Dry Fire

[Jim Van Eldik]

All right Hakum I can't resist this.

Back in the 70's I lived in Iowa and developed sort of a reputation as a muzzle loading expert. A guy brought a musket to a local hardware store with a patched round ball stuck in it after the guy forgot to put powder in first. I said I could handle that and brought it home. My method to get a stuck ball out was to remove the nipple and trikle in enough super fine powder to expell the ball on firing. When I remove the ball I saw the breech was full of lubricant they had poured in to help facilitate pulling the ball out. I need the breech dry, so I applied a lit match to the nipple hole to dry it out. While doing this I was holding the end of barrel between the big and second toe of my left foot. When the match was applied the gun went"PHROOOOOM" rapidly expelling the ball onto my basement floor and then into the wall. The lubricant was actually soaked blackpowder which will still fire--- I found out. Yes he had loaded it.

Then there's the time the sergeant major fired his unloaded .45 into the cealing of our office in Vietnam.