gun.

Jailer, there is more chance of an accident messing around trying to get rounds out of the loading gate than there is running them through the action, in my opinion.

Robert

[adrians]

that might be tough going with a rimmed cartridge and a heavy sprung gate, but i don't know i aint tried it,:p

[felix]

An example of a SEE, but this time with the primer and not the powder? The vibes were just right to make such an ugly instance. I am surprised, though, the powder just did not just push the boolit out of the case for a relative mild powder burn. Can you find the case head and see if the primer is still intact, and intact with its chemistry or not? I am really curious if the primer was the culprit, or the powder. Anyway, you now have proof of the randomness of the SEE condition or whatever name this instance commands. If the primer chemistry was actually broken, then we need to speculate further the cause of such a dramatic explosion. I don't want to think the crimp had something to do with it.

No, I don't think the gun itself had any affect.

Like our fellow members, I feel the pain with you.

... felix

[RobS]

I unload my Rossi's into a folded towel one at a time or slowly open the action with my hand on top so as to stop the round from full ejection and then continue to open the action.

Glad to see you are OK.

[geargnasher]

I read about a Ziplock baggie full of loaded .45 ACP cartridges sliding off of a table and detonating when it hit the basement floor, but that's a lot better odds of significant rim/primer contact.

The only thing I can compare to is the time I dumped a few .357 Magnum "dummy" rounds into my lead pot to melt out the boolits so I could scrap the brass, and somehow one of them was live. When it blew it nearly deafened me, in fact I believe it added a new frequency to my tinnitis, and ragged shards of torn brass shot out of the pot. One of these shards impaled a 3/8" laminated wood blade on the ceiling fan above the pot, I left it there as a reminder. The really scary part was I wasn't casting yet and the lead hadn't fully melted in the pot, so I wasn't wearing my safety glasses yet. Fortunately I had just turned half-away from the pot when the thing blew, and nothing hit me. I figure that was my one free reminder to use PPE. Next time I probably won't be so lucky, so I'm dilligent.

I don't see anything unusual about the magnatude of the explosion of the round here, if the primer goes off the brass will blow off of the boolit like a pineapple grenade, but the boolit itself won't travel far due to the relatively high static inertia.

Gear

[runfiverun]

i turn the rifle over and eject them into my hand.
stock under my armpit and run the lever with my strong hand supporting the rifle with my catch hand.
it's a bit awkward to get the hang of.
i just do it so i don't have to pick rounds up from the dirt.
i have heard of a 40 flipping an empty out into a box of open rounds hitting a primer and setting the round off.
there might even be a video on the u-tube.

[superior]

An example of a SEE, but this time with the primer and not the powder? The vibes were just right to make such an ugly instance. I am surprised, though, the powder just did not just push the boolit out of the case for a relative mild powder burn. Can you find the case head and see if the primer is still intact, and intact with its chemistry or not? I am really curious if the primer was the culprit, or the powder. Anyway, you now have proof of the randomness of the SEE condition or whatever name this instance commands. If the primer chemistry was actually broken, then we need to speculate further the cause of such a dramatic explosion. I don't want to think the crimp had something to do with it.

No, I don't think the gun itself had any affect.

Like our fellow members, I feel the pain with you.

... felix

I was never able to find the case head, but after reliving it in my mind and calculating which direction the exploding case must have been oriented, I decided to look for the boolit and found it about 6 feet to the right of the bench, on the floor. (right where I expected to find it) It was in perfect condition and prbably could have been reloaded! I found a piece of shrapnel over 25 feet away up on a shelf to my left. I kept 3 pieces of jagged brass, including the one that appeared to have gone through my thumb..OUCH! I did have a healthy crimp on the boolit though, and I'm reasonably certain that it played a part. It was like the loudest firecracker I've ever heard.

