doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How many of you shoot Damascus barrel guns

I don't know why the gun fired, other than operator errors.

There were the following fundamental errors, IMHO:
1. The gun was not unloaded when it should have been.
2. The operator's hand was over the muzzle.
3. The gun was not treated as loaded.

As to exactly why the gun went off, no one knows. It could have been that the hammer was cocked and the trigger tripped somehow, or that it was uncocked but then cocked and fired by brushing against something when being used as a pushpole, or that the face of the striker was pushed into the primer by an outside object. It doesn't really matter, though. It should have not been loaded.

I can see, as rational and even safe, using a gun as a pushpole or a crutch when in the situation that operator found himself in. But only if unloaded. Remember, he was snowshoeing and the snow underneath him turned out to be exceptionally loose (b/c it was over a beaver pond or similar ground which leads to loose snow) and he went off his snowshoes when the snow gave under his weight. He was in snow over his head and not over his snowshoes. And getting soaked in a beaver pond when you're a mile or two from your truck and twenty miles or so from town and it's winter in Maine is something you want to avoid. What first comes to mind in that situation is to get back on your feet without getting (too) wet. I think the excitement of the moment took precedence over cool thinking. Thus, an implicit violation of "safety first all the time" and "Don't hurry - no number of seconds saved are worth an accident".

The first thing he should have done, IMHO before he started snowshoeing into what he thought was a clearing in the woods, was break the gun and unload. (I left out of the telling earlier, that he told me his dogs were on a hare but some distance away. Thus, an implicit violation of another principle: "no shot at game is worth an accident".)

I've had a similar thing happen while on snowshoes: if you get too close to a tree's trunk, particularly in a thicket, you'll find the snow is often quite loose and your snowshoes will sink in, even though the snow's top is no higher - or even a little lower - than the rest of the snow. When it happened to me I wound up on my back in about 4 feet of snow, debating whether to take off the snowshoes as a way of getting out while I was unloading the gun. To address that problem, I carry a couple of ski poles while snowshoeing and use them, and will sling the shotgun until I come across some hare sign. After I unloaded my gun, I set it aside in the crook of an adjacent sapling, and only then turned my attention to getting off my back and out of the snow. And then, once I was back on my feet and regained my composure, I checked the gun and assembled the ramrod in my game bag so I could clean out the snow in the right barrel.

And only when everything was squared away did I even think about reloading and continuing.

To be fair, he found himself in a complicated situation that even the most advanced course in hunter safety might not have addressed. There werea series of subtle safety traps that he missed. If he had caught any of them, he could have avoided the accident. But he still should have unloaded his gun, first, before trying to get out of the situation.

I have shot both 16 and 12 damascus without issue. I use RST and Polywad 2 1/2 vintage loads for the 16 and for the 12 I have used Polywad and reload Federal Gold Medal hulls with the primers painted black with a marker for 4000-4500 PSI loads. I limit my reloads to the Gold Medal hulls and use the Gold Medal for nothing else to reduce the potential of any mix ups. Both my father and I have really enjoyed the beauty of the damascus barrels and the fact that a gun made in 1872 is still deliverying quail.

We both like it on the clays range when people wince at the Damascus tubes.

The gun was cocked.

Plus that was just plain unsafe use so I don't think that can count a hammer gun as unsafe. Likely would have happened as a boxlock or whatever type action had it been used the same.

Last month shooting sporting clays, I was squadded with a fellow whose left arm ended above the elbow. Many years ago he lying in a duck boat and dragged a hammer gun forward to shoot. A hammer caught on something then slipped off and boom!. Yes, he did something unsafe, but a hammerless would have forgiven him.

see http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=259371&p=2202106 for an interesting commentary on this subject.

Nope. Some years ago an acquaintance of mine was pulling his shotgun from the back of his station wagon by the barrel and it discharged killing him. It did not have exposed hammers.

The only truly effective safety on any firearm is muzzle control. The safety on most shotguns is a trigger block and impact can on rare occasion cause the sear to release from the bent. Although intercepting sears can prevent this very few of our guns, and none of mine, have intercepting sears.

When I began shooting 54 years ago at eight years of age I was simply taught "don't ever point your gun at anything you don't want to destroy". It's as true today and then.

Ed,after reading the link you found I have to apologize for teasing you about your CCH. Thanks for finding/sharing a good read.

Haven't had the time to read the whole post, but did read quite a bit of it. There were some very good points made but also some glaring errors. For instnce the bit about compressed air being the cause of obstructional bursts. It was proved many, many years ago by intentional destructive testing a hollow obstruction of same wt would produce an equal bulge to a solid one & as wt of obstruction increased a burst would be produced by equal wts. Call it what you will it is essentially the same thing as the Water Hammer ie the sudden checking of the projectile creates a localized build-up of the following gases from the burning powder which produces first the bulge & if severe enough the Burst.
Also I believe that Dynamite was produced from Nitro-Glycerine, not TNT.
The early DuPont powders mentioned required the black powder volumetric loading, not because they were "Weak" as stated, but because they were intentionally Bulked up to allow for this loading.
PS;
Incidently not certain about the classification of propellent powders vs Black powder but they are not the same. The "Unconfined Sizzling" of smokeless propellent powder is not a characteristic of Black Powder. If you don't believe that just pour some out in a pile & toss a match in it. This is why the laws regarding BP are much more strict than for Smokeless.

In reading Sherman Bell's "Black vs Smokeless" articles in DGJ,
it is now obvious that many if not most Black Powder loads were around 9000psi and our moderate loads are less. The pressure curve for 7625 is exactly the same as BP which lead him to assume as I did that it was developed as a substitute for BP loads.