First time out with my brand new Golden Age Arms Company
flintlock longrifle.
Everything that I describe taking place happened on a wooden bench rest.
I was nearing the end of our shooting session, with a real good, quarter-sized, 4-shot group going at about 85 yards, the total length of that public shooting range.
In my haste to get off the last shot in the 5-shot group I made what could have been a fatal mistake.
I was completely self-taught, learning what little I knew from black powder handbooks and issues of Muzzle Blasts.
I did not own a powder horn or flask.
I did, however have an adjustable brass powder measure.
I had collected a variety of empty cartridge cases, wrapped coat hanger wire around the extractor grooves, brazed them into place with my father's oxy-acetylene torch, and formed a loop at the ends ot the wires to make a variety of powder dippers.
I had poured more than half of a 1 pound can of FFFg DuPont black powder into a plastic, 3" or so diameter, screw top jar.
After determining approximately how much powder that the .45 caliber Douglas barrel liked using the powder measure, we started using the home-made dipper closest to the charge that the powder measure indicated.
It was just easier, that way.
On the last shot of that 5-shot group I neglected to do two things.
The first was to snugly screw the lid all of the way onto the plastic jar, something that I had done for ALL of the previous shots.
The second thing was to move the closed jar of powder out of the way of the touch hole.
In my enthusiasm at what was the best shooting of my life up to that moment, I left the lid to the jar loosely sitting atop the jar with no threads engaged. I also left the loosely-topped jar directly in the line of fire from the touch hole.
You can all guess what happened next.
I pulled the trigger, and I knew with absolute certainty, that the fifth shot went exactly into the hole in the target made by the previous 4 shots.
A millisecond later, the balance of the powder remaining in that blue plastic jar ignited in a tremendous whoosh!!!!
The flames burned off all of the hair on my right forearm that was facing the flames.
This was 1972, and I had hair down to my shoulderblades, as well as a mustache and muttonchop sideburns.
I lost all of the facial hair on the right side of my face, about 70% of the mustache, all of my right eyebrow, and a lot of the long hair that was hanging on the right side of my face.
After the initial shock wore off, I lept to my feet screaming from the pain of first and second degree burns on my arms, neck, and face
I was holding my right wrist with my left hand as hard as I could possibly grip it to try and control the pain.
After several seconds of screaming and silence I realized I could not see anything, so I started shouting to my friend, "I'm blind, I'm blind".
He had gone off into the woods to urinate, and when he turned around as I started screaming all he could see was me looking like a circus clown with soot covering me from the crown of my floppy Australian hat down to the middle of my chest.
So he starts laughing like a hyena because of how I looked, while I continue to alternately grip my wrist silently and scream that I'm blind.
Eventually, he gets enough of a hold on himself to tell me that I am not blind, but my glasses are covered in soot.
I pull off my glasses, realize that I can see, and the pain REALLY ramps up..
Eventually, we get to the hospital, and the consequences of my neglect and stupidity result in the first and second degree burns where I previously described them; as well as having to have a surgeon clamp my head in a device to immobilize iit, while he removed a piece of unburnt powder from my right cornea.
End result was the only scar was the one on my cornea from me rubbing it before the surgeon removed the powder particle.
REALLY, REALLY LUCKY, in retrospect!!!!
And, I still have a flinch whenever I shoot a flintlock.
Regards, R.J.Bruce