[nanuk]

I would have never thought a brass rim could set off a primer, until I read about a bucket of primers being set off by shaking the bucket a bit...

funny, it doesn't take much. Yet, I've seen older 30-30 rounds with round lead tips

[no34570]

I have unloaded thousands of rounds from Marlin 336,s 1894,s 1895.s and even a 94 Winchester just by running the lever and letting them hit the ground or by slowly cycling the lever and pulling them off of the ejector,never had anything bad happen.
+1 Same here.
Glad your ok though. ;)

[missionary5155]

Good morning
Been shooting lever rifles since 1967. Here is my procedure.
For chambered round.. Slowly open chamber and catch cartridge as it pops up.
Empty chamber... Lower lever and then half chamber round. Reopen lever completly, turn rifle upside down, tilt muzzle up and cartridge slides out into my waiting left hand. Place cartridge to the side or pocket and repeat. No way do I want my bullet noses banged around more than needed. I never would have thought what you experienced would have happened though.
Mike in Peru

[Bret4207]

I've been jacking them out into my hand for decades. I think what you had happen was no more than a one in a billion chance thing. I'm betting we could try and duplicate it 24/7/365 for years and never have it happen again. Hey, crazy stuff happens. I threw a super ball at a pine tree once, It ricocheted off 6 or 7 other trees and hit my grandmother, who was walking by, right square in the backside. There isn't a chance in the world of duplicating that. Same thing with this story.

[Ragnarok]

Good morning
Been shooting lever rifles since 1967. Here is my procedure.
For chambered round.. Slowly open chamber and catch cartridge as it pops up.
Empty chamber... Lower lever and then half chamber round. Reopen lever completly, turn rifle upside down, tilt muzzle up and cartridge slides out into my waiting left hand. Place cartridge to the side or pocket and repeat. No way do I want my bullet noses banged around more than needed. I never would have thought what you experienced would have happened though.
Mike in Peru

This is what I do...Just crank the lever enough to free the cartridge from the mechanism and part-way chamber it..then dump it in my hand.

I can see a loaded round flying with enough force to hit another cartridge's primer and set it off...

A friend of mine that likes the .454 Casul..points out the benifits of the tube loading mechanism of these Rossi's..specificaly the capability of pulling the tube out and dumping the cartridges out the front.

[HollowPoint]

That's the same principle we've all heard about that causes detonation while stacked in a tubular magazine. Only in that case, it's more a chain reaction of one detonation causing another.

I'm glad you got away with only minor damage.

I had my M92 discharge while test-cycling some newly loaded low-power semi-wad-cutters. My index finger touched the trigger during the cycling process. I neglected to engage the safety before doing so and the resulting discharge sent a wad-cutter through one inch of stuck-o, two inches of insulation, the corner of a two-by-four, another half inch of dry wall, into the side of my kitchen cabinet, through a couple of plastic containers and lodged into the roof of that an upper cabinet. (and that was a low-power load.)

When unloading live rounds from this rifle I generally turn the gun upside down and let the cartridges just drop into the palm of my hand. There's no real forceful ejection; it just allows the live round to drop about a one inch distance from the receiver to my waiting hand. (muzzle pointed in a safe direction of course)

HollowPoint

[superior]

Good morning
Been shooting lever rifles since 1967. Here is my procedure.
For chambered round.. Slowly open chamber and catch cartridge as it pops up.
Empty chamber... Lower lever and then half chamber round. Reopen lever completly, turn rifle upside down, tilt muzzle up and cartridge slides out into my waiting left hand. Place cartridge to the side or pocket and repeat. No way do I want my bullet noses banged around more than needed. I never would have thought what you experienced would have happened though.
Mike in Peru

That's exactly the way that I've been doing it since the accident, only I've been letting them fall onto a soft surface. I'm been so cautious, that I didn't want to expose my hand. I was wondering if slightly shaking the round loose from the chamber could result in it's sliding backwards and contacting something in the bolt area, setting it off! At some point, I have to calm down and just go about the business of enjoying my hobby. Yet, I'll never forget what happened and I'll always keep this memory working for me.
Thanks all, for expressing your concern for my safety. I was darn lucky and I know it.

[fishnbob]

I have read about (I think on this site) a 45 auto ejecting an empty onto a box of cartridges and setting off a round. Must have been with the rim. It's another reason to always wear glasses.

