I'm certainly not arguing for doing anything dodgy, nor was I attacking you. I was just asking if this is was a real, confirmed thing that has happened as this was the first time I've ever seen it mentioned. Regardless, I would not think telling an interested newcomer that percussion guns are inherently dangerous is something good for our hobby when many thousands of people shoot percussion rifles safely regularly. Accidents do happen, but they are usually from severe negligence.
Not especially insulted just tired after 50 years+ of seeing really scary stuff that people can’t be bothered to pay attention to, have never heard it before or it just scares them to think of it.
ANYTHING can be dangerous if IMPROPERLY USED OR if people don’t UNDERSTAND the issues and potential dangers. I think the post by Bob Roller tells a good example. AND as he stated many rifles back in the day had NO HALF COCK and to make sure the air vented right they might be loaded with the lock on full cock. If you want to second guess E.M. Farris go for it. Who would think that a FIRED percussion rifle could be fired without a cap?
OR people THINK its severe negligence. Been at this a long time and I used to write for a magazine that was basically a clearing house for blown guns and investigations into trashy guns. Factory makes that had “vents” below the nipple of the patent breech. Cracks in the bottom of dovetail cuts that were open to the bore after firing. Breech plugs installed by machine so than the rebate behind the threads was so stressed the when gunsmists tried to remove the breech it BROKE off leaving the threaded portion in the barrel. They used the machine because fitting the breech cost too much so they simply turned the plug till it matched the top flat. Various and sundry blowups.
The hand loader defense works for ML arms. Everyone thinks, since its so !@*%&@ hard to blow a barrel made from a GOOD piece of even questionable steel they assume ANY barrel that fails is the loaders fault. Sometimes it is or could not be proven in court the load was correct. But sometimes its not. The first one I saw in a friends shop when I was 19, was a Douglas 45 cal split from breech face to rear sight right up the top flat 60 gr of FFF and a RB. Hot rolled gun barrel quality steel will not do this. Douglas before dumping the ML barrel making started annealing the bars before making them into barrels. The later ones had a hard oxide scale.
So as a result when someone starts telling me of finding an “early” of a certain US make it gives me the creeps to think someone is actually shooting it. Then some of the REALLY bad stuff that was made by a BIG name in firearms in Japan that REALLY scares me. And this is from gunsmith reports and sectioned barrels. Like the two piece barrels the the bore did not properly align when the breech section was screwed onto the front section. These were fully functional percussion arms and could fire, IF you could get a projectile down the bore. IF I wanted to dig I could find the articles, with photos for much of this. But most here were not shooting MLs in the late 60s and 70s and you WILL NOT see much, maybe one report, of this in MB of the time. And this caused the person who wrote it permanent long term grief. Reporting on these things caused the Old Buckskin Report permanent problems and eventually put them out of business. You cannot print the truth without consequences. Sorry for the rant.
Oh! Percussion. Did you know, for example, that in England (at least) when they started converting shotguns from flint to percussion many of them burst in service even though they had been rigorously proved when made? Its amazing what you find in old books about firearms. IIRC its in “English Guns and Rifles” by George. There are other things about percussion ignition impulse but not going into it here.
Sorry again. But I did not just fall off a turnip truck and land in this site.
