Anyone out there dumber than me?

[Molly]

My initial interest in cast bullets was a desire to keep my guns going bang – a lot! - without bankrupting myself. I suspect that there are few casters who started out more ignorant than I was. I was a hillbilly kid whose only knowledge of reloading and casting came from the Lyman magazine ads that touted “Bang – Boom – Pow. I knew that reloading and casting were possible, but not much more. My initial reloading experience was prompted by some crows that had my number, and I wanted a bit more oomph from my .22 LR to surprise them with.

I grew up in a different world than you see today. A surprise high school locker inspection once turned up a 16 gauge double, a 30-40 Krag and a .38 breaktop in my locker. I explained to the principal that they belonged to the antique store down the street, and I had taken them home to check them for proper and safe operation for the owner. He just sighed and told me to get them out of the school and not to bring any more back in. I used to trade guns with my school bus driver. I was once apprehended walking through the rotunda of the state capital building with a 45-70 Rolling Block over my shoulder. I explained that I was taking it to the state museum curator for discussion. The cop said "Oh. OK, go ahead." I used to make some pretty significant cannon too, until the time when I almost blew a patrol cruiser away. And I didn't have any trouble purchasing ammo or gunpowder at that age either. As I recall, 22 shorts were 25 or 30 cents a box at a country store a couple of miles from home. One of my most memorable experiences is the reaction of a grade school teacher who was overseeing the class play. We 3rd grade boys were instructed to wear a cowboy outfit, because we were scheduled to sit aroound a red-cellophane-and-flashlight campfire and sing "Home on the range." The teacher went beserk when I showed up wearing my very own .41Colt Lightning on my hip. Hey! It wasn't loaded, and she TOLD me to dress like a real cowboy ... Somehow, I survived those innocent days without injuring anyone, with all my fingers and toes, and without a criminal record. They were different days indeed.

So when I was about 8 or ten years old, I pulled the bullet from a .22 LR round, and seated it in the bore with a bit of welding rod and a hammer. I then charged my rifle to 'four fingers' with powder from several other disassembled rounds, inserted an empty primed case, and closed the bolt.

I’d learned everything there was to know about reloading by reading the exploits of one Dan’l Boon (a distant relative BTW) who was reported in a kids book as having dealt effectively with one of the more distant besiegers of Boonsboro by loading up ‘Ol Betsy’ with “four fingers” of powder. The author explained that this indicated that the powder charge filled the bore for a distance equal to the width of the four fingers of Dan’s hand. Well, if it were good enough for Dan, it was good enough for me.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t too good for my rifle: The first shot did a pretty good job of disassembling it: The stock split from the forend through the grip. The internal components of the clip were imbedded in the ground, but were otherwise unharmed: After cleaning them off, they reassembled and functioned fine. The stock was replaced by gluing a couple of pine 2/4’s together and inflicting some serious damage on the assembly with a drill and some chisels. “Twarn’t pretty, but it still went bang reliably. However, a vivid recollection of the results of the last shot inspired me to limit its use to unmodified factory ammo.

But the crows still got my goat. So I traded most of what little I owned for a really nice little .222 and some ammo. It was great, but it’s astonishing how fast a gun crazy kid can go through 20 rounds of ammo. And the stunning prices asked by the local emporium for new factory ammo brought me back to considering reloading again. It couldn’t be all that hard: I had plenty of 22 powder from the rimfire ammo, and disassembling them provided me with lead bullets too: What could go wrong?

However, well recalling the excitement that accompanied my last attempt at something of this nature, I decided to play it ultra safe: I only filled the .222 case half full of ’22 powder’. The bullet was crimped into the mouth of the case with a pair of pliers, and I closed the bolt and pulled the trigger from my shoulder.

I’m sometimes considered a rather slow learner, but I’m proud to say that this is not always the case. When I pulled that trigger, I learned a great number of things in an astonishing short time period. I learned that there were more things to consider in powder selection than bore diameter, and I learned to be grateful for safety glasses. I learned the value of hearing protection, and to be grateful that I’d decided to test my reload privately, instead of before friends. I became the only person I ever knew who literally had gunpowder in his blood – or at least under his skin. It’s no longer visible in my wrist, but the little black specks were there for decades. I also learned that brass takes on some rather strange shapes while extruding from a chamber.

I also learned that if I hoped to survive much more of this sort of thing, I’d better find someone who knew what he was doing. This was considerably more difficult than you might think: A kid back in the mountain ‘hollers’ had about a three mile or four mile walk to town, and to the local gun store, where more experienced loaders could be found.

I no longer recall the name of my instructor, but some kind soul took me under his wing for a few hours, and taught me how to use a mold and loaned me one for 311414 – possibly the worst possible design ever made for high power cast bullets. But what did I know? It had a short body and a long tapering nose just like the factory ammo for my dad’s ’06, so it just had to be good. And I’d heard that you had to have the right lead alloy, a topic about which I knew nothing whatsoever. But I had frequent access to a formal rifle range, and scrounging through the backstop provided me with several pockets full of spent jacketed slugs. I knew this alloy – whatever it was – had to be the right stuff, because it worked for factory ammo. I cast up a couple dozen bullets, lubricated them with lard (I think), and seated them over a factory equivalent load from the Lyman handbook. They were beautiful! I hied myself to the range, set up my targets and sandbags, and had at it. The results were impressive. Or rather, they were depressive. Not one shot hit the 50 yard target. Target reset to 25 yards. Same results, except that I saw a bullet hit the dirt about halfway to the target. I estimate the accuracy was something on the rough order of 25 degrees. Not minutes of angle. Degrees of angle! And the bore no longer had visible rifling in it, for all the leading.

This was most puzzling: The ammo looked almost exactly like factory ammo, but sure didn‘t shoot like factory ammo. That incident sort of set a pattern for my life: Shoot a bit, cuss, fuss & fume mightily, go back and try something different. I was determined to find out why cast bullets that looked so nice would shoot so poorly. Over the years, I’ve stumbled on bits and pieces of the explanation, and think I now have a decent handle on them. I can easily load to factory velocity and accuracy with paper patching, and very nearly so with bare gaschecked bullets (a bit lower velocity). Factory equivalent loads with Cream of Wheat fillers are a bit less accurate, but don’t require gas checks, lube or sizing. But over the years, I believe I’ve made just about every mistake it’s possible to make with cast bullets. If I get good results from my techniques today, it’s because I’ve already tried about all the bad techniques. And I look forward to reading the results being reported by the young guys today.

OK, turn about is fair play. Now how about some of YOUR mistakes glitches and experiences?

[WildmanJack]

Thank you Molly, you brought back some good memories for me. Things I had forgotten many years ago..
All the best,
Jack

[bobk]

Molly,
I was lucky to be taught by my Father, a thorough and meticulous man. He wasn't much on experimenting, but he did assemble very good ammo. Yesterday was his birthday, but I think of him often. He would have been 101 yesterday, though he didn't make it nearly that far.

I guess my dumbest tricks were assassinating a couple of chronographs.

Bob K

[44man]

Funny post! :mrgreen: I am 71 and never had the problems you describe and never had anything go wrong until I recently tried starting loads in the .454 using SR primers. First time EVER that I had any trouble.
However, when I was real young I put a .22 shell on a brick aimed at a brick structure. I hit it with a hammer. The bullet whizzing past my head taught me a lesson real fast.
Then there was the time I shot a 110 gr, 30-06 bullet at a 5 gallon can of water at 50 yd's. The can exploded and a piece went whizzing past my head, another lesson in stupidity.
Why some of us are still here is a mystery! [smilie=1:

[jhrosier]

I learned both handloading and boolit casting back in the '60s, entirely from reading the Lyman handbook.
I did not know of anyone else who handloaded at the time.
My own early attempts at handloading were not very exiting, thankfully.
I was not even aware that there were other sources of information for a number of years.
To this day, I check loading data from other sources against the Lyman manual. It is still the one that I trust the most.

One of the gunshops that I haunted in those days had a very interesting collection of guns that were blown up due to handloading misadventures. Seeing those regularly made me pay close attention to the data in the loading manual.

This same gunshop sold oddball surplus powders that were labeled "Similar to XXXX".
Looking back, I can't help but think that there was some sort of connection between those powders and the blown up guns.

A pal of mine, Curley Bill, had the dubious distinction of being the only person that I ever knew, who managed to blow up a .25 rimfire rifle. He was not pleased with the performance of the black powder cartridges that he had found and decided to improve them by replacing the powder with some "Similar to Bullseye" powder. The first load at 1-1/2 grains worked pretty good, so he thought that perhaps twice as much powder would be twice as good. Very shortly after the first shot, the front half of the bolt was bent at right angles to the action and nicely copper plated from the vapourised cartridge case. He improved this technique with some practice and later mangaged to blow the barrel completely off a Siamese Mauser and launch the top half of a S&W revolver cylinder into low earth orbit. I always tried to be busy with something else when Curley Bill wanted to go to the range. The sight of blood made me queasy in those days.

