What Stupid Stuff Have You Done With A Gun?

[Bozz10mm]

I'm glad we didn't have camera phones when I was 12.

We had one black wall phone and a Kodak Brownie.

 

[majormadmax]

Well....this!

 

[Mad John]

That’s logical. But sometimes you gotta live a little on the wild side. If it wasn’t for that dang carpet I would have found it. I’m a master at recovering detents and springs in a shop.

There is nothing worse than spending more time looking for that spring that managed to pass escape velocity and go into orbit amidst the planets of boxes and shelves. Taking longer to find than the repair to begin with. I have an assistant just for that purpose. I have a talented big black Tomcat named Ravyn that loves to play fetch. He spends most of the time with me in the basement shop laying on a shop towel at one end of my workbench just watching. My power tools do not seem to bother him. When something goes "Spling" flying off into the nether regions, the big goof goes after it and if he can brings it back... if not he will sit and stare at where he heard it land. I have a couple buddies that come to my house... not to see me ... they want to play "fetch" with my weird cat. He is a big boy, 18 pounds, complete with a pair of "murder" mittens and teeth.

 

[Mad John]

I bought a Springfield .58 musket at an estate sale. When I got it home, I found that there was a barrel obstruction about three inches from the breech. The damned thing was still LOADED! The solution to that is pull the bullet with a worm attached to the ram rod. So I started in working the prongs of the worm into the lead ball. It was really stuck in there probably since the Civil War. Finally it started to move... friction took over and the sum-btch fired! The ram-rod was launched through the ceiling and through the floor of my living room! I am glad that I had leather glove on. The powder burns would not have been pleasant. The rod protruded about two feet through the floor right next to my favorite recliner. Now I had to repair the floor! The wife was NOT impressed!
There was a learning curve with that incident. I have now devised a fool proof method for unloading any cap and ball loaded gun!

 

[Tonyt915]

If airguns count, my stepbrother and I would cut Q-tips in half and load them in our break barrel daisy air rifles and shoot at each other in the house while our parents were gone. Our games came to a screeching halt when I shot him in the eye socket. Didn’t penetrate his eye, but went through the skin and in between the eye and bone. We knew were going to be dead if our parents found out, so we removed the q-tip and said the dog bit him. Our dog was a small Scottie that would have never ever bitten anyone, so not sure our parents believed us but at least we kept our air rifles.

 

[Texasjack]

I bought a Springfield .58 musket at an estate sale. When I got it home, I found that there was a barrel obstruction about three inches from the breech. The damned thing was still LOADED! The solution to that is pull the bullet with a worm attached to the ram rod. So I started in working the prongs of the worm into the lead ball. It was really stuck in there probably since the Civil War. Finally it started to move... friction took over and the sum-btch fired! The ram-rod was launched through the ceiling and through the floor of my living room! I am glad that I had leather glove on. The powder burns would not have been pleasant. The rod protruded about two feet through the floor right next to my favorite recliner. Now I had to repair the floor! The wife was NOT impressed!
There was a learning curve with that incident. I have now devised a fool proof method for unloading any cap and ball loaded gun!

Historians have found Civil War rifles with multiple loads still in the barrel - sometimes 5 or 6 of them. Soldiers would load, aim, and pull the trigger, but with all the noise and confusion they didn't realize that the gun didn't fire.

An old way to remove a really stuck ball (assuming the powder is ruined) was to put mercury in the barrel. It doesn't affect steel, but it will crumble lead (or copper, aluminum, gold, or silver) in a surprisingly short period of time.

 

[lightflyer1]

Bought an old Winchester 94 on Thursday. Was working the action and had my thumb in the way of the hammer. Smashed the heck out of it and broke the skin and was bleeding. Learned not to do that again!

 

[HKSig]

Sold some.

 

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

What stupid stuff have I done with a gun?

Well, I loaned one out one time....


Alan

 

[crystalphoto]

What stupid stuff have I done with a gun?

Well, I loaned one out one time....


Alan

Same here... the last time I will ever do that... the guy died, and his crack head daughter "can't find it..."

 

[DoubleDuty]

Never because when I was young and dumb I didn't have access to firearms.

 

[mm54943]

Nothing too stupid. When I was first leaning, I didn't realize I was holding the pistol incorrectly and my thumb was sore for like a week.

 

[Sam75022]

I have to take the cake in dumbest thing to have done to a gun.

I wanted to install surefire muzzle break to FN Scar 20s (old model) but needed to take the factory flash hider off. I did everything that youtube and FN forums recommended (let it sit in boiling water as that is only way to break rocksett, etc), blow torched and cranked it with as hard as I could. Nothing worked. So.... like a genious idiot that I am, I decided to cut open the flash hider with dremel... and this is what happened... Was able to cut open flash hider in half, BUT when I pulled the flash hider off, boila....

At this point, I was beyond pssed and cut the barrel off where the thinner barrel meets thicker portion (2 1/2 Inches) and made it a 17 1/2 inch barrel. Went to home depot bought flat file and sanded muzzle until flat and then crowned the muzzle with round grounding stone for couple of minutes using power drill...

All of this because I had to have flash hider off and put in muzzle brake...

Fortunately, the gun still shoots great but felt like crap for weeks...