#doubleload

In the past couple of days in particular and in the previous months I have seen where a number of guys have double loaded their smokeless muzzle-loader. I have seen it on a muzzle-loader board and received texts about it from guys who have read about it. Some got lucky and only bulged a barrel or escaped an exploding rifle without injury. Others went to the hospital for surgery.This is not a first nor it will it be a last but I have heard about it more frequently as of late. I want to discuss how this happens, what happens as a result, and how to prevent it because I was only issued two eyes, one face, two hands, and one life and want to maintain all of them as long as I can.

As a case study we will look at one of the recent survivors. He is a bench-rest shooter and self proclaimed expert for nearly anything rifled that fires a single projectile. His version of the story:

Last Tuesday I was shooting Deep Purple with my new Sightron 8x32x56 scope.  I proceeded to fire about six shots getting the POI just right! BTW, I love the scope and the reticle.  The click adjustments are very positive and audible.  So, having it zeroed "dead nuts on" at 100 yards with the 300 gr. SST type blem using a 6/65.8 Clays/H-4198 duplex, I decided to move out to 300 yards.  So using the second hash mark (which would have put me 4" high at 100) I fired a shot.  That shot hit 7" low and a couple inches to the right. Now here comes the fuzzy part..............I evidentially took the gun to my "loading station" ( the next bench) and loaded it.   Then put it right back up on the lead sled.  So now I am sitting behind the gun looking thru the scope, playing with the dials, checking which hash mark I would need to be on at 300.  Then I put the second hash mark back on the bull and saw that the center dot was situated in a rock above the target........so, I decided to "dial the dot to the bullet hit and see how many MOA I needed if I did not use the hash marks.  I then returned it back to the 100 yard zero and decided I would bridge the third and fourth hash marks.  This procedure took maybe five to ten minutes of playing around.  When I finished, I took the gun back to the loading station and loaded it---------------------------------------------------------THE SECOND TIME!  Another 72 gr. of powder and another 300 gr. bullet   Do Not need to hear about the witness marks!  They only work when you have reason to look at them!  In my mind, the gun had been fired and I needed to load it!   Well, you think CYCLOPS is a powerful gun?  672 grains of bullets and powder exited the muzzle at 3484 fps.  I knew right off what happened  as I saw the little wisp of smoke come from around the bolt. The module swelled  a bout .027" and was semi-stuck on the bolt.  I was able to just tap it off.   The primer was still in and very flattened.  I ran a patch down the bore and could feel the bulge about 4" forward of the recoil lug.  I tried to load another charge and bullet but the bullet got dead loose when it got to the powder column.  Even being a duplex, it would not ignite so I put it up for the day and shot my other rifle. Deep Purple was 29 1/2" long and now its 26" long.  I am getting good at doing these HIS plugs!   Like I said, witness marks only work if you look at them.  Lets just say that the fact my barrel was 1.250  in the area of the bulge, there was no safety issue.  Had it been a sendero or lesser contour, ...........who knows.  

How did this happen? He broke a sequence, did not have fail safes in place, and did not use (or look at if he had one) a witness mark. After firing his gun he loaded it, put it back on his lead sled to figure out how many “hashmarks”  (MoA was the word he was looking for but he never understood the Mil-Dot either) of hold over he needed to shoot a longer target than the one he just fired. Personally, I would have looked it up on my phone while I was behind the gun and ready to shoot. He then went back to his loading station and double loaded it because in his mind he had fired it. He also stated that a witness mark was not important. My imagination is not powerful enough to fire a rifle and you do need a witness mark. He was right about only one thing, a witness mark only does you service if you look at it. As a testament, this is the second barrel he has bulged. Over the years I have learned that when you lose respect for something dangerous it will usually remind you why it is dangerous whether it is guns, alcohol, or your pet tiger. Luckily, his gun did not come unglued, all that happened was a bulged barrel but doing that twice in a lifetime is twice too much since it can absolutely be prevented.

Additionally, if this happens to you my personal opinion is that barrel is compromised and needs to become a tomato state. His solution was to cut back past the bulge in the barrel and reinstall. That’s not a good idea as steel has a plastic limit and a double load is probably pretty close to getting you there which means it is more susceptible to future failure. Just because a structure doesn’t fail immediately does not mean it’s not prone to doing so from being weak and over stressed; just look at the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. It was under built, over stressed, and already had cracks. It was totally fine until it wasn’t and then it fell in the Mississippi. I am not going to continue to run 50-60Kpsi through a barrel I know had an integrity compromise.