Jack

[Gerry N.]

In the summer of 1956, at the age of 12, I invented the squirrel gun. My dad and I were pawing through pipe fittings at the hardware store when it occured to me that one of the pipe nipples, a 6 incher, I think, was about the size of a carbide cannon I had at home. It accepted a glass marble I had in my pocket. I also owned a 50 cent piece. The 50 cent piece covered the cost of the nipple, a 1/8" drill bit and a pipe cap. When we got home I began my career as a gun builder and handloader. I took Dad's eggbeater drill and clamping the pipe nipple in the vise with the cap screwed on, I drilled a hole in the cap. Then I took a chunk of 1" pine and cut and hacked it to resemble a gunstock. Two salvaged hose clamps held the "barrel" to the stock. The propellant charges were factory made. 2" salutes with the green fuse coming out of one end. We called 'em cherry bombs and usually used 'em to depth charge suckers in Lake Washington. I took my newly built custom squirrel gun to the depths of Ravenna Park in North Seattle, where I loaded it with a glass marble, then a cherry bomb fishing the fuse through the hole in the pipe cap, then screwing into position, marking the first use of a screw breech. (By me, anyway) My best friend, Joel, and I finally found our quarry, a squirrel sitting in the vee of a huge double trunked maple. Carefully aiming, I held the gun while Joel lit the fuse. Then we waited, and we waited, the squirrel, remembering he had business elswhere, left. We waited and waited, as I held my aim at the departing squirrel. Then unexpectedly the gun finally discharged. No injuries to us, or the squirrel, who was now a few trees away sneering and laugheing himself half to death. Joel and I were very gratified that the barrel of our squirrel gun remained in one piece and were amazed at the size of the hole a glass marble can make in the side of a maple tree. The cavity was the size of a fist, and had no glass chips in it that we could find. The siren of an approaching police car ended further investigation as we suddenly remembered important business elsewhere too.

I don't remember any more squirrel hunting, as we used the barrel as a depth charge a few weeks later. A 6" long 1/2" iron pipe nipple full of 3F black powder placed in a paint can filled with sand to sink it, then lit and dropped overboard from a rented canoe taught us about the non compressability of water. The water where we dropped our depth charge being less than ten feet deep, the resulting concussion nearly killed us. Didn't do the canoe any good either.

Next attempt was with a 2" long pipe nipple. Very satisfying result without feeling like we'd been hit from behind by a truck. It's surprising how much mud, crawdads and suckers a 1/2" X 2" long pipe nipple full of 3F can dislodge from the bottom.

Gerry N.

[waksupi]

In the summer of 1956, at the age of 12, I invented the squirrel gun. My dad and I were pawing through pipe fittings at the hardware store when it occured to me that one of the pipe nipples, a 6 incher, I think, was about the size of a carbide cannon I had at home. It accepted a glass marble I had in my pocket. I also owned a 50 cent piece. The 50 cent piece covered the cost of the nipple, a 1/8" drill bit and a pipe cap. When we got home I began my career as a gun builder and handloader. I took Dad's eggbeater drill and clamping the pipe nipple in the vise with the cap screwed on, I drilled a hole in the cap. Then I took a chunk of 1" pine and cut and hacked it to resemble a gunstock. Two salvaged hose clamps held the "barrel" to the stock. The propellant charges were factory made. 2" salutes with the green fuse coming out of one end. We called 'em cherry bombs and usually used 'em to depth charge suckers in Lake Washington. I took my newly built custom squirrel gun to the depths of Ravenna Park in North Seattle, where I loaded it with a glass marble, then a cherry bomb fishing the fuse through the hole in the pipe cap, then screwing into position, marking the first use of a screw breech. (By me, anyway) My best friend, Joel, and I finally found our quarry, a squirrel sitting in the vee of a huge double trunked maple. Carefully aiming, I held the gun while Joel lit the fuse. Then we waited, and we waited, the squirrel, remembering he had business elswhere, left. We waited and waited, as I held my aim at the departing squirrel. Then unexpectedly the gun finally discharged. No injuries to us, or the squirrel, who was now a few trees away sneering and laugheing himself half to death. Joel and I were very gratified that the barrel of our squirrel gun remained in one piece and were amazed at the size of the hole a glass marble can make in the side of a maple tree. The cavity was the size of a fist, and had no glass chips in it that we could find. The siren of an approaching police car ended further investigation as we suddenly remembered important business elsewhere too.

I don't remember any more squirrel hunting, as we used the barrel as a depth charge a few weeks later. A 6" long 1/2" iron pipe nipple full of 3F black powder placed in a paint can filled with sand to sink it, then lit and dropped overboard from a rented canoe taught us about the non compressability of water. The water where we dropped our depth charge being less than ten feet deep, the resulting concussion nearly killed us. Didn't do the canoe any good either.

Next attempt was with a 2" long pipe nipple. Very satisfying result without feeling like we'd been hit from behind by a truck. It's surprising how much mud, crawdads and suckers a 1/2" X 2" long pipe nipple full of 3F can dislodge from the bottom.

Gerry N.


Geez, Ed McManus is on the board! Welcome! [smilie=1::drinks:

[Molly]

>> propellant charges were factory made. 2" salutes with the green fuse coming out of one end. We called 'em cherry bombs and usually used 'em to depth charge suckers in Lake Washington.

LOL! I used to play quite a bit with the red cherry bombs. Wrapped an empty cigarette package around one, with a rock to sink it, and dropped it into a full 55 gal drum being used as a barn rain barrel. Darn thing just went 'Whoomp! and lifted the entire drum about 12 to 16 inches off the ground. Dropped straight back down and just sat there and quivered!

Naturally, we had to do it again, and again. It finally quit jumping, so we kicked it over to see what was going on. The botton of the barrel was dead flat around the chime. Lessee. Water is 8.34 pounds per gallon times 50 = at least 432 foot pounds of energy from one cherry bomb. Compare that with the energy of your favorite round, and think about it fora while.

>> The siren of an approaching police car ended further investigation as we suddenly remembered important business elsewhere too.

I was firing a home-made cannon across a dirt road behind our house one fine summer day. This was normally quite safe, as the only traffic I ever saw on it (except for this one time) were late night lovers. But I was using a home-made fuze, and it wasn't any too reliable. It had burned down to the edge of the touchhole, and I heard a car coming! Well, I had to slip up the road a bit and wave it down. Bless pete, it was a police patrol car! They stopped and rolled the window down. Is there some problem son? Nosir, but I'd appreciate it if you'd wait here with me for just a moment. The driver looked at his partner. Why do you want us to wait son? (Deep breath) Well, my cannon is about to go off, and I don't want you to get hurt. The driver loked at his pardner again, and turned back to me. He raised his finger up, opened his mouth, and the whole world went away in a huge blast of noise and white smoke. I went away too. Quickly. You simply wouldn't believe how a long legged hillbilly kid can cover ground down the side of a 35 to 40 degree slope when he tries. Never saw another patrol car up there for some reason either. (VBG)

Molly

[waksupi]

Molly, you did all this and never got arrested! Thank god, you're a country boy!

[HABCAN]

Employed part-time as a teen chore-boy in the postwar '40's, I once walked into a prestigious downtown bank with a half-dozen rifles and shotguns hanging off my shoulders and a few handguns stuck in my belt. Later that day the bank manager telephoned my gunshop boss and directed that 'The Boy" reverse his route in future and make the delivery to the gunsmith across town BEFORE making the firm's bank deposit!

Molly, your tales ring a familiar bell. It WAS a different world!

[Molly]

...Molly, your tales ring a familiar bell. It WAS a different world!

Still is in a few places, but not many. I went home to visit my folks a few years back, and my mother asked if I'd heard about dad's run-in with the police.

"WHAT? What happened?"

"Go ask him about it. (VBG)"

"Dad, what's all this about a problem with the cops?"

"(Annoyed) I'd like to know what everyone thinks is so funny. I was just sitting here watching television when Gary (one of the town cops) knocked on the door and said they needed to go across the property to sneak up on the blind side of that apartment building to conduct a drug raid. I told them to go ahead, and asked if they needed any help. Gary said "Naw, we can handle it." That's all there was to it."

Well, I hied myself down to the police station and got a slightly different story by questioning the officers involved. Seems our small town police force didn't have the manpower they wanted to conduct the raid, so they requested a few officers from the county police force. Things had started to get underway just at dusk, when Gary noticed they were about to cross our property. He said "Hold it while I go get permission to cross."

One of the county officers said 'What are you talking about?'

Gary said "The old guy who lives there has a .45 ..."

"Oh hell, go on! I'm not afraid of some old guy with a gun."

