A story that needs to be told

[chapmans]

    In 1999 my father-in -law wanted a muzzleloader to hunt deer with and he wanted to know if I had the parts to build one laying around so I started looking and found enough parts to build this rifle.







  My father-in -law was never interested in muzzleloaders until I took him to Friendship in 1992, he watched me win a medal in the X-sticks  then went back a couple of times and watched my son shoot, that's when he decided he would like one so we started building. The cherry stock blank was one I bought years before from Roy Keeler the barrel was a CVA second from a barrel of them at the flea market at Friendship, the rest of the parts were just laying around my shop. He wanted to help so I let him band saw out the blank as he was a woodworker, he worked on it one weekend with me. I worked on it evenings and finished the rest without him, but I didn't tell him it was finished, one Sat. he called and wanted to work on it so I told him to come on down , when he walked in he said let's get to work on that gun and I handed it to him finished, boy was he suprised. He is retired Army, Korea, and knows his way around a rifle, we took the rifle to the range and he practically put them all in the same hole at 50 yds. That was a few months before Friendship, well he wanted to take it down and shoot the woodswalk with it so that's excactly what we did, he and another good friend of mine went through and they were both close to 70 and they both cut a card, I thought that was the last time the gun had ever been used.
  When we built this he said I would get it back when he was gone, well he succomed to cancer last July and my mother-in-law gave me the gun the day of the funeral, I ran a patch down the barrel and it was perfect, no rust, the patch came out white and I thought he really new how to clean a gun. I put the gun in the gun room,  this spring I took it to Friendship thinking my son or I would shoot the woodswalk with it for old times but we didn't. I met this woman who is new to muzzleloading and her husband shoots bench so I have been helping her with her offhand shooting and thought she could shoot the woodswalk with this little rifle. The gun has a single trigger so I put a cap on it to have her try the trigger, when she pulled the trigger the gun went off like it had just been loaded, boy was I ever suprised and embarrased to say the least, she said she was expecting it to go off because I didn't tell her it wasn't loaded . That means my father-in-law did take the gun hunting but he had never mentioned that fact to me, I'm pretty sure if he did it was in the year 2000 so that means the gun had been loaded for almost 9 years. The way things worked out couldn't have been better I've since thought about what could have happened, but I thought he had never used or thought about using that gun and I would never believed it was loaded, you better believe I'll check every gun from now on.
   Regards, Steve Chapman

[roundball]

A good safety reminder for all of us...thanks

[Feltwad]

Always check for a load in a muzzle loading barrel by inserting your ramrod down the bore then checking the length on the outside of the barrel if there is a space from the ramrod to the breech then there is a load  in the barrel.Black powder can still ignite even if it has been in the barrel for over 100years. I do a lot of restoration here in the UK of originals and do come across loaded barrels ,a good percentage are sleepers and have laid in attics  for decades ,I have removed loads and disposed them and yes the powder still ignites.
Feltwad

[Don Steele]

That's a good story Steve. Thanks for sharing. We can never have too many safety reminders....

[Sam Everly]

I have several originals, and have restored several originals . I would say i have found about 1/4 of them were still loaded . One of them was a friends rifle he had played with when he was a kid . The nipple was bashed almost flat, the barrel was almost to the top with dirt and small rocks he had "loaded" as a kid . But under all that mess was a ball and powder,he about went to tears when i told him that . He said i could have shot my brother any one of the 100's of times when we where playing with it !     

[David Price]

Steve,
Years ago  I was very active buying antiques, trading, and reselling.  That was back in the 50's and 60's.  I would say that half of the antiques were loaded.

These days many people that really have no interest in muzzle loaders buy a rifle just to get the extra hunting days for muzzle loading.  Thaey leave there rifle loaded and forget about it, or in your case die, and someone ends us owning a rifle that is loaded and doesn't know it.

When people bring a gun into my shop for repair or for just show and tell, the first thing that I do is put a loading stick down the barrel.  One person said that he was insulted that I would think that he would bring a loaded gun into my shop.  Now I apologize ahead of time so as not to " insult " anyone, but I will never handle a muzzle loader without first checking it.  Every once in a while I still find one loaded and they will say ," I know it" or "O ya I forgot".    Pretty scary !!!!!!!!!!

I can see how what happened to you could happen to any of us, we must stay alert and keep thinking at all times , when handling any gun.

[ottawa]

Back when i was in scouts we did a jamboree we were historical explorer scouts doing rev war we did the colore ceremony with a gun saluteabout 8 of us we went back to camp and went about our business then heard a gun go off our troop leader was showing how the frizzin worked in setting of the prime in the pan but the gun was loaded from the salute it didn't go off we didn't know that luckily it was just a blank with a patch but after  that we all bounced our ram rod too make sure they were not  loaded

[chapmans]

Thanks for all of the comments, I always check a modern gun when I pick it up, it's automatic to open the action and look. I guess I had better check all of the ML's from now on, I do when someone brings me one to work on but this one was a real surprise, I had no idea he had ever taken it hunting, I thought the only time he ever shot it was when we were together. The one thing that makes me think he might have known is the ramrod was not in the gun when I got it my Mother-in-law found it several weeks later so he may have left it out to remind him it was loaded but we'll never know.
   Steve

[La Longue Carabine]

Good story and sorry about the passing of your father in-law. Also a great safety reminder to never take any weapon for granted. The first time you do, is usually your last. A blessing from the good Lord that it turned out the way it did....

[Levy]

I can only add that extreme care needs to be taken with patent breeched and hook breeched guns.  The nose of the plug is usually always hollowed out and can contain powder even if the bore is checked to the face of the breechplug.  Loads that have been in the bore for a long time can become caked and solid.  It is possible to bore through the center of the load and blow air out the breech.  A donut of powder can remain in the barrel under these circumstances.  Working for the State of Florida as a conservator, I have to agree with David, half the firearms that have come in have been loaded with something.

James Levy

[Long John]

Being a certifiable old fellow now, I have had 2 such experiences.  The first was back when I was about 9.  I had always wanted a "musket" as a little tyke.  One Christmas morning there was a long package beneath the tree with my name on it.  When I unwrapped it there was an old, caplock Civil War musket that my father had picked up in an antique shop during his travels.  Not knowing any better, he and I spent several rainy afternoons "cleaning it up".  During that time we discovered there  was a load in the gun and were successful in pulling it.  I still have that gun.

Fast forward many years, my buddy brought over a TC Seneca rifle in 32 caliber that was his father-in-law's with the complaint that his FIL must have dry balled it because he could not get it to go off, had checked the bore and it was clean.  We ran a loading rod down the barrel and held it along side the barrel and it seemed to be dry balled.  I tried ball puller and could not get a bit into anything.  I tried CO2 and could not get anything to budge.  So I decided to pull the breech.  Try as I might I could not get the breech to budge off the barrel.  In desperation I decided to heat the breech up a little with a propane torch to see if I could make use of thermal expansion to loosen the breech.  BANG!  It wasn't dry balled!

There is no cure for stupid so I am now extra careful!

JMC