Womp womp.
- Thread starter LolaPP
- Start date
Cleaning jag. Someone didn’t remove their ramrod before firing. I found an aluminum rod on our range floor while trimming the grass. About 75 yards out. A little mangled.
Big bore dinosaur
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- NORT OF COW.TOWN.EH
Nasty find.. people get all trigger happy
vagrantviking
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Alberta
Good chance it just came unscrewed or broken off while seating a bullet. Looks like other rounds have impacted it laying there.
Shi# happens. Not a serious issue. Even if they noticed it was gone there might not have been any better way to deal with it.
Shi# happens. Not a serious issue. Even if they noticed it was gone there might not have been any better way to deal with it.
The things you find on the berm
No sign of the rest of it, I guess they hid their shame
If it was at the Selkirk Range, I might know who owns it. He said he never felt recoil like that before when he forgot to remove the ramrod. He knew immediately what had happened.
I had a cleaning jag get stuck in a barrel and ended up pulling the whole tip off the end of the ram rod....now what !!&*%$! ended up pulling the nipple and trickling powder in the snail of the breach plug and then put the nipple back in and shoot it out. Was not at Selkirk but at a buds cabin up in the Grindstone Prov Park. in moose hunting season. 58 cal Kodiak Rifle
Ahhhhhhh ok.... that helps answer one thing I was wondering about... how far, exactly, does a ramrod launched into space travel? I couldn't see it being all that balistically stable or efficient. 75 yards is further than I would have guessed.
I found it on the berm, the angle the end is deformed very suspiciously matches the angle of the berm. The white stuff is sand embedded in it.
I don't see any sign of a bullet strike, though that would be very possible too - I've found more than a few cast bullets I've shot that have perfect looking semi circles cut in them from other bullets. The thread end is gooned, so hard to say what happened there, but it doesn't look snapped or stripped.
I think firing something out your barrel that you didn't intend is kind of a big deal. Not going to be dangerous, probably, but that's a pretty big and basic oopsie, especially if the Confederates aren't shooting back at you.
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vagrantviking
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Alberta
It's certainly not ideal as a person does want to be cognizant of the particulars of their load but I will stand by it not being a big deal to fire out a lost jag like that. I see no evidence of the rod having been attached.
I weighed a couple jags on my bench and the biggest was a little over 200gn. A 175gn ball plus a 200gn jag is just a hair over the 360gn mini balls I sometimes use or a 2 ball load. Ball and buck loads have been used for centuries. Brass isn't much harder than copper jackets and certainly softer than steel jackets found in some ammo.
It would be very easy to not notice on ramming the load home that the jag is lost until the next shot. If a shooter has noticed what are they going to do about it? A worm won't bite into brass. Threading the rod back on to pull it is unlikely to be successful. Then what? How much do you want to monkey around the muzzle of a charged gun? A CO2 discharge device would work but in 30 years shooting muzzleloaders mostly at events of a dozen or more participants I've never seen one.
A whole rod is certainly a bad thing. It weighs many times the amount of any intended projectile and usually results in bruises, black eyes, broken stocks etc. though I've never heard of it damaging a barrel. Haven't seen anyone do it in person either so couldn't verify. A heavy metal range rod with a big ball handle is ideal as one should feel the weight or balance difference and the ball would interfere with the sight picture.
Haven't been to a reenactment event in many years. Not using a rod makes safety sense but I wouldn't want to just be dumping in loose powder without a wad or regular swabbing. Uncompressed powder leaves a LOT of fouling from poor combustion and possibly embers as well.
Old western movie once showed the “cowboy” shooting his ramrod into the belly of an oncoming tomahawk wielding ruffian. Guy didn’t have time to pull it out after seating the shot, just turned and shot it out. No big recoil, no damage to firearm, it was all good.....oh yeah did I mention it was a hollywood stunt?
I've done the same thing before, got the jag stuck with a patch in the barrel. I unscrewed the ramrod, trickled about ~5 grains or so of 4F into the priming hole, and watched the jag pop out and fly 4-5 meters. It was in perfect shape, just picked it and put it back.
Several years ago, a re enactor in BC had the tip of his ramrod come off and it hit a second re enactor in the bum. Victim spent 3 or 4 hours on the operating table as well as acquiring the camp name of "semi colon" Also when I was first starting with muzzle loaders the person beside me shot a 3/8" by 3 ' solid brass ramrod down range using a moderately heavy charge of powder. He didn't seem to notice the added recoil and at first didn't realize that he had shot his ramrod. It struck ground about 2 feet low at 25 or 30 yards as best I can recall. The gun was undamaged and we continued shooting. I did see another metal rod, possibly tubing, after it had been shot down range ---- it was twisted and bent quite badly and definitely could not be reused right away like the solid brass one was
cheers mooncoon
cheers mooncoon
- Location
- vancouver island
At rendezvous wife shot her .375 brass ramrod from her 40 cal - at 100 feet or so it hit the ground and ended up bent into a near perfect circle with about 8" buried in very hard ground. Her camp name is now "hot rod". Took about 5 days for the bruised cheek to fade.