"You need to keep still if you don't know what you're talking about. I KNOW that old man. He shoots with us every week, and if there's a better or faster shot in the county, I don't know him. And if that old man happens to look out his window and sees a stranger on his property with a drawn gun, he'll bring that 45 out through that door, and he won't be asking any questions. I figure he can get about 4 or 5 of us before we can bring him down. And anyone that comes out of that OK will face his two boys, and dammit, they're both worse than he is! Now you just sit still while I go get permission to pass."

(The officer's name was Gary Hesom, and events took place in Harrisville, W.Va. if anyone wants to check the story. Gary's dead now, but the police chief shouldn't have much trouble remembering the incident or my folks. We got quite a reputation when I invited Gary and a few others to go shooting. Gary showed up with tin cans, while I was trimming weeds across the river with one of my 44's.) (vbg)

Molly

[Slow Elk 45/70]

:oops:Hullo Molly, I too could write a small book of my early misadvertures, suffice to say I survived with a few minor scars :oops::redneck:and a vast knowledge of what not to do early on. I was lucky enough to have folks that pointed me in the right direction, read the books on subject and pay attention to what others have to offer.[smilie=1:

But I think a lot of the elders in this group came up the same way and we share a lot of history. The younger folks could never have made it through school these days if they did things we did in our day. They would all be in jail for things folks back them didn't give a second thought to.


:redneck::Fire:

[Buckshot]

.............I WOULD have been a gun crazy kid, but just wasn't in the right local for it. My folks bought a new house and moved in in 1954 when I was a year old. I feel very lucky to have grown up when and where I did as I think it to was an end of an era. At that time a newlywed couple COULD afford a new home if the husband had most any kind of a steady job. Remember also that the woman's income (if any) wasn't counted toward their ability to afford the place.

Anyway, most all the houses were sold to newlyweds so I grew up in a neighborhood where all us kids grew up together. Most of us were 1-3 years apart and there were so many of us we had to do stuff like call other kids Big Bob and Little Bob, David G and just plain David. Of course girls were invisible to us and not surprising none of them ever wanted to play Army or Cowboys and Indians. Almost ALL the moms stayed home and the dad's went to work. All the grownups on the block knew each other. This meant that if you did wrong at a buddies you got a swat there and sent home. And of course your mom would get a phone call so you got a spanking when you got home.

They'd have block parties on holidays, and then there'd be dinner invites and cards afterwards so us 3 small boys got put into a strange bed, then woke up and carried home at some ungodly hour like 10 or 11 pm. Growing up with a good supply of kids allowed us to have actual 2 full baseball teams for playing ball in the street and in the summer when it stayed light and warm so late 20 kids running around the neighborhood playing 'Ditch'. Being boys we dug like a regiment of gophers. I suspect were probably shifted umpteen cubic yards of dirt in various and sundry back yards.

I had a 22 rifle but it stayed at my grandparents (mom's folks) who lived about 20 miles away from us in Redlands, CA which was at the time, considered to be in the country. They owned 58 acres of citrus and on occassion if I badgered my dad enough we'd go out in the back of the house and shoot the 22, IF there was ammo. They'd set up some field crates and set some oranges on top for targets. I didn't know where ammo came from, other then dad or grampa. They either happened to have some or not. The 22 rifle was a Winchester single shot and I remember thinking it was a wonderous rifle. It had a hooded front sight, and it seemed like a really long barrel. It had a polished bolt and what I know now was a Mauser type safety. After closing the bolt on a round you had to pull back on the cocking knob. While it WAS a nice rifle with a walnut stock and all, I knew later it was a kid's rifle.

My dad was not anti-gun or anything. They just didn't show up on his screen. As a kid born and raised on a farm in northeastern Arkansas, and being allowed to enjoy living through the depression they had a shotgun, and he said his dad (my other grampa) had a pistol. He didn't know what kind it was (I asked). The shotgun stayed in the kitchen at the end of grandma's sideboard and the corner. Obviously a gun was just a common tool and he never really had the opportunity nor inclination to learn to enjoy them. I get the impression they didn't have time or money for a whole lot of things that were simply 'fun'.

Steve was my best friend. I'm a month older then him and we have pictures of us together in diapers. Old fashioned non-disposable baggy ole cloth diapers :-) We both were sworn into the Navy at the same time. Steve's dad was a hunter and so Steve had much more exposure to guns then I did. They hunted locally in the San Bernardino National Forest with an Indian from a local tribe. Steve always called him 'Cloud' and he apparently had some old disreputable army Jeep.

Steve had a old Savage single shot 22RF. He'd sneak it out of the house and go to the grape vineyards to shoot it. We had to walk about 8 blocks. People out watering their flowers, mowing the lawn or simply driving by. This wasn't even in the country yet no one called the cops. Picture that now! At one time they HAD been grape vineyards but had been allowed to die years previously. Development was starting to boom and housebuilding was really getting going. Nothing had been built in this area yet, but they'd pushed down hundreds of Eucalyptus trees that had been planted way years back as wind breaks, and we clambered all over the huge piles. People had used the area as a dump for years so there were cans and bottles galore to use as targets. We had a blast. One of those times is when Steve shot me.

There was a kind of flood control levee and for some reason he decided to shoot at a sign posted on top that said for everyone to stay off the levee. It wasn't vandalism as this was the only sign shot and there were plenty of signs around and over time we could have shot at plenty of them if destruction had been on our minds. It was on a piece of "U" shaped channel. I was standing almost directly behind him when he shot and something smacked my leg. I had an idea of what it was but it really didn't hurt, then. I pulled my pant leg up and sure enough I had blood slowly running down my shin. Since he wasn't supposed to have the rifle out we decided to not tell anyone unless it looked like I was going to die or something.

We walked home and I had a bloody US Keds tenny by then. I used Bacteen and then some Mercurochrome and a bandaid and haven't died to this day. Steve had done the kid thing of putting a 22 shell in his dad's vise and hitting it with a hammer. He carried a piece of brass in his chest until while in the Navy. His body had encapsulated it and was trying to expel it, so it was cut out.

We both bought cap 'n' ball revolvers, and I don't recall now if a parent had to buy the BP or what. It seemed we always had some and I think we must have been about 16 or so. His was a brass framed 44 cal copy of a Navy, and mine was a 36 cal copy of a Leech & Rigdon. We used to shoot cigarette butts at each other. My casting actually began before then, as my grandfather had an original Colt 1862 police and I tried to make a mould using plaster of paris. I didn't know it but years later my youngest brother was shooting it in a friend's back yard and someone called the cops. They took it away and said he had to have his mom or dad come down to the station to get it. He was too afraid to say anything, so that was the end of the old pistol.

My grandfather wasn't a gun guy either so I supposed they'd all really had been my great grandfather's. I was given a nice old NRA Springfield Sporter. Grandpa called it an "Elephant gun" :-) I shot all kinds of old -'06 ammo he had lying around in it. There were also several cans of Laflin & Rand black powder, in the red cans that looked like the old cans powdered Lava hand soap came in. He also had a big coil of fuze. This was used for the powder wedge, used to blow stumps. This fuze was great stuff in itself. It was about a fat as a cigarette and a chalky white. When it was burning an oil would ooze up and out. Grandpa said it was so you'd know where the fire was in it. When the fire reached the end it would really jet out. We'd cut pieces about an inch long and light it. When the fire reached the end they'd shoot off across the ground several feet like a little rocket.

My next younder brother Eric and I got into cannons, first using up all of grandpa's powder. After I graduated from the 10th grade we moved to Redlands as grandpa decided he was getting too old and needed help with the groves. There was always plenty of junk around behind the shop where equipment stuff was done. That's where we got the pipe. Just regular old galvanized water pipe. There was a big box of stucco screen nails with those fat cardboard washers. We'd pull those off and stick a big 20D through a couple. It's a perfect fit in a piece of 1/2" pipe. Kinda like sabots? We had a pipe cap on it with a hole drilled in the end for the fuse.
Maybe a tablesoon of Laflin & Rand BP, push in the nail with the cardboard sabots.

We'd stick this into a 10' piece of 1" pipe. We'd welded on a couple studs about 4" from the end of the 1" pipe and then heated and bent a piece of steel strap into a U shape. Holes drilled in the end of the legs fit on the studs so it was like a stirrup, and would hold the smaller (loaded) pipe in the 1" pipe up to the pipe cap. We could hold the end of the 1" pipe and aim it at an orange tree trunk then light the fuse. I'm still amazed at how many of those nails would drive into the tree.

