I have a "regular job" in an office which I enjoy, which also pays the bills. That's a good thing on all counts. However, my "fun job" is as a Gunsmith. Sometimes I work one day a week, and sometimes I work all weekend. It affords me the chance to shoot my EDC gun every week in a modern, clean indoor range for free (which is pretty great) and gives me a multitude of stories about really neat (and rare) guns that I get to work on, plus
many stories about less-than-intelligent gun owners.
Here is one of them:
I removed eight (8) squib rounds (that's a bullet that has lodged in the barrel, causing an obstruction) from a single-action (SA) centerfire revolver last Saturday.
It's a personal record for me, after 30 years of Gunsmithing. My old "record" was six (6) rimfire rounds.
Just let that sink in.
This guy shot his revolver at a paper target, and made no hole in the target. I guess he surmised that he missed the target - because he fired again and again - still not making any holes in the target. With each subsequent cartridge fired, each bullet just mashed into the one in front of it.
So this is a six-shooter, right?
After he fires an
entire cylinder of six rounds, he RELOADS and continues to fire until the gun just won't function anymore.
Eight (8) rounds, total. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
This is how you get a revolver barrel full of nothing but copper-jacketed lead bullets from muzzle to forcing cone.
Had this revolver not been "built like a tank" (which it was), it could have turned into a
SCLID.
That's a
Sudden Catastrophic Load-Induced Disassembly, which is a very scientific way to say that the gun would have exploded like a pipe bomb.
Had he not stopped when he did, I am sure that the cylinder would have exploded and blown the top strap off the frame.
To illustrate what I'm talking about, here's an example of a Smith & Wesson revolver:
View attachment 4029
Here's what used to be a nice Colt revolver. Four (4) .45LC bullets opened up the barrel like a peeled banana:
View attachment 4030
