[Squantos]

I only thought stuff like this happened in the Houston area !!!

[300winmag]

Holy carp!

If the guy was wearing eye protection, he got off lucky, even if his handsome good looks are a bit impaired. I suspect he was sprayed by hot gas, and vaporized aluminum, lead, and jacketing. It looks like there's a piece of metal embedded in the scope lens, but it's hard to tell if any of the gas also blew back through the bolt body.

The rifle looks like a Savage 110. It's a tribute to modern design that the bolt held, otherwise he'd be on a slab in the morgue.

I use laser bore sighters and optical collimators, but on as a check on my work. Even then, I do a quick check of the bore when I button things up. I leave that stuff at home when I head to the range with live ammo.

[thackney]

As soon as I saw the pictures I thought of Eaker.

Figured I had to be too late by now to ping him.

[Smokin' Joe]

I only thought stuff like this happened in the Houston area !!!

Nah. A friend of mine blew up an Argentine Mauser. He decided the powder he'd been dumping out of the IMI blanks he was pulling the wooden bullets out of looked a lot like BLC-2, so he decided to whip up a couple of 'light' loads...

He got off very lucky. The rifle was toast (the hunter safety crew up here use it as an example of what NOT to do when reloading). He got a couple of small pieces of brass in the forehead and some concussion bruising to his hand when the foregrip splintered.

[Gilbo_3]

never used or even seen one of these gizmos, but it begs the question, are they 'hollow', and if not why not...

would seem to alleviate *some* of the backpressure if an ijudt forgets to remove it...still WOW...

[hiredhand]

Gosh....just like a real life Elmer Fudd cartoon! I've got a slightly "happier" story. It's about one of my younger brothers.

My younger brother used to have an AMD-65 (Hungarian AK-47) and he kept it next to the bed as his PDW for the house. Him and my sis-in-law run a business and the office is at the house, so he's there about half the time. He was there by himself and he was sorting through some paperwork on the bed and the AMD was there on the bed next to him. He wasn't paying particular attention and had just returned from being outside with the rifle. The safety was off, and there was a round in the chamber (you see this coming don't you!).

Anyway...he was reading something he was holding in his left hand, and trying to get the magazine out of the AMD with his right hand, and not giving it his full attention. He said all of the sudden there was the most amazing *BANG* he had ever heard in his life. The cat (sitting next to him on the bed) instantly went into anti-gravity mode and stuck to the ceiling and ran from the room via the ceiling, blazing a path to the bedroom door!

He said that there was propellant smoke hanging in the air, along with feathers (from the comforter), wood chips from the headboard, and concrete and plaster dust from the wall. His ears were ringing and he had JUST figured out what had happened when he realized that there was a NEW vehicle JUST opposite of the new hole in the headboard and wall. He ran to the window and couldn't see a hole in the vehicle, so he went outside and FORTUNATELY the round did NOT penetrate the outside wall!

He went back to the bedroom to survey the scene and discovered that he pretty much cut the feather comforter in half. Feathers were still coming down when he came back in the house. One pillow also had a hole in it, as did the headboard, and the wall. Now that he was PAYING ATTENTION, he removed the magazine, and unloaded the thing! Then he called me and told me what had just happened! After finding out that there was minimal damage and no personal injury I called him a dipshit and prepared him for what his wife was going to do when she got home!

Sure enough.... his wife got home and I got another call. She said that the NEXT day she would be hauling all of his weapons to my house to keep for awhile! I tried to convince her that a man who does something as stupid as he had just done would probably never do something like it again. She said, "HAVE YOU SEEN MY NEW COMFORTER?!"... she was MAD...plus she's a classic red head and doesn't just simply "calm down" quickly.

My brother was in the DOG HOUSE for about three days and then his wife calmed down. She called us and I gave her our "house rules" for firearms....which for MONTHS was stuck on their fridge and was visible when you walked in the front door!

My brother was fortunate. The cat hasn't been the same since though. :-)