In the 11th grade I was working as a part time box boy at a grocery store and would bring home heavy cardboard tubes to make big firecrackers. Punch a hole in the center and drive a piece of wood dowel in one end, fill with BP and insert a piece of dowel into the other and cover well with Bondo. Steve had come over once so we made a bunch of them up. Getting a pail we filled it with water and were dropping these big firecrackers in. Lots of water gysering up. Steve didn't think they were sinking. I thought they were but we tied one to a rock, refilled the bucket and dropped it in. When it went off that bucket must have gone 70 ft straight up and was blown wide open. We hid it in the orange grove or my dad would have skinned me.

The powder wedge was fun (I still have it) Below:

http://www.fototime.com/072D0FFB0323F69/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/CB54EEFBF5200AC/standard.jpg

It's made out of a piece of a Ford "TT" truck axle. There were no instrucitons with it, but I learned about 150 grs of 2Fg was good. Grandpa had a 7 stall equipment shed and I cut and split firewood at one end of it. There was a huge old walnut tree at the other end. Citrus trees have rather short and knarly trunks. Especially where they branch out and can "eat" 2-3 wedges. Those got set aside and I'd bust them with the powder wedge. Once in my early learning stages I blew one and it went end over end the length of the shed, and landed up in that old walnut tree. The powder wedge was lying there ringing like a tuning fork.

...................Buckshot

[Molly]

> I grew up in a neighborhood where all us kids grew up together. Most of us were 1-3 years apart and there were so many of us we had to do stuff like call other kids Big Bob and Little Bob, David G and just plain David.

You were lucky! I only had one kid near my age that lived closer than about two miles. We were the best of friends and enemies. I still carry his teethmarks on my chest, as well as some very fond memories or our youth together.

> All the grownups on the block knew each other. This meant that if you did wrong at a buddies you got a swat there and sent home. And of course your mom would get a phone call so you got a spanking when you got home.

Un Huh! 'Cept it wasn't a spanking, it was a stropping with a leather razor strop.

> Steve had a old Savage single shot 22RF. He'd sneak it out of the house and go to the grape vineyards to shoot it. ... We had a blast. One of those times is when Steve shot me.

Well, I've managed to shoot MYSELF twice now. Once when I was shooting an old .32 S&W breaktop with .32 Colt ammo. The cases all split, so there wasn't a whole lot of resulting velocity. The bullets bounced off of an old oak tree, and one of them smacked me in the ribs. Hurt like BLEEP too!

The second time I was annoying a local gunsmith, and I think he was trying to get me out of his hair when he gave me a little .25 ACP, and told me to make a try to fix the clip lips so it would feed properly. Well, I got it looking pretty good, so he told me to test fire it. I asked where, and he told me to just shoot it into an old oak plank he had leaning against the wall of his shop. I did, but the darn plank shot back! The bullet bounced off at a range of about two feet, and it got me in the ribs again. Hurt worse than the first time. I'm not terribly impressed with the 25 ACP.

Your talk about your grandpa reminded me of my own grandddad. He was such a gentle man that a few folks made the bad mistake of misjudging him. He was the guy that told me "Never get into P###ing contest with a skunk, because you'll lose even if you win. But on the other hand, if you're walking down the street minding your own business and some skunk p###es on you, you don't have much to lose. Teach that skunk a lesson, and do it in such a manner that momma skunks for ten miles around will use your name to scare the baby skunks into behaving. From then on, you'll find that the skunks will step off the sidewalk into the mud, and let you pass in peace." His words have framed a good deal of my own life, and they have yet to let me down.

There was one occasion when he and another fellow were rivals for the same girl, and he received word to leave her alone, or the other guy would work him over with billet of kindling. Poor judgement on the other guy's part. Grandpa had been out squirrel hunting and ran out of shotgun shells, so he just walked back to town and bought a box at the general store. He happened to look out the store front and saw the other fellow with a club, walking toward the store. He quickly cut the shot out of two shells and dropped them into his double. The guy slammed the door open and said "Now I've got you!" Gramps simply snapped the double shut and gve him both barrels, right in the belly. These were black powder loads, and the wads had quite a thump. Grandpa apologized to the clerk for the BP smoke, stepped over the white faced victim squirming on the floor, and went back to hunting. The local police investigated, but the clerk's testimony was sufficient to clear grandpa, and get the guy charged with disturbing the peace.

At any rate, he seemed to learn something from the experience, because he apparently developed other romantic interests, and not too much later, the young lady involved became my grandmother-to-be.

Molly

[Ed Barrett]

Different world it sure was. I remember in 1955 taking the streetcar to Klein's sporting goods store in downtown Chicago. I was about 15 years old, I bought a Martini action Austrailian cadet rifle rechambered to 32 special and 2 boxes of 32 special. I was about 12 bucks for the works. Brought it home on the streetcar wrapped in paper. Never did get that thing to shoot well in 32 spl. Had a friend of mine who was going through gunsmithing school rebarrel it to 357 Mag in 1970 and it drove tacks with cast.

[leadman]

I was probably about 13 or so when I made my first "gun". Used a piece of I think 1/4" black pipe for the barrel. Cut a`slot in the end for the fuse of a Black Cat to stuck up through. Cut a 2x4 to look somewhat like a stock with a standing breech. Used some u-shaped nails to hold the barrel but allowed it to slide so I could load the Black Cat in the end and slide the barrel against the standing breech on the stock. My buddies dad worked in maintenance at Fisher Body and unknowingly supplied the ammo. These were ball bearings. Never shot anything live with it but sure would drive those bearings into trees.
Guess that was my first "slide action" gun.

[Bladebu1]

I can tell you wax load from a .38 will leave welts if your brother shoots you
I can tell you a cork can make a Pipe explode when stuck in the y of a tree and leave nothing but a stump.
I know you can load a 12 ga up with little slivers of banding steel but it dose not mean you should
I know that it only takes one Ice crystal on the end of a 12 ga to make you cut it 3 inches off it
(By the way, that was not me)
I know that a two-liter pop bottle will make a 22lr very quite But it will not help a .223 at all
I know black powder and magnesium will make a good flash bang in a pill bottle
However, do not try it with an old co2 can with the tip cut off and the fuse hot melt glued in there that was a hell of a boom
I know salt peter and sugar will make a good smoke bomb but when you are cooking them in the oven watch them careful or the whole will smell like burnt cookies when the stuff over flows and drips on the element oh and it is hell to clean off
my 16 birthday gift was a. AR15 and I brought to school for a report I was ask if I had my hunter safety card I said yes and they said it was ok
I remember shooting when I was eight
I know how to throw a knife by 10
I got a 20 ga at 12
I had a compound bow at 14
I was taught to always do the right thing it may not be easy it may be hard but it will always be right!
I have six kids all boys the four older all know how shoot and take of themselves
I am still working on the last two but the can out shoot most people the shoot against
I am still trying to teach them to be humble about afterward and to not sound like a jerk
But rather to teach other to shoot better
They know of sight picture and sight alignment
Body alignment and breathing
However, if they were to do what I did as a kid the FBI would have been looking for us.
I have served my country and I have got to shoot allot of things and blow some things up (legal)
I have always know about safety hearing and eye and the best safety on a gun is and open empty chamber
I just hope my kids learn it sooner rather then later
God bless the USA

[Maven]

Buckshot's experiences were somewhat similar to mine, but in all honesty, mine were much tamer. I too started casting in earnest when I purchased an Italian Colt 1851 Navy replica + Lyman .375" RB mold, casting pot, ladle (dipper), percussion caps, Pb and FFFg* in 1970. I quickly learned how to cast on our kitchen stove. Hitting the target was another matter though, at least at first. However, the roots of this affliction started years earlier, probably in 1961 when I was taking HS Chemistry. My parents who were pharmacists, retained all manner of flasks, ring stands, even Bunsen burners, which I would later rescue and put into use, first to make alcohol and later (surprise! surprise!), things that went bang. I should add that by 1961 my mother changed careers and became a Chemistry teacher in a neighboring school district. Somehow I prevailed upon her to bring home certain chemicals: Potassium permanganate, glycerin (These two will ignite when glycerin is added to the permanganate.), potassium chlorate, copper sulfate, etc. I didn't think she'd spring for potassium nitrate for obvious reasons, so applying what I learned from my Chemistry textbook, I produced it by some circuitous route. A few test batches of black powder were whipped up, but I didn't get the result I'd hoped for. When I substituted potassium chlorate for KNO3, however things really changed: The stuff worked and how! Little did I know that it was sensitive to shock and never found out the hard way either. Having read J.F. Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales," I just HAD to have a "gun" to test this wondrous powder in. With what little money I had, I purchased perhaps 12" of ~3/16" copper tubing, sawed it in two and hammered and folded the rear portion flat, drilled a touch hole, placed it in my father's vise, put a charge down it and a BB on top of that, primed it and lit the priming. It worked, but the BB traveled less than 6" from the "muzzle." Then I remembered that Hawkeye/Deerslayer used a PATCHED RB. Aha says I, why not wrap the BB in toilet tissue? I did and proceeded as before, but this time the BB blew a 1/4" deep x 1" piece of concrete out of our [painted] basement wall** and the "gun" made a deeply satisfying bang to boot. As for casting, several years later I got hold of an empty CO2 cartridge that just looked to nice to throw away and thought it would be much stronger than the copper tubing cannon (which ultimately failed). My perverse mind seized on my father's tubing cutter, which I employed to cut off the tapered portion of the cylinder. I drilled a touch hole in the remaining portion and when my folks were out for the evening, began to melt wheelweights (even then I knew!) over the kitchen stove (electric this time) and pour them into the tapered part of the CO2 cylinder: My first cast bullet. My younger sister happened by and asked what I was doing and I told her. When the CB was cool enough to touch, I showed her the new "cannon," placed it in the vise, loaded and primed it and fired it into a wooden milk box (remember those?) filled with rags. She was truly impressed with the sound and muzzle flash! That CB pushed the milk box back wall out by ~ 1/4". All of this was fun and I learned something about Chemistry along the way, but it was incredibly dangerous and I, incredibly oblivious, as in REALLY STUPID!


