This really embarassing,but I've decided to share my experience. I've been making some of my hawks from old muzzleloader barrels. Typically, I unscrew the breachplug to get rid of the threaded portion of the barrel. So this guy sells me this old rusted out barrel that had been siittng in his basement for years. I couldn't get the plug out, so I thought "great"; this is the perfect opportunity to try out my new abrassive cut-off saw. Well, the instant that hot blade hit the powder charge..... KABOOOOOM!!!!!. good thing I live way out in the woods , was working outdoors and had the barrel clamped in really tight. Could have been a disaster. What a dope. John

Glad to hear everything surived but your pants!

that is scary good thing a projectile did not launch.

Oh, but it did.

ya need to go to work for mythbusters!!!!! ive seen muzzleloaders loaded possably for over a hundred years and the powder was still viable ...(it was a flintlock converted to caplock and had sat in the owners house for 50+years untouched he got it from his grandfather) ... i always check!

Go buy a Lotto ticket ASAP..... :lol:

Thank you for sharing your experience. You have obviously learned something from it, but putting it out there also helps us to be more safety conscious.

A bit of machine oil poured down the barrel would have solved the problem.

A bit of machine oil poured down the barrel would have solved the problem.

He said it had a projectile in it. Guessing that it had a patch and ball in it, how long to let it soak through the tight fitting patch to neutralize the powder?

hind sight is 20-20

Glad to hear you weren't hurt or worse John and I'm really hoping you don't hear about a neighbor getting shot. Okay, now for your head slap. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!!!! Didn't someone here just post an article about someone getting killed when a civil war cannon ball exploded?

how long a soak time depends on what kind of oil you use and what the patch is. If it's a hide patch it'll take quite a while to soak the powder. WD-40 will penetrate pretty quickly as will any pen oil. Diesel fuel is fast too but plain old water with some Calgon in it is faster yet. Calgon is a wetting solution or surfacant, it breaks surface tension and lets capillarity do it's thing as fast as it will.

Better yet, don't use a hot saw, use a hack saw and lube it with oil so it can't spark.

Hey, at least you didn't just put it in the fire. <grin>

Frosty The Lucky.

Well Old Frost, Apparently, I wasn't thinking at all. I've used muzzloaders all my life. Its pretty simple to tell if one's loaded with a ramrod. If I had done so and found it was charged I certainly wouldn't have used oil or WD in an attempt to soak the powder. After all, What next? Couldn't be sure the charge was dampened. What I would have done is : put the barrel in a vice, remove the nipple and put my propane torch to the port, basicly the same thing I did with my saw. Hey, at least I had the thing pointed down range. Funny, one drop of rain and I can't get the dang things to fire when I want them to.Hope you guys had a good laugh on me. John

We can laugh now but it could have been much worse :o , may I suggest you cut a half inch or so of off the end of the barrel and make yourself a ring with as a reminder?

ouch.. glad your ok

i'd mount that sucker on the wall ... a good reminder of the one that almost gotcha
either that or make it into a nice hawk that you can keep.. what are the odds it'll try to get ya again ...

err... i'm not a lucky person, so i'd just probably go with the first option ...

nobody said this was a safe business to be in.. :wacko:

That is scary! When I was working in a gun shop we had a similar experience with an old family heirloom, a flint lock pistol that was one of two in a set that still had a charge in it from a way back no one knew how far back but a long time and the hole in the pan was rusted solid. We tried to worm it out but it wasn't budging and I didn't want to try using a drill for fear of damaging the inside of the barrel so the owner of the shop decided to take the barrel out of the stock and apply the O/A torch to the bottom of the barrel to see if a charge was behind the ball or not. I told him it was a bad idea and he said it wouldn't be much of a charge because he had measured it with the ramrod. All things considered it was a semi-disaster, the charge was bigger than he thought and the ball came out of that barrel and went through three glass display cases, glass every where and lots of smoke. I got to put the pistol back together and he got to go buy glass for his display cases. Sure glad there weren't any customers or he'd had to buy a lot of underwear for them and me too.

I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach from your story, you know the feeling, it reminds you of something you did that was very dangerous, and wil NEVER EVER do again? I hope you never have that feeling after you get over this debacle, but if you do, count it as a blessing.

Glad you came out good! Nothing like a bit of a scare to reignite the passion for safety in a shop!!

I always triple check my muzzie for a load with the ramrod, but a few times I wasn't certain and couldn't get to the WD40 fast enough. A few squirts of oil in the touch hole and you're relatively safe. Or, leave the barrel standing in a bucket of water for a few days....

Wow.
Quite the story! Good thing it had a happy ending.
Who leaves a powder charge in a barrel anyway?
I'll bet next time you'll dump a cup of water down there first huh?

I wasn't laughing at you John, this kind of thing scares the crap out of me. All it takes is one mistake to punch our card, maybe not even a mistake.

I've felled thousands of trees over nearly 40 years and unfortunately I don't remember what went wrong so I can't avoid whatever made that one kick back and hit me. I don't even know if I screw up or it just went wrong.

So, no I wasn't laughing. Trying to lighten the mood yes, laughing no. I was too relieved.

Frosty The Lucky.

Hey Old Frost, I didn't mean that "laugh on me" in a sarcastic manner. I think this incident scared some of you guys more than it did me. Honestly, not only didn't I soil my pants, my heart didn't skip a beat. My first thought was, "Xxxx*, I hope that didn't blow a chunk out of my saw blade." Maybe it's because I've had so many close calls with the Grim Reaper in my life that this incident didn't even make the list. You know what really scares me? People driving at 80 MPH, bumper to bumper and changing lanes with no signals on the interstate. The City. Drug addicts. xxxxxxxx. Lightning. America's decline. Unexpected Gunfire? nah. John