The Perils of Black Powder

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Richard500

The Perils of Black Powder

#1 Post by Richard500 »

Sometime back in the early 80's many of our club members (I'll just say it's in Sussex for now) were avid black powder enthusiasts and on one occasion this was going to prove costly for one unsuspecting enthusiast. So off to Headly Park pistol range near Bordon went a few of these "avids" for a days shooting. It was common practice to use Trex to smear around the chamber of their revolvers and this was no exception on the warm sunny days they chose to start shooting. It was also about two weeks before a Royal Wedding (I can't remember which one just now).

OK, "JR" was happy reloading and blasting away, the smell of the powder mixed with the cooking smell of fresh warm fat was intoxicating and he wasn't noticing that his grip on the revolver was not as good as it should have been. He lifted the revolver, started to squeeze the trigger but he was having to exert extra pressure to compensate for the loss of grip on the grips of the revolver. The Trex was now acting as a lubricant between the palm of his hand and the grips and as he continued to squeeze hard on the trigger the grips slowly squeezed out of his hand and tipped forward so that the weight of his Colt Old Navy or Army was now resting on the trigger that was swinging down and backwards towards "JR" with inevitable results, he was shot in the groin! As the gun fired "JR " was heard to call out "bugger if I haven't shot myself" whereupon one of his colleagues rushed to his aid and called an ambulance which arrived promptly and took him to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot. "JR" was thankfully not in too serious condition and was operated on military surgeons. However, after getting on for two weeks in hospital the surgeons gave up trying to remove the .36 ball as it had moved into ever more inaccessible parts of his groin and thigh. He was later discharged more because the Alert was raised to severe of something in the run up to the wedding and there was always the threat of an IRA attack on it that would require the hospital to be on standby and poor old "JR" was not considered and emergency by the time of the raised alert level.

I occasionally bump into JR and ask after his wound which he assures me he is unaware of lump of lead still present somewhere in his upper leg these days (about 25 years ago I think the incident was) except when it rains!

Health & Safety - Black Powder - Trex!!

Lessons learnt.
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