*We'd been married 22 months and money was really tight. My wife, God bless her, encouraged me to by the revolver and all the trimmings. It came to maybe $65.

**My father didn't suspect how that chip appeared until I told him several years later.

[Buckshot]

.............Yup, we'd all be on court ordered juvinile probation these days :-)

..............Buckshot

[Wicky]

When I was about 10 or 11 I had only ever fired 22 rifles, a good thing really, and as any good kid would I have a few spare rounds in my room.
One day when both my parents had gone out I set a cartridge in the vice being very careful to line up where the bullet would go, not wanting it to fly across the street. I then gave the rear end a good whack with a hammer. There was a flash a bang and I crapped myself when blood started running down my neck. It would seem that vices grip the bullet as well as the case, fancy that, and the case had blown apart and a large piece had lodged under my jaw. :oops:
Being as smart as I was I popped it out and cleaned up the wound but I couldn't hide that from Mum when she got home, copped a fair old belting as well as a hole in the neck.
The only good thing to come out of all this is when we are teaching school kids to shoot I can show them what happens when you play with ammunition!!:bigsmyl2:

[shotman]

well I have done much more and lived. Today would be in prison. My favorite saying was "Hey guys watch this" Do you know how far gas fumes will spread on a quite evening? There were 5 of use and after Christmas we collected all the trees "were alot then60s" and piled them up. I got a 2gal can of gas from the house and soaked the pile. We were all standing arond the pile and one guy took the old country match on the jeans. We didnt see the trees burn we all were on fire and trying to put each other out in the snow. The pile of tree were scatered for 30 ft. Another one is a BB gun with a 12ga shell on the end,last of the BB gun.Guess where a BB goes when you shoot a car tire? It comes STRAIGHT back and harder. Still have scar under my eye. But we had fun. rick

[Crash_Corrigan]

When I was 12 I somehow opened the locked door into the potato celler dug into the side of the basement. Therin I found the bonanza. My Grandpa was a guard at an Army post in Brooklyn NY during the 2nd WW. He was always on the lookout for a fast buck and heisted 3 rooms full of small arms and ammo.

You have to understand that he was a rich man. During prohibition he was a bootlegger and brought hooch down from Canada. When it ended he became a bookmaker and dealt with the same people in the same bars that he used to bring hooch to. He was well liked and respected.

Anyhow my interests were in fishing not weapons at that time. I had a .22 Rifle which I carried everywhere and ate rabbits and squirrels as often as I could. I really loved to fish for smallmouth bass. When I found that crate of grenades from WWII I could not resist taking a couple for fishing.

They worked really good but were loud. I had a special spot in mind where I was sure a big bass lurked and I pulled the pin and tossed the grenade about 5 feet upstream of this spot. It hit the bottom and the curren rolled it right next to a large half water covered boulder. It went off and a tall column of water went up into the air at least 50 feet.

When all the noise was over I had four nice bass lying on top of the water stunned. I immediately swam over to claim my prizes and never told a soul. He had 4 cases of grenades and I went through all of them over the next 5 years.

Some years later the family had gathered at Thanksgiving at the farm and that Friday morning at about 7:30 we all were surprised a loud string of shots coming from the duck house about 200 feet to the South. Two of my uncles were cops and they both thought it was an automatic weapon. We went down to the duck house and there was grandpa on the floor with a BAR on the table right in front of him. There were empty '06 cases everywhere.

He had opend up with the BAR on a small herd of deer and wiped out 6 of them. All six of them. Although it was hunting season grandpa never got a license since he thought since he owned the land he could shoot on it.

Twenty people spend the rest of the morning butchering 6 deer and hanging them up the barn out of site and we were all hoping not to see the Game Warden or a State Trooper as grandpa was guility of about 2 felonies and some serious game law violations.

His daughters {my aunts and mom} chewed him a new one and forced him to tell about the potato cellers. Turns out that grandpa had two crates of M-1's, 1 crate of BAR's, over 30 .45's 1911's, M-1 Carbines {a whole room full} and a lifetime supply of ammo for all.

Everything was hush hush and the guns all dissapeared quickly. Big family secret but the next year we had a swimming pool installed and a new commercial rerfrigerator and air conditioner were installed in the big house and we dug a new well. All this cost major bucks but I guess that old surplus was profitable.

The ammo is still there in sealed tins and crates. We had venison instead of Turkey for the next few years and I am still shooting up that WWII ammo. It still good but I wish I would have saved a few grenades for fishing.

[HABCAN]

Crash, we never had grenades. But we DID have a deep out-of-the-way fishing hole and access to unslaked lime. About 2" of unslaked lime was placed in a gallon glass vinegar jug, the screw-on cap punctured with a few holes, and a large rock attached to the jug ear with a length of wire. If one rowed or canoed out to the deepest part of the 'hole' and dropped this contraption over the side it was necessary to retreat at maximum speed from the coming geyser generated by your 'depth charge' which always produced some very nice big fish floaters.

Impossible to do today: no unslaked lime, no gallon glass jugs with ears, no uninquisitive neighbors/LEOs and no out-of-the-way secret fishing holes. I miss those halcyon days when Liberty was understood.

[Cherokee]

Well, all these posts have been very interesting. I grew up in the late 40's & 50's in Hialeah Florida, most people thought we were on the edge of the Everglades, but not really. Usta have firecracker fights with a few of the boys in the area, no body ever got hurt. One year at grandpa's place, I discovered his 12 ga in the closet. Short story - ended up with a hole in the floor and some real startled older folks. It wasn't until I was a little older that Dad allowed me to have a Sears single shot 22. Had lots of fun with it, still have it but it's not functional. Mom finally allowed me to have one of those new Ruger cowboy guns in 22 LR. No body ever got hurt, but a hole did appear in my wall one afternoon. Still got that Ruger. I was a teen when I learned not to shoot FMJ 30 Carbine bullets at steel plates - still have the scar in my forehead. Had to pick that piece of jacket out before I went home. Oh, yea, those cherry bombs, I learned a little earlier, will wipe out a shallow decorative water basin that my Uncle usta have. Then there was that smoke house, well, it didn't start out as a smokehouse but served that purpose afterward. I guess I would end up in jail with the rest of ya if we were doing that as kids today. Thanks everybody for sharing, brings back memories.

[tommag]

When I was about 7 or 8, I was out shooting my 22 and saw a glass insulator from a power line laying on the ground. "I wonder what would happen if..."
I shot it and barely chipped it, so decided to get closer. Bang, OUCH! Part of the boolit came right back in my face. Using the mirror on my bike, I cleaned it, and picked the scrap of lead out. I was scared to death Dad would take away my rifle and made up some story to cover my butt. I still have that scar, a diagonal one on the bridge of my nose, exactly between my eyes.
A few years later, while snowmobiling, I discovered why ether isn't the best fire-starter, epecially in an ice-fishing shack. The results were pretty dramatic, but no major injuries.
In Jr. high, we learned how to extact hydrogen from hcl with zinc. That was pretty cool, but extra-curricular activities were in order. David (the lutheran pastors son) and I filled a 5 gallon carboy in the basement of the rectory and lit it with a long piece of molding from behind the couch. It blew out all the lights in the basement and a couple of windows.
Rick Zarn and I were lighting firecrackers and put one in the filler of an old truck's gas tank. BOY OH BOY does that ever make a mess and a lot of noise!
I learned that you should apply the brakes BEFORE you go off the edge of a cut-bank. That one really hurt.
I also learned that cannon-building is best left to people who know something about the strength of the metals involved. Some knowledge about propellants is a good thing, too.

[Frank46]

You mean shooting an 1891 argentine mauser down in the basement of my mom and Dads house??. Shockwave stirred up every little scrap of dirt, dust, dessicated bugs and god knows what else. Took over a hour before things settlled down. Frank

[Molly]

I'm not alone, am I? You boys are a bunch of undisciplined hooligans, and I'm proud to know each and every one of you.

