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Anvil shoot injures 13-year-old boy


Glenn

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WILLOW SPRINGS, Mo. - A 13-year-old boy is in critical condition after he was hit by a piece of an anvil at a family's Independence Day celebration. The police chief says something went wrong when family members tried to fire an anvil into the air on Monday afternoon.

The explosion meant to launch the anvil went off too soon. It shattered the heavy piece of metal and sent pieces flying 60 feet away. An ambulance took the boy to a hospital in Springfield.

The chief said an investigation is underway. The accident was on private property next to the Willow Springs airport. 

http://www.ky3.com/content/news/anvil-explosion-willow-springs-385626681.html

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The tradition I know of was not trying to put the anvil in orbit; just using enough black powder to get a BANG  Sort of a reusable firecracker.  Most anvils don't have enough of a depression on the under side to do much.  Though I have seen ones where people have milled a hole to pack with powder---now old anvils were welded up from a bunch of pieces of sometimes pretty ratty wrought iron---sort of like the segments on a pineapple grenade...

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Details details, the story is in the details. A while back the annual "official" anvil shooting competition went into some detail about how folk were preparing their shooting anvils. The special bases to spread the force across more ground surface looked good. It was the folk who were drilling and machining pockets in the base of the anvil so they could pack more than 1lb. of powder that seems pretty stupid.

Do that to a Chinese ASO and you're likely making a fragmentation bomb and folk who would let ANYBODY stay within 60' of 1lb. of exploding black powder shouldn't be trusted with anything dangerous a spoon comes to mind but don't let them pour hot coffee for you.

This is a good example of why I discourage even discussing some video idjits the King of RanDUMB just pops right into mind.

Frosty The Lucky.

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2 minutes ago, Judson Yaggy said:

About 10 or 12 years ago ABANA got serious grief from their local chapters when they asked that ABANA covered events stop anvil shooting.  A bummer, but totally understandable in modern America.  Hope the kid will be ok.  

Actually ABANA came to grief by DEMANDING chapters cease and desist on pain of expulsion. You want to bet how many chapters told them to . . . pound sand? By then though ABANA had lost sight of it's intended purpose and a LOT of chapters and members thought it becoming irrelevant. Happily ABANA is making a comeback but it took more involvement from the membership including leaning on board members and actually running for office.

It's a bane of non-profit organizations. The charter board members tend to find themselves trapped in jobs they thought temporary or regularly elected. After a while you stop investing personal time in an organization with a membership that doesn't care enough to come to meetings, vote, or even help out let alone run for the board.

In trying to do a good job in spite of apparent disinterest in the nuts and bolts of operation, ABANA was offering chapters inclusion in inexpensive insurance policies. Imaging what the insurance companies told ABANA about liability where shooting anvils was concerned.

I think the board could've worded the reality of the situation better. If an activity makes a chapter uninsurable then ABANA would be insanely incompetent to continue carrying them. A cease and desist edict on penalty of losing insurance coverage is is perfectly in order. It just didn't come out that way.

I wouldn't know any of this if I weren't trapped as president of the Association of Alaskan Blacksmiths. Yeah,they reelected me pres for life while I was in a coma. :rolleyes:

Frosty The Lucky.

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For those who've never seen what goes into an anvil shoot,technically you are screwing with 2 anvils, not one--one as your base and one as your shooter.  Serious waste of good anvils.

In a real shoot, I do understand the appeal--other than a big bang.  The goal is not only height but also perfectly straight up:  Your score is height minus X times the distance from the start point to the landing point so there is a lot of tweaking and planning involved in set-up. Doing well takes some skill. They just need to find something other than anvils to shoot.

If you ban this dangerous game, they'll just find an alternative--might be better to improve the safety issues than just ban it.

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  • 2 months later...
On 7/25/2016 at 8:11 PM, Michael Cochran said:

I had a guy ask if I could make Spurs for 'game chickens.'

Fellow that ask me to make fighting spurs said they would even post my bail. Very kind of him I said, followed by a polite NO THANK YOU.

Turned down good money to photograph a cock fight 4 months later. No requests since so I guess the word got out.

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On ‎7‎/‎23‎/‎2016 at 7:20 PM, Frosty said:

You want to bet how many chapters told them to . . . pound sand? 

Frosty The Lucky.

It was 7, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama.  ABANA made their demand shortly before the 2001 South East Regional Blacksmith Conference in Madison, Georgia.  SERBC had been shooting the anvil for years with no issues. and have continued at every conference since.  Two of the member blacksmith associations voted against defying ABANA and did not participate in the anvil shoot but ABANA kicked them out anyway.  A few months later when ABANA saw that the SE blacksmith associations would not come to ABANA begging to be back in they changed the association's designation from Chapters to Affiliates, as if that somehow made some kind of difference.

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There's a legal distinction between an affiliate and a chapter. An affiliate is just associated with and not legally liable to or for. Where a chapter is legally part of the parent thing. (whatever the thing may be)

For example an author writing about the dead sea scrolls has produced a work that is affiliated with the Bible in one one form or another but not part of the Bible.

However Psalm 117 is a Chapter in the Bible and so is part of the Bible.

Being a Chapter of ABANA makes ABANA at least partly liable for actions of the Chapter. An affiliate on the other hand can be anybody with A similar interest and  there is no legal connection.

I think the ABANA board took actions to protect the organization without talking to a lawyer about how to go about it. The result being a number of regional organizations reacting badly to being told what they must or must not do.

It's just humans being human and adjusting as they go. Nothing new.

Frosty The Lucky.

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