There is a post on VaGun forum that shows a picture of a box of ammo sitting on the bench with part of the plastic holder blown away and a picture of the spent cartridge with a struck primer that did the damage. No one knows how the primer got mashed or hit, but the guy took some brass shrapnel to his stomach. He was standing up shooting and the ammo was on the bench, open and exposed with the primers up, lead down as usual.

[superior]

This is the result.http://castboolits.gunloads.com/imagehosting/thum_70874ec5296c7087b.jpg (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=2726)http://castboolits.gunloads.com/imagehosting/thum_70874ec5299f9bb06.jpg (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=2727)

I believe the case head flew out of the open shop door. The medium sized piece of brass appears to be the one that got me.

[KYCaster]

Check this out........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCn3fxRhmB8


He sure does make it look easy, but apparently it requires some modification to the loading gate..........

.............and practice.

I think this is from one of our members...Finn45.

Jerry

[btroj]

I would think you would need to thin the spring portion of the loading gate. Mine is way too stiff to push in that easily.

I will keep cycling them thru the action slowly so they eject into my hand. Takes little time and keeps the loaded rounds of the ground.

I am with Bret- I doubt you could recreate this if you tried. What a totally freak accident.

[Wrbjr]

WOW! Glad you are ok.

[reivertom]

I wouldn't worry because you have done the one in 10 million accident and the odds of it happening again are astronomical. You can relax now.

[looseprojectile]

this way.
I had loaded some 44 40 ammo and tried one in the gun. It stuck in the chamber of the 92 Winchester and the extractor jumped off the rim leaving the cartridge in the chamber with the bolt open. I believe my boolits were too big.
A lot of times if it isn't stuck too awfully bad you can push down on the extractor when levering the round out. Didn't work this time. No problem . I went and got a cleaning rod and proceeded to tap the round out from the muzzel.
When the round came out of the chamber it struck something in the action and detonated. No injuries but it blew out and ruined the loading gate and made a mess in the bedroom. Was a black powder round. Ask me if I would jam a shop towel in the action before doing this again.
That instance has made me much more careful when handling any gun since then.
All of the Rossi 92s I have handled had way more spring behind the ejector than needed. I made this comment because I am thinking that the spinning of the cartridge end for end when ejected would have its own energy. I will be careful from here on out.
Thanks for the heads up and sorry about your injury. I believe that these freak accidents were put there to teach us a lesson. :groner:
Experience is what you get if you live.

Life is good

[ghitch75]

i'm glad you still have your thumb......i still don't understand what the primer hit to set it off?....was it the receiver?

[Ranch Dog]

What are the odds! Glad you are okay and I guess you will always have a story to go with the thumb!

[Hornetb]

Freak accident. Glad you were ok.

But just on the unloading thing, it isn't rocket science. Point the rifle downrange (where it should be anyway if there are live rounds in it) and cycle the action while covering the ejection port with your free hand. The rounds will pop into your hand or fall back into the action where you can just grab them. Tuck the butt under your arm if you need to. If you are worried about chambering them fully don't close the action all the way. No need for ungainly flipping rifles upside down, or ejecting the round out onto the ground or towel or whatever. I didn't realise it was so hard.

What scares me more are these stories of people cycling live rounds in your gun while in the house. That is a recipe for disaster right there, and don't say it wont happen or you're careful because clearly as your have stated you have had accidental discharges IN YOUR HOUSE. What about the poor person in the next room or a neighbor? This is one of the major rules of safe gun handling. I never put live rounds in a gun until I am ready to shoot. Home defence blurs this line but again highlights the importance of safe practices. If I was regularly having to cycle live rounds through a gun in the home I'd strongly consider making a safe steel box filled with sand or something to point the firearm in while unloading. Yikes, you guys scare me.

Make some dummy rounds and practice unloading your rifle until you get your technique down.

Safe shooting.
HB

[Chakta]

Now that is 1 in 100,000 on the odds! Hope your hearing is going to be alright too. A pretty nurse will take all that pain away you betcha