ROFLMAO!

Molly

[Wayne Smith]

I had to be a young teenager when I read si-fi book – Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen - that contained the recipe for black powder. Somehow I talked my mom into taking me to the drug store to get sulfur and niter. We had charcoal. I knew nothing of corning, so the best I was able to make was dust powder. It would blow a very tight fitting wooden plug out of a copper pipe. Unfortunately I thought that was the breech. The first few trial shots only had wadding, I knew enough of cannon loading even then from reading history to know to use paper wadding. I didn’t expect that wadding with some shot and more wadding well packed would be more well established in the pipe than the ‘breech’ that I had installed. Learned the value of a nail holding the ‘breech’ in place.

I also learned that if you take a 16 gauge shotgun shell, pop the primer, insert a fuse, fill with my powder, and then stick a 12 gauge shotgun shell over it and wrap it all with strapping tape it will destroy a cinder block if you light it, drop it in, and run like hell. Never thought of using this for fishing – stuck to the cane poles.

If you take a piece of gutter down spout and jam it into the ground at an angle, light a cherry bomb and drop it in and drop an empty coke or beer can in the can ends up a field away and about 1 ½” thick.

I too had an Italian copy of a Colt cap and ball and learned to shoot it quite well. By this time I was using a Lee loader for my dad’s 30-30 and my 16ga. I also learned what happens when three chambers go off all at one time. Wasn’t real sure what happened until I saw the lead smear on the wedge. Then it all came clear to me. Didn’t hurt the gun.

[Molly]

Hi Wayne,

> Somehow I talked my mom into taking me to the drug store to get sulfur and niter. We had charcoal. I knew nothing of corning, so the best I was able to make was dust powder.

I was luckier than you - or less supervised. I could buy the ingredients myself, and did. The dust was interesting, but not too powerful. I fixed that by dampening the dust wih water until it was a stiff paste, and then pressing it through a window screen with a putty knife. After it dried, it worked great. And all it took was a match to clean off the window screen too! (VBG)

Reminds me of the time I got a large bucket of dry aluminum powder (sold as a paint pigment) and stirred it in with powdered red iron oide (otherwise known as rust), which is another paint pigment. Again, it needed to be dried off, but it made the greatest flash powder you ever saw. I'd lay a string of it down our driveway, and light it with a short strip of magnesium. Or rather the boys in the neighborhood would fight for the privilege. I enjoyed entertaining them from time to time. There ARE advantages to being a rogue chemist.


> I too had an Italian copy of a Colt cap and ball and learned ... what happens when three chambers go off all at one time.

Oddly enough, I never had the experience. I guess I just used lots and lots of grease over the balls.

Molly

[Molly]

One more note from my mis-spent youth is probably appropriate here. Seems that one of our neighbors spent most of his paycheck buying drinks for the boys at a bar, which was not appreciated by his wife. Nor was she shy about mentioning it to him in no uncertain terms. Well, he wasn't about to take that from a woman, so he just backhanded her and bounced her off the wall before leaving to go back to the bar to assuage his injured manly dignity.

When she came to, she seemed to be consumed by the desire to express her own indignation and looked about for some means to do so. Her eyes fell on his tool chest and his gun cabinet at roughly the same time. She apparently worked off quite a bit of her anger with a hacksaw, because the abbrevated remains were sticking out of their trash barrel the next day when I came to deliver newspapers.

A salvage operation was immediately initiated. I recovered a bolt action rifle (now sawed off to a pistol) that became the constant companion of my paper route, and accounted for numberless bunnies. There was also a sawed off shotgun that was still functional, though I don't recall what ever happened to it. there were a few others too, including a 12 gauge breaktop that became one of the worst kicking 4 inch barrel pistols it's ever been my misfortune to own. These were all quite legal to own at the time.

That episode reminds me of a similar ocassion that turned out quite differently. The he-man of the house was imprudent enough to stagger into the bedroom and pass out on the bed after playing whack-a-mole with his wife. His wife went outside and gathered up the clothesline rope. When he woke up, he was securely tied down, and she was sitting by the bed with a frying pan in her lap. She told him "When we married, I warned you to never hit me." And then she worked him over pretty good with the frying pan.

When she was done, she said "Now I'm going to cut you loose. And I want you to know that I know what's going to happen. You're going to come out of that bed and beat the BLEEP out of me. It'll be a mistake if you do." She cut him loose, he came out and he beat her up pretty good.

The next night, he came home and went to sleep. When he woke up, he was tied down, and she had her fryng pan. This time, she put him in the hospital. When he got out, they went home, and a vigorous discussion about recent evenets ensued, wherein he raised his fist to emphasize a point with her. She didn't even flinch. She looked him straight in the eye and said "You've got to sleep sometime." End of the discussion. End of whack-a-mole parties too!

Ya gotta admire some of those hillbilly gals.

Remind me sometime to tell you about my moonshining experiences.

Molly

[Wayne Smith]

Hi Wayne,

> Somehow I talked my mom into taking me to the drug store to get sulfur and niter. We had charcoal. I knew nothing of corning, so the best I was able to make was dust powder.

I was luckier than you - or less supervised. I could buy the ingredients myself, and did. The dust was interesting, but not too powerful. I fixed that by dampening the dust wih water until it was a stiff paste, and then pressing it through a window screen with a putty knife. After it dried, it worked great. And all it took was a match to clean off the window screen too! (VBG)

Molly

I could too, Molly, but the 15 mile trip to the store was rather far to walk before I had a license!

[Rodfac]

I was 15 or 16 before my folks would allow me to go out on my own with a .22 lever action Sears and Roebuck (Marlin's model 56). I'd bought it with savings from my morning trap line and paper route...25 miles south of Buffalo, NY...pretty cold for six months of the year.

My buddy, Jim was into rifles too, but had convinced his parents that a .257 Roberts on a pre-64 Model 70 was OK and he could make a few bucks doing in the local wood chuck population. But Jim was into bigger and better things...a British Jungle Carbine in .303 to be exact.

We spent a lot of time figuring out just how many Japs it'd gotten in the jungles of the south Pacific...ah if it could only talk. He'd managed to get hold of reloading tools for the .257 but not for the .303, but that wasn't such a catastrophe since the rounds were less than a nickle a piece. Trouble was, the only kind we could find at the gun shop out in Lawtons, were armor piercing. Stalking wood chucks with it, we found that it was like using a drill press on 'em.

Along our regular 'chuck' hunting route was an infrequently used local railroad siding, with a high trestle over 18 mile creek. My mom and dad are buried not a quarter mile from there now, but at the time the fields were still open farm land, with heavy brush along the tracks.

One lazy summer afternoon we were taking the short cut home across the trestle after 'shelling' some model boats we'd launched down in the creek. My .22, I found, was no match for the gysers from the .303. One thing led to another and we decided that since the .303 was a bonefide military rifle and we'd loaded it with those armor piercing rounds, we ought to try it on the deck plates of the old trestle, just to see if they still worked. As someone earlier said, "paging Patrick McManus".

We'd gotten about half way across the trestle when Jim decided to shoot down between the ties at a cross beam some 20' below. He lined up on it, and believe me, never was a shot so much of a surprise. When he fired, his head jerked back and up, and the rifle flew out of his hands and over the rail into the creek 50 feet below.

Jim's face was covered in blood and for a minute, I thought the bolt had blown back through his skull. It hadn't quite knocked him out and he flopped down between the rails and covered his face with his hands. I got him to let me have a look, and found a piece of copper jacket lodged squarely between his eyes, right there between the eye brows. He was bleeding quite a lot and I ripped up my t-shirt to stop it.

We cleaned up down in the creek, found the rifle and headed home via the back lots to avoid anyone seeing his head. He-l, we were afraid we'd be grounded and the guns confiscated. At his house, we snuck into the garage and I pulled the pealed back jacket out of his skull with a pair of lineman's pliers from his dad's tool box. We were both Scouts and knew that we'd have to really clean it out good or he'd have problems that would ultimately result in the aforementioned 'confiscation'.

I used rubbing alcohol on him and he claimed he eyes hurt worse from the runoff than from the jacket lodged in his skull. We came up with a cover story about running into a branch staub in the woods while hunting to account for the gouge in his forehead.

He never had a problem with infection from it, and we both stuck to our story, but he did have a pair of beautiful black eyes for a cpl of weeks.

We figured he'd shot absolutely perpendicular to the cross beam and the armor piercing core of whatever the Brit's were using punched through, pealing the jacket off in the process. The jacket ricochetted back and hit him in the head. A quarter inch either way and it would have killed him, probably passing through the eye socket and brain.

