We recently had a discussion about primers (
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=24135.0) and I posted a couple that I had made several years ago out of a .30 and .50 cal brass cases. Here they are again:
About the same time I was posting those, Dennis Glazener was sending me a PM about a friend who had recently blown off part of his hand with a primer much like the one I had made out of the .50 cal case when it accidently caught a spark. I thanked Dennis for the heads up and told him I was working on a primer that had a "blow out" safety feature. Well, here it is. It uses a modified plunger tube on the business end, but the rear end of the reservoir tube is not closed with metal. The end is plugged with a thin leather disk sealed and water proofed with a drop of varnish. It only takes a few psi to blow out the leather disk, so, if this one were to catch a spark, you might get burned, but the tube will not explode and there won't be any shrapnel. (You could do the same thing with a little cork in a plain tube.)
Perhaps a little overkill, but then I had some time, some brass, an idea....and I like to keep all my digits in place.
By the by, while I was digging around looking for the brass, I found a powder measure I made when I was 10 for my first powder horn. Not at all safe, but not bad for 10.
