Last year a woman in my city had her left arm blown off below the elbow. A guy had an old, old flintlock that he thought was empty. News reported it had sat on a mantle for about 100 years. Apparently, he made a habit of allowing people to dry fire it to see the sparks it made.

They were doing this after dark one evening, on his back porch. The rifle exploded, taking her arm off.

Brent, I have read accounts of someone buying a muzzleloader and installing a nipple to allow hotter caps oe even shotgun primers. Couple that with starting at max loads and not knowing to seat the ball and you hve a problem.
I don't think just the wrong cap by itself can do it either, but usually someone makes more than one mistake at a time.
Jim

I went over to see my friend today a few towns away. It seems that one of the locals "blew up" an inline. My friends daughter is his nurse in the hospital. The guy has some pretty severe injuries from schrapnel, puntured bladder, intestines and some others. His wife was also injured. He claims that it "came loaded" when he bought it. This of course sounds like total BS to me!! One of the stories going around town is that he was shooting it into the fireplace. On the 3rd or 4th shot , it blew up. This sounds more like reality to me. Possibly using Pyrodex or 777, crusted up by the chamber, failed to seat the sabot all the way down, and KABOOM !!!!! I've never heard of a muzzleloader being testfired at the factory, except maybe a Knight, have you??? No matter what happened, the guy is a total moron for shooting it in the house.

If it was an old, used rifle, I can easily believe it. I have two personal friends that have seen this in rifles they have bought and I have heard of it from others - even with very old early 19th - late 18th century guns. BP does not go bad like modern powder, it will fire. And a flintlock is particularly dangerous because too many people presume that they are safe so long as there is no powder in the pan.

Yes, i can easily believe he brought home a loaded muzzleloader. Very easy indeed.

On the other hand, perhaps he really did "blow up" one of these Savage rifles.

Brent