I haven't seen Jim in 10 or 15 years now, and then for only a few minutes at a high school reunion. I mentioned the .303 and could just about make out the scar between his eyes. It's been 47 years since that last trek across the trestle, but each time I make the journey back up to western NY to visit my folks graves, I look to the southwest, down along the old right of way and remember that sunny afternoon.

Regards, Rodfac

[Molly]

When my baby brother was still in short pants, and I was hardly out of them, my grandpa moved into town to be close to his work. Some town. Gasaway, WV is not exactly a booming metropolis, even today. Then it was much smaller. The empty lot beside us accommodated a pack of hounds so big and vicious that most of the men in town were afraid to walk down the lane that went past their kennels. I think the dogs would outweigh about half of the men. And they really WERE vicious animals, but my brother and I didn’t know that. We took a plateful of table leavings down to the dogs every night, and adopted them. They adopted us too. We used to lie awake at night listening to them howl across the mountains after any fox or coon unfortunate enough to cross their path.

One evening, my dad was getting ready to take us home, and couldn’t find my little brother. Neither could anyone else. We searched high and low, and were getting ready to call the police, when dad wandered down to the kennels. My little brother had crawled up inside of one of them, and was sound asleep. And the dogs were emphatic about their displeasure should anyone attempt to purloin him – as they saw it. Dad had to call the dogs’ owner to come down and hold them back with heavy chains while Dad went in and retrieved my brother. The owner just shook his head over the men that wouldn’t come near them, while this little kid went to sleep with them.

Molly

[Lawnjockey]

This was a good thread so I thought I would bring it back up.

As to the question, "Now how about some of YOUR mistakes glitches and experiences?"

In all honesty I have to say the biggest mistake I ever made was voting for OBAMA. I mean we kinda look alike and he said he would look out for the little guy, and little I am. The country was so screwed up I figured it couldn't get worse, wrong again.

So boys, hold on to your wallets, guns and casting equipment. In another year or so, when this country has gone totally third world and reloading components are taxed through the roof, casting skills will be in demand. Since none of us will be working it just might help put some food on the table.

Jocko

[Cherokee]

It was a good thread.

[Harter66]

Its still a great thread. I voted for the girl w a gun. But the election was over before Nevadas polls closed. When I was 6 or 7 my Dad showed me this neat trick with a 22 BB cap when he shot this mouse across the dinningroom. Under the china hutch. Ya know a 3 legged mouse runs like all with an 80 lb weimeranner chasing it and oh how quickly dinner can get on the floor when the table gets wiped out. Fast foreward we got this little wild cat in the house through the crawlspace its been 15 years and still the folks are on about "how do you live in a house without a hole in the kitchen floor". Then when I was 12 I somehow blew out a bedroom window with the "unloaded"mauser.

[Daddyfixit]

Great thread! The best read I've had I awhile. It should be a "sticky" and added to daily!
It made my remember a few ill advised moves of my own( as I'm sure it did with all!)
If published into a short story book I'd buy it!
At 8 or 9 I thought I could handle a gun OK, My dad was a vet (10th mountain, Poe Valley) and by this age I was sure he gave me all the instuction I needed. So I felt with all my knowledge I should show my buddy Mike how to shoot my dads Remington 22 bolt action. So after "killing" a few tin can varments. I handed him the rifle. well he managed to get a bullet in the feed tube backwards cocked the the gun and jammed the round in the loading mech.
Being the "expert" I proclaimed "Give it to me, I'll fix it!", grabbed a screw driver and pried on it.....I then understood the term "rimfire".....luckly just a little bruse on my arm & a BIG bruse on my ego!

[six_gun]

My friend Jay and I got into muzzle loading when we were in about the fourth grade. We found out if you took a bicycle spoke along with the little nut thing that went through the rim and bent the spoke into a handle it looked like a little pistol. We also found out that if you cut a 12ga shotgun shell apart in the right place you had a pretty good source of gun powder. If you poured the powder into the little nut thing on the end of the bicycle spoke and then pounded a single #6 shot into the end, over the powder, all you had to do is hold a kitchen match under the nut where the powder was and it would send that #6 shot about ½ inch into a 2X4. If you put too much powder in, it would peel the barrel, or spoke nut, like a banana.

We lived through that and a few wars with Daisy BB Guns and made it to Jr. High School. In our small town, everyone had a few milk cows. When you turned 14 you could get a drivers license and it was handy for our dads to let us drive the pickup full of 10 gallon milk cans into town to the creamery on the way to school. We were supposed to dump the cans off, go to school, then pick up the cans on the way home from school, where we would milk again and fill up the cans and drop them off on the way to school again. I don’t know where we got the idea, maybe from the “big boys” or maybe it just is the natural thing to do. Everyone brought a gun with them to school. If it was pheasant on duck season, you brought a shotgun if it wasn’t you brought a 22 to go jack rabbit hunting. When we got to the creamery you had a sack lunch, a pickup, a gun and all of us would decide if it was a good day to go to school or go hunting. It’s a wonder any of us graduated.

I took Agriculture Classes in High School. Part of the AG curriculum was welding and part of learning to weld was learning how to use a cutting torch. Our AG teacher Mr Stucki, taught us how acetylene is heavier than air. He even demonstrated by putting some into a plastic cup and making a wick out of cotton string and lighting it off. It was pretty impressive, even just a little bit in a plastic cup. Looking back on it, I think Mr Stucki wished he had never taught us that little trick. It didn’t take us long to figure out that if you brought a plastic gallon purex jar to AG shop you could duplicate Mr Stucki’s experiment. We would fill the jar with acetylene and rip a piece of hem from our tee shirt and light it. It was necessary to hide the purex bottle where Mr Stucki couldn’t find it because he thought that he should be the only one to conduct acetylene experiments and when he found them he would pull out the fuse and the bomb would never go off. I had AG class 2ed period. If I used the right length of fuse, it would smoulder until about 4th or 5th period before it went off. You could hear it all over the school. Mr Stucki developed a twitch and spent most of our shop time looking behind things in corners. Those were the good old days.
Sixgun

[AkMike]

Once upon a time there were a group of guys that worked together. During an after hours BBQ and beer bust someone came up with the bright idea to shoot off some firecrackers or bottle rockets at 2 am.. All the cars were searched without finding a single 'lady finger'.
But I remembered that we had a cutting tourch in the shop... I filled several large black garbage bags with a good mixture of gas. I tied the bags shut with a wick of paper towels leaving several feet for a wick/fuse.. The resulting explosion was pretty impressive. Even the local police were impressed and were searching for the cause.. All went well several times until somone with a curiousity to see how full the bag was squeezed it..

To this day I don't know if it was static electricity on him or in the bag that caused the explosion inside the shop. But the party quickly ended. When my eyes became refocused enough to see anyhting other than a huge orange ball of light, I didcaovered that guy on the floor without his shirt on.. It was blown right off him. I began peeling strips of plastic bag off my face where it had become fused to the skin. Several months afterwards my hearing retrumed... Mostly.

[Taylor]

It makes me so remember those Kentucky mountains as a young man.Colemans Hardware,the drug store,between those two I could make or buy just about anything.I guess those day's are long gone my friends.

[runfiveswife]

I was dumber than a box of rocks. until i met my husband and he taught me how to shoot and cast. hunt ect,ect

[Uncle R.]

When I was young I may have been seen now and then in the area of some of those "acetylene bombs" but it was pure coincidence - I had nothing to do with that big noise.
:bigsmyl2:
Even then the country was going downhill but there were still a few last vestiges of freedom - and a few cops left who didn't take themselves way too seriously and/or understood the difference between dangerous criminals and boys with a bent toward experimentation.
If you should try almost any of the above described adventures these days you'd be labeled a terrorist, met by SWAT teams or worse and have your arrest splashed all over the five o'clock news while the local mayor and police chief explained how they had courageously defused your weapons of mass destruction after you were captured at grave risk to all fifty officers involved.
<
Gawd I miss America...
Did anyone notice where it went?

[Lawnjockey]

I miss it too.

I was elk hunting in Utah a couple of years ago and one of the locals I was hunting with was telling us about hunting before school when he was a kid. I asked him what he did with his gun when he went to school. He answered "in the gun rack in the back of the classroom". I don't think we will see those days again.

My dad used to tell me about how free it was in the thirties, now I look back to the sixties and seventies and think of what we have lost. It is no wonder kids just play video games these days, they aren't allowed to do anything else.

Doing jug head stuff is just part of growing up red blooded male American. Can you imagine someone like Barney Frank holding office back then?

