![Crying or Very sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
Today we had our last monthly levergun silhouette match at Atglen Sportsman's Club. They called my relay to the line and gave us the command to load. 30 seconds after the command to load comes the command to fire. It never came.
I look down the line and see all of this commotion with other guys all bunched up.
We were doing the pistol caliber event. One guy was using a replica 1860 Henry in 45 Colt and while he was dropping the rounds down the mag tube, one blew up. Bang!
He got struck by brass shrapnel in the hand and the leg and it stuck in real good. I mosied on down to take a look-see and after an inspection, I was dumbfounded by what I saw. As you may or may not know, a Henry magazine tube is split down the middle and that lets the follower and spring keep pressure on the rounds in the mag tube for feeding into the receiver.
4 rounds were dropped down the tube and on the fifth, the primer ignited on round #4, expanding the mag tube, pushing the bullets in the cases in the other rounds and leaving the blown up round with just a tad of brass holding the rim and the mouth together. I inspected the remaining 35 rounds in his box of ammo and they were reloads, with bullets with a large flat metplat and all primers seated flush or below. In other words, it was all done right.
The only thing I could think of that caused this was that one case had a high primer or it was a freak bad primer as primers are constructed to blow at a given strike pressure.............a light pressure hit is not supposed to set it off, especially with a flat bullet resting on it.
I'm sure all of us here have shot leverguns with 45-70 rds. that gave a lot more hitting power on rounds in the mag from the heavy recoil when shooting it than one can do just by dropping a round 20 inches or so with just a gravity drop.
Weird, really weird.---------------Sixgun