archmaker
08-02-2009, 09:04 AM
I have had the time to put the pieces together and get the hand healed enough to do some analysis of what happen. Briefly the type of gun was a 1911, and the case exploded with the slide open.
(There is whole discussion about the why and cause this is strictly to let people know that an exploding case can go in ANY direction)
I thought the insights from this should be shared just to let everyone know the dangers of where things can go flying.
For ease of discussion we are going to say the barrel downrange is 0deg and to the right is 90deg. We will use the clock face to talk about vertical for instance straight up is 12:00 and to the right is 3:00.
Now for what I think is important to know.
The biggest piece went up at 11:30 and no significant downrange or up range direction of travel. Maybe an inch before hitting my palm.
The small piece which penetrated the deepest because it was folded over and more compact flew out of the gun at 165deg about 2:30, traveled about 1.5" before hitting my finger and penetrated a good 1/4".
Looking back if I had tried to clear the weapon from the back it may have been safer for me but we were on a crowded shooting range and there was a good chance it could have hit a bystander. Instead I did it with my hand over the ejection port. With the finger that was hit toward the back of the slide, the piece that hit the finger went past the other three.
(There is whole discussion about the why and cause this is strictly to let people know that an exploding case can go in ANY direction)
I thought the insights from this should be shared just to let everyone know the dangers of where things can go flying.
For ease of discussion we are going to say the barrel downrange is 0deg and to the right is 90deg. We will use the clock face to talk about vertical for instance straight up is 12:00 and to the right is 3:00.
Now for what I think is important to know.
The biggest piece went up at 11:30 and no significant downrange or up range direction of travel. Maybe an inch before hitting my palm.
The small piece which penetrated the deepest because it was folded over and more compact flew out of the gun at 165deg about 2:30, traveled about 1.5" before hitting my finger and penetrated a good 1/4".
Looking back if I had tried to clear the weapon from the back it may have been safer for me but we were on a crowded shooting range and there was a good chance it could have hit a bystander. Instead I did it with my hand over the ejection port. With the finger that was hit toward the back of the slide, the piece that hit the finger went past the other three.