oldracer
03-10-2013, 09:24 PM
Opps, forgot what part of the forum I was in......old age is setting in I guess! Sorry.
Back in 1973 I was stationed in upstate New York at the Knolles Atomic Power Lab helping to train Navy nucs. Did a LOT of drinking and partying and on one Saturday afternoon one of the party animals mentioned he had just finished a muzzle loading rifle and wanted to do a test fire. We had finished off a couple cases of beer so said "hell yes", of course! He said the instructions said to do a proof load of 150% of the normal load which was 100gn of BP so he could not find a measure that read in grains so we did some "nuclear math" and made a measure and loaded it up. We did decide none of us should hold it so it was lashed to his railing that ran around his mobile home with a bunch of rope. We were about 5 miles from the nearest house so we all got behind the railing area, opened a fresh beer all around and waited. I remember he put on a percussion cap, cocked the gun and got back about 10 feet. He pulled the string on the trigger and KA BOOM! What a blast, huge cloud of smoke and the whole porch, rail and supports went flying backwards! His wife was in the trailer and it seemed he had forgot to tell her the test was at hand and boy did she scream! We were laughing so hard that it was hard to stand up and we spent the rest of the day putting his trailer back together!
I am happy to say this really does prove that alcohol and BP do not mix..........
Back in 1973 I was stationed in upstate New York at the Knolles Atomic Power Lab helping to train Navy nucs. Did a LOT of drinking and partying and on one Saturday afternoon one of the party animals mentioned he had just finished a muzzle loading rifle and wanted to do a test fire. We had finished off a couple cases of beer so said "hell yes", of course! He said the instructions said to do a proof load of 150% of the normal load which was 100gn of BP so he could not find a measure that read in grains so we did some "nuclear math" and made a measure and loaded it up. We did decide none of us should hold it so it was lashed to his railing that ran around his mobile home with a bunch of rope. We were about 5 miles from the nearest house so we all got behind the railing area, opened a fresh beer all around and waited. I remember he put on a percussion cap, cocked the gun and got back about 10 feet. He pulled the string on the trigger and KA BOOM! What a blast, huge cloud of smoke and the whole porch, rail and supports went flying backwards! His wife was in the trailer and it seemed he had forgot to tell her the test was at hand and boy did she scream! We were laughing so hard that it was hard to stand up and we spent the rest of the day putting his trailer back together!
I am happy to say this really does prove that alcohol and BP do not mix..........