You may be asking, “So what?”, this has never happened to me. Point is it can and will when you take it for granted. I used the example I did because lots of people look at the bench-rest crowd as the epitome of rifle shooting (I don’t but they have driven advancements in equipment that have benefited everyone) and a guy who has shot 15K rounds of SML down range should have a process down. As I was told by a mentor at work in regard to negligent discharges: there are two types of guys who use guns (use them everyday, not casual hobbyist shooters), the one who have had a negligent discharge and those who will. The casual shooter is always a little afraid of a gun because they don’t spend enough time with it to ever master it. I can see it at the range all the time, that little creeping lack of confidence that causes them to give things and extra look. The guy who lives with a gun does not do that. The problem is that eventually confidence will override competence and you will fall back on your lowest level of training. It is never quite as crushing for the casual shooter because that lowest level of training (or confidence) is never very high. Either way, it normally turns you into a very safe shooter because you become hyper-aware. A double load is the same way, you have either had one or you are waiting on your turn but you should do everything in the world to ensure your number doesn’t come up.

I do not think that Smokeless Muzzle-Loaders are the right choice for a casual hunter and there are a few essential rules to avoid a double-load if you decide the SML is for you:

1. Shoot alone or if you have others on the range ask them to give you a minute of uninterrupted attention to your task. If they cannot give you that courtesy stop what you are doing immediately and resume what you are doing when they go away.

2. Treat every gun as if it loaded. Do it every single time you touch it even if you have no doubt. Have a process that ensures your safety by proving or disproving that it is loaded. The first thing I do when I pull my SML out of the case is remove the bolt. The bolt does not go back in until the rifle is loaded. I do the same thing when I fire it: bolt comes out and does not go back in until it is loaded. The reason I do this first is that with the bolt removed I can point the rifle skyward and see light through the vent orifice in the breech-plug. If I have to walk away from the rifle for any reason, the first thing I do is pick it up and point it skyward looking for that light. This is the equivalent of conducting a press-check or clearing a center-fire gun. You do that every time you pick up a rifle, shotgun, or pistol. Right? Do it with your SML.

3. Come up with some sort of sequence and organization that supports your sequence. I pull my bolt from the rifle and place it on the far right side of the bench as I am looking at it. As soon as I pull the bolt out of the gun I turn it upright and place my funnel in my break and place the ramrod in the barrel so that the T-handle is sitting flush with the top of my break (this serves as my unloaded witness-mark). I am now ready to start a load procedure.

For me everything is bagged separately: bullets, powder, primers, wads, etc. I have a box for expended powder vials and primers/primer modules. I lay them out on the bench in the order they are loaded: powder, wads (if used), bullets, then primers. I then pull out one of each for the shot to be conducted and lay them in the same order used. I never load by grabbing stuff out of bags as I need it.

Now that my rifle is in a no-fail safe condition and my load is staged I am ready to make the rifle ready to fire. I remove my ramrod from the barrel and take control of my rifle. I uncap the powder vial, pour my powder through my funnel, then replace the cap on the vial and place it in the expended box. If I am using a wad, I place it in the funnel and ram it home on top of the powder column. Next, I pull my funnel from the break and wedge my bullet in the end that sits against the muzzle then reinsert it into the break and turn it until the bullet indexes to the rifling and the bullet seats in the muzzle. Lastly, I use my ramrod to push the bullet home through the funnel until it makes a positive stop with the powder and my witness-mark is flush with the top of my funnel. I remove the ramrod and funnel then place the rifle into my bench-rest setup (if I’m using it) or place it on bi-pod if shooting prone. I take my bolt and insert the primer/primer module and move into my shooting position. The last thing I do is place the primed bolt into the rifle and place it into battery. This sequence ensures that everything that should have been removed is removed and everything that belongs is in place.

If for any reason I have to stop mid-sequence I place the ramrod back in the barrel before I step away from the rifle. When I come back to the rifle I immediately look at the ramrod. If it is not sitting flush with the top of my break it means something is in the barrel or your bullet is not fully seated (which also causes bulged barrels). I will then remove the rod and point the rifle skyward to confirm there is either light or no light and reference that to what I have left on my loading table. At that point I am safe to go back into my loading sequence where I left off.

As soon as I fire my shot and ensure good follow through, I open the bolt and remove it. I take it back to the table, remove the primer and place it in the expended box, then place the bolt back on the far right side of the table as I’m facing it. I then retrieve my rifle and start the sequence over gain.