What is the worse cut, finggersmash, burn, fingerloss or poisioning you have recieved when gun smithing?


urdubob

Not gunsmithing but I got my finger in the reloading press on the upstroke,, Not nice.

Surface grinder, 19 stitches.

Well, I hate to admit this but, I was chambereing a Mod 70 for .30-06AI for a friend and the reamer I purchased came with a recommendation to cut at 100-140 RPM, which I was doing. My PREVIOUS bad habit, when chambering at 40-45 RPM, when getting close and wanting to check the GO gauge against the bolt, was to run the receiver on to the barrel under power. It's easy to get your hand off the receiver in time at the lower speed but suffice to say that at 140 RPM, the receiver hit the shoulder of the barrel and took my thumb between it and the compound. Fortunately I had removed the tool post and was using the flat of the compound to rest my hand on while reaming. After four hours of surgery, one titanium plate and six stainless steel screws, my thumb was saved. I no longer have any mobility in my right thumb from the first joint out but after he put a permanent 20 deg. twist in it, I can pinch things in it and have most of the sensation back. I no longer screw actions on to a rotating barrel. The machine is shut off and I do it manually. By the way, after the '06AI was finished, the fellow swears it's a half minute rifle. I guess "it's an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good".

I've been lucky....no injuries.....yet except for a few nasty cuts using wood chisels while inletting stocks.

However one of the greats who died young of mercury poisoning from inhaling bluing salt fumes was Cap Ahlman. He might not be well known as he died in his before he was well known.

A gunsmith friend, Wayne Baker of Conroe, got a small metal sliver in his leg, sepsis in his blood, clots in his lungs, seriously ill for awhile.

I guess I'm fortunate in that the only thing I've injured is my wallet. Not that I'm anything more than a pimple on a real gunsmith's ass but I play, none the less.

I hate to admit this. In the process of polishing a barrel, I was daydreaming about guys that said they threaded at 250 rpm or higher. Since the apron was to the far right next to the tailstock, I decided to briefly engage the halfnut at 900 rpms. I saw that I had about 26" and knew I could kick it out quickly. Of course I forgot my last operation was threading in backgear. As you know when you go out of back gear the carriage travels in the opposite direction. After the carriage pushed the tailstock back, the barrel beat the hell out of me!I was fortunate that I only had a big knot and bruise on my left forearm. The barrel didn't hit the ways as it fell to the floor. Don't tell anybody that I told this.
Butch

I know of so many things that have happened to people I knew in the gun businesses it's hard to decide which ones to relate.

One of my mentors, Bill Mowrey of black powder rifle fame was turning a large diameter billet of steel in a 16" swhing lathe running at high speed. He was wearing bibb overalls and leaned over the work too far when the high rpm stock snagged the bibb of his overalls, started wrapping things up, Bill threw out his arms, locked his elbows, his hands stopped him at the back of the chip pan and the lathe ripped the front of his overalls completey off to the crotch. He said that was the scariest moment of his entire life.

A co-owner of Mowrey Gun Works in Olney, Texas left a 3 jaw chuck key in a large lathe then kicked it back in gear. The key hit him in the head knocking him unconcious. While in the hospital he caught pnuemonia and died.

There was a well known gunsmith here in North Texas named Paul Morton who had a Winchester model 11 accidently discharge striking him in the left hand and forearm. He lost that arm, returned to gunsmithing to become a talented gunsmith building custom rifles of guild quality including complex checkering and carving patterns, all done with one arm. He stayed in business untill old age and was a highly productive and prolific smith producing many rifles of high quality in the 1950's and 1960's. He was somewhat of a legend in this area. I now own his personally built checkering cradle. Wouldn't take a million bucks for it.

I know a gunsmith/instructor who was working on a 98 military mauser. The rear sight sleeve had been removed and for other reasons needed to be test fired into a bullet trap. Unknown to the gunsmith the sight sleeve screw hole had been drilled into the bore (probably when it was manufactured). He held the barreled action by the barrel right over that hole and fired. The high pressure gas made an ugly hole in the palm of his hand and terrible bruising. Upon visiting the emergency room and the doctor was informed of what happened the gunsmith was rushed to ICU for three days. Turns out he was at risk for bubbles being introduced into his blood stream. The good news is he recovered just fine.

