Death By Detecting

No. Cartridges outside of a breech and barrel are basically harmless.
 

I throw bullets into a campfire. Scares the bajeezas out of greenhorns! :skullflag:
 

No. Not on common small arms ammo.
Without compression due to being in a constriction/ chamber , pressure is not generated enough. It escapes from behind and all sides of a bullet when unrestricted.
The primer IF struck just right would cause as much result probably as the entire load.
A very short barreled .22 pistol of mine does not pack much wallop ,due to limited restriction in the short amount of confinement.

Why? Are you hammering rounds with a shovel?

Fire burning ammo is on the internet. Unconfined rounds pop off. Unlike being fired out of a restricting chamber/barrel.
 

Terry, I had a friend that threw cartridges in a fire with a dozen or more persons around it. So SO Dangerous. They almost tore each others eyeballs out trying to get away. So SO Dangerous. :)
 

Alan Payne said:
Has anyone ever heard of someone striking an unspent Cartridge with your shovel and the round actually going off? Has anyone ever died from this situation before?
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The setting a primer off with a shovel is about as likely as being struck by a meteorite. I won't say that it can't happen because crazier things have, but the chance is very, very low. As for the rest of the cartridge, you could beat on it with a hammer, run it over, cut it in half with a bandsaw, whatever...it's not going to go off. (That shouldn't set a primer off either, really.)

If you did manage to somehow set off an uncontained cartridge, it still won't be particularly dangerous as others have mentioned. Your biggest danger would be a piece of flying debris hitting you in the eye. That having been said, I seem to recall Julian Hatcher mentioning in one of his books (probably Hatcher's Notebook) a curious case where a woman was killed by just such a thing. Apparently while loading some wood into a stove, she inadvertently dropped a cartridge in as well; it exploded while the door was still open. If memory serves, it was the casing or the primer that killed her, not the bullet. Hatcher mentioned it exactly because it was such an unusual thing, but that was pretty much a one in one million sort of thing. So yes, this can kill someone and apparently did kill someone once, but that's the only incident that I've heard about and I used to deal with this stuff for a living, and it happened before my father was born. It's certainly not a common thing.

I once observed a .50 BMG cartridge detonate in someone's hands...true story, and I'm willing to tell it if anyone is interested. There were probably some soiled drawers but no one was injured. