A recent attic find

[mountainman]

Found locally in Somerset county in an attic very recently.
I'd hate to think about what would have happened to the person that fired the last shot of this rifle.
I found pictures that match the same characteristics of that of Jacob Mier the elder, although not signed I believe it to be his work or an apprentice.

[bama]

That would make a neat relic display. Great find.

[Avlrc]

That is beautiful. 

[JTR]

Hopefully it'll stay just like that!
Looks like it had already been broken through the wrist.
I'd guess a charge of smokeless powder doing the final damage.

[mountainman70]

If that dont chill ya,nothing would.Brrrr
 Quite a find indeed. Thanks for sharing . Dave F

[120RIR]

It's a long shot but with some intensive research, there's always a possibility, albeit slim, that the rest of the story is out there.  Such a catastrophic failure may have been notable enough to have been reported in a local newspaper.  Thousands of papers dating back at least the mid-19th century have been scanned and are available on Newspapers.com.  This is a project of Ancestry.com and as of today advertises they have nearly a billion (and growing) newspaper pages available for viewing.  In my line of work I use this site all the time and find some remarkably obscure information.  Again, it's a real long shot but one never knows.  Never discount the utility of the interwebs for better or for worse.

[Dietle]

If you have the time, I sure would appreciate seeing a closeup of the patch box finial, to see what the engraving looks like. The incised carving rearward of the cheekpiece sure does look like the work of Jacob Mier.

[homerifle]

Great find! Thanks for posting!

[mountainman]

Thanks all for your comments! I agree should
stay as is for study and education display.
I think it would be a good idea to look in old newspapers although that could get very extensive.
(Dietle) Although not the same gun that you see pictured in the book of ( Gunsmiths of Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, and Somerset Counties) by James B. Whiskers and Larry
 Yantz, you can see it a lot of similarities like the patch box, the side plate, the double set triggers, carvings architecture etc. It pretty much has Jacob Mier written all over it, as you can see on page 113
Although on this particular patch box I could not see any traces of engravings on it, I even held it in the sunlight to get better lighting, but everything looks fairly smooth in spite of all the layers of patina on it.
Here is a closer up picture of the finial, I tried to get it detailed as much as I could with the camera.

[mountainman]

Another interesting feature I found was that the barrel was actually swamped. The muzzle and the breech were right at 1" while the narrow part in the center was 7/8"

[Seth Isaacson]

I think it would be a good idea to look in old newspapers although that could get very extensive.

Thanks to text searchable scans, it might not be as hard as you think. Here is an example from Somerset County that popped up immediately on Newspapers.com from the The Republic of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, on June 23, 1921.

[120RIR]

Well would ya' look at that.  The chances that article references this blown-out rifle is probably very slim to none if for no other reason than based on the damage it's reasonable to assume the user suffered hand/arm injuries as opposed to facial and cranial trauma but who knows?  I imagine explosions like this one could have sent steel and other bits in all kinds of strange directions.  Regardless, yes, this article is just the sort of thing I was talking about.  Maybe some additional sleuthing would turn up more just like it and maybe related to this incident.  Then again, maybe not. Either way, it's entertaining to speculate.

[Seth Isaacson]

I presume this wasn't an article about this event, but it does show that such events were discussed in the local papers and by trying different search variations you might be able to find an article that references the catastrophic failure of this rifle.