The dumbest thing I ever did was use the bead blast cabinet (which leaked) with a poor fitting face mask filter for several days. I came down with a very bad cough, could not get over it, thought I had the flu. Went to the doctor, he couldn't diagnose it. Took me about three months of misery to recover. We determined a lot later it was silicosis (spelling?) from breathig glass dust. Come to find out it could have been very serious.

This one I read about in Brownells I think. A long time employee was running the hot bluing tanks. Another employee with less experience doing the polishing left the magazine full of loaded shotshells in a Browning A-5. The first employee leaned over the hot bluing tank when a loaded round let go, spraying caustic bluing salts in his face and eyes. He was severely disfigured and lost sight in both eyes.

I know a lot more but I'll let some the rest of the craft relate a few.

OK, I'll tell stories on myself. A lot of my tooling came from the estate of a gunsmith I worked for when I first started. He had his barrel vise set on the corner of a bench with a piece of plate steel under it. I was checking the fit of a action to the barrel. While removing it, it was snug not tight, the action suddenly broke loose and I caught my left index finger between the action wrench and the plate steel. It peeled the skin back from the knuckle on my left index finger. Luckily, I'm only about 5 miles from the nearest ER. And I know most of the doctors there because my wife works there. Having an ER nurse for a wife can come in handy. 17 stitches later I was good as new. The first thing I did after that was move the barrel vise. I'd never noticed that it made as good a shear as it did a vise.

When I first started working for my mentor it was in the back of a gunshop. His/my polishing motors were lined up against a wall and plugged into an outlet strip mounted on the wall at the heighth of the motors. I'd been using a worklight on a stand plugged into the same strip to light the work. One day, one of the sales folks stepped into the shop to ask me about something. While talking to him, I reached down without looking and turned on a buffer. The loud crashing and thrashing made the salesman step out of the shop quickly and I moved around the nearest solid wall. When things had settled down, I turned off the buffer and we found out what had happened. The worklight cord had gotten caught on the buffer motor shaft. The work light and stand was spun at 1750rpm by th 1hp motor and smashed thoroughly against the wall. I was still finding pieces of it several weeks later in all corners of the shop. Luckily no one was hurt and the only property damage was to my light. I never again plugged anything but the buffer motors into that power strip.

I'm not stupid, just slow. Once I learn my lessons I remember them well.

The one armed gunsmith I described earlier had a protegee who was a talented stockmaker of his own right.

One week end at a gun show it was obvious he had a badly swollen left hand and the index finger bandaged up. He confessed he was spin polishing a barrel in his Atlas 12" lathe at home in his garage. He was known to drink a little and was using a long strip of emory cloth when it wrapped around the barrel taking his finger and hand with it, he reached over his left arm with his right hand to throw the forward/reverse switch to off and went past middle/off position to reverse......unwinding his finger and hand from clockwise to winding it all the way back around to counter clockwise. He finally got it shut off and his appendages unwrapped. He had pulled the finger out of two joints........he went in the house, drank quite a bit more whiskey and shoved everything back into joint.

A gunsmith in my town was working on Colt clone and was using live ammo. He accidently allowed the trigger to fall and shot himself in the lower abdomen. I got him from the ER and after about one hour we took him to the morgue. He had destroyed the inguinal artery and bled to death before we could cross clamp the aorta. 35 U blood in 30 min with a Level 1 infuser couldn't get the job done. Guns can kill anyone that disreguards the rules. We miss his skill.

Back when I was in Machinist school at Fort Aberdeen, one of the Army cats had forgotten to tighten the chuck all the way to the lathe and turned it on at 560 rpm. The whole chuck flew off and caught him right in the chest and knocked him over. Surprisingly enough, he only had a few broken ribs and severe bruising.
I'm just glad they hound us Marine types so much that I haven't forgotten to do something like that yet. I've only gotten ugly scars from my own dumbass faults, like the time I got attacked viciously by my wire wheel.