Jocko

[DLCTEX]

I was fortunate to learn from others mistakes. Like the time a cousin stuck 22 shells in hard ground and hit them with a hammer. He tried to lie about the track up his arm left by the flipping brass, but his brother ratted him out.
An uncle three years older than I tried to build a fire by stuffing sticks in an old 5 gallon oil can. The sticks wouldn't burn even when paper was placed inside. So we decided we needed some gasoline. He poured the bean can of gas in while I went to get more matches, which he took away from me and made me stand back while he dropped the lighted match in, looking down the hole. He looked really funny with no eyelashes, eyebrows, or hair on most of his head.
My brother provided education for me when he tried parachuting from the garage roof. and when he built "magnum" stilts and got on the 20' stilts from the barn roof. His eyes were really large as he was figuring out the stilts were too heavy to move quickly enough to get his balance.
The Bailey brothers had an old cistern (in ground water storage about 20 ft. deep and 10 ft. in dia.) that was no longer needed after the city put in a water system. They threw trash in it until it was almost full and the boys decided to burn the mostly paper and wood refuse. They happened to get this brilliant idea while I was there and due to my prior experience with the oil can I was able to advise them to stand back after pouring gas in. A burning paper sack produced an amazing boom and fireball. which we repeated numerous times until the local cops made us quit. Party poopers.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Like a previous writer has said, I could write a book but I will give you just two. My friends father helped a family move and when they were making one last look thru the house he saw a rifle standing in the corner. He asked if they were going to take it and the man said no, you can have it if you want. My friends father brought it home for my friend to play with. I suould point out here that when I was young only two guns were of any value. One was a shotgun, preferably a 12 gauge and the other was a .22 rifle. You would be hard pressed to even but ammo for anything else. The rifle my friend got was a Win. mod 73 carbine. Well it wasn't long before I traded him out of it. What did I trade, a Remington hunting knife. I can still remember the insignia of REM. UMC stamped on the sheath.The knife had imitation pearl handles. I remember also that the brass lifter on the rifle was marked .38 cal. Well about that time my father came home from California where he had been working in the ship yard. He had found a cigar box of misc ammo on one of the ships and brought it home. Well I think you can guess what happend next. I dug through the box untill I found a round that looked like it would fit and I inserted it in the chamber. I closed the lever and it locked in place. Now I am sure that I had an angel looking out for me that day. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I don't know to this day if it had a brioken firing pin or if the ammo was a dud. I traded the rifle with the round still in the chamber, but I can't remember what I traded it for. Fast forward a few years. My father bought a .38 cal pistol for a few dollars. It was one of those cheap spanish copies of the S&W , although I didn't know it at the time. One day when Dad wasn't home I took it out of the drawer my father kept it in , just to look at it mind you. After I held it for a few minutes I took aim at myself in the mirror on the vanity dresser. I even cocked the pistol. Before I knew it there was a very loud noise and my Mother came running into the bed room screaming. When she saw I was allright she was so relieved she didn't even get mad. Well needless to say I laid low for several days. When I did come back through the front door all my father said was, HI HO SILVER. The hole remained in the mirror for years but the incident was never mentioned . The pistol is still in the family, although Dad didn't give it to me. It is indeed a piece of junk. I could go on but I promised just two. I would like to add this comment. How did any of us make it to adulthood?

[AkMike]

How did any of us make it to adulthood?

Thru the Grace of God and Blind Luck!:drinks:

[Gelandangan]

Blind luck indeed!

After learning about the ingredient in a book, back then, you can just walk into a drugstore and buy them.
I used to mix salt peter (potassium nitrate) sulfur and carbon to make me some home made gunpowder..
In my dad's garage and using a Coleman stove to dry the mixture!!
I dont even know the correct proportion of the ingredients..
All I remember is I did light them up using a long stick in the garden.

Now that I have my formal education in explosives,
I shiver when I remember that the next recipe I thought to try is fertilizer and coal oil..
Lucky for me I never got to it.

[Chihuahua Floyd]

I know the last 18" of a 1964 Ford driveshaft with the U-joint knocked out, a hole drilled into the end, cannon fuse and 120g of FFg with newspaper wadding will send a piston out of sight.
Piston was from a 1947 F-type flathead Willeys jeep. Mounted into a hollowed out piece of firewood for a carrage.
Would send an empty fire extinsher straight up out of sight, till the wind caught it and it nicked my younger brothers new car on the way down. Didn't shoot up any more after that.
CF

[.357]

haha oh man, my first reloads were shooting 10 inches low at thirty feet.... i freaked out and re read everything i could get my hands on after that. I love this thread do very much

[Daddyfixit]

....And then there was the time my brother & I got some iodine crystals, ammonia and cheesecloth, got this idea from one of the older (but not wiser!) boys in the neighborhood. If a little worked good...more would be better! The garbage can ended up on the garage roof. Mom said " just you wait 'till your father comes home!" After the lecture that just drying too fast can set that off we couldn't sit for a week! Sometimes I wonder how I made it this far!

[Lawnjockey]

Well lets see, the second dumbest thing I ever done was getting married the first time. I should have listened to Dad when he asked me "why buy a cow when you can get milk for free?"

Now with a gun that would have to be rabbit hunting while slightly tipsy. The rabbit got between two of us and you can guess the rest. No one was hurt except the rabbit had a belly ache from laughing so hard.

And then there was the time we went to a new gun range. We couldn't find it so we stopped at a gas station and the guy told us where it was. When we got there the place looked abandoned but we went in and had fun. There was a lot of broken glass and other stuff shot up. We decided to come back the following week. All week we saved our beer bottles. When we returned I stepped on a snake on the way in and I jumped back and let it have it with my hair triggered AR. It sounded full auto. We just finished setting up the bottles when the police arrived. It turned out this was the police gun range.

Down at the station while we were being finger printed the officer told us how he wanted to be reincarnated as a german shepard owned by a wealthy widow with a teenage daughter, I am not making this up.

A few weeks later we went to court. In the hallway we convinced a local attorney to represent us. The words slid off his tongue like he had been using a personal lubercant as tooth paste. He explained the bad directions we had received and how the no trespassing sign was so shot up that we had no notice that it wasn't the public range, that we had acted in good faith. The judge agreed and dropped the trespassing charge. All that was remaining was the littering charge regarding the 200 beer bottles that were neatly lined up on top ot the target frame. With out a pause old slippery tongue respectfully informed the court that the DA had failed to provide any evidence linking us to the 200 Turborg bottles, after all, everyone drinks Turborg. Before this could fully sink in he chastised the arresting officers for acting prematurely, "Your Honnor, even if my clients were responsible for the 200 bottles on top of the target rack the officers , by arresting them, prohibited them from removing them thus they could not have intentionally left the bottles on the grounds. "Simply stated, law enforcement cannot prevent a citizen from performing an act and then hold them accountable for the non-performance". The words had barely slipped off the astro glide enhanced tongue when "case dismissed" bellowed from the bench. Timidly, old astro lube continued "your honor, there is the small matter of my clients' personal property still being held by the police dept. "What personal property would that be?" "Well your honor, between the three of them there were 24 rifles, 18 hand guns, multiple shooting accessories, 8 50 cal ammo cans (full) and one ice chest containing Tuborg beer. The Court responded "I see" then staring down the DA the Court directed "See to it that these citizens' personal property is returned to them with out delay". And it was an hour later, unfortunately the beer was warm but it taste good under the circumstances.

Some times the system works.

Then there was the time I was pulled over for a rolling stop in a small rural town. I had a loaded 44 mag Ruger Deer Stalker between my legs and my buddy had his AR. The floor of the pick up was littered with beer bottles and brass. Officer Oppie, sizing up the situation says "You aint the boys we heard about shooting the sign a few miles back?" "Nosir, no sir". but that is another story for another day.

Jocko

[DLCTEX]

When I was in my early 20's I bought, sold and traded guns a lot. In one deal I wound up with two real pieces of junk pistols that I had no capital invested in. I liked to fire all the guns that passed through my hands, so I scrounged up some rounds for the 32 auto pistol, loaded 5 rounds, and fired all 5 with one pull of the trigger. That was all I wanted of that one. The other gun was a foreign made 38 special that was so poorly made that the bore came out near one edge of the muzzle. A friend who's father was chief of police gave me some rounds he pilfered from his dad's stuff. We sorted out the 38s from the 357 rounds in a cigar box. The pistol fired ok, but didn't shoot for beans. As I loaded the last cylinder full and closed the loading gate, it struck me that something didn't look right. The last round was a 357 Mag. The cylinder was so sloppy that the longer mag. slid right in. I'm sure that if I had fired the round it would have demolished that piece of garbage. A couple days later the young fellow that had traded them to me urgently needed them back. Seems he had stolen them from a relative and was in trouble. He paid me $75 to get them back. Made me happy. I hope no one ever got hurt with them.

[Lawnjockey]

Judging from the crowd we have in DC atleast half of us are dumber than dirt so fess up. Post your dumbest moments. Or maybe you aren't posting because you are so dumb that you don't know your dumb. If thats the case I have some hope and change I'll sell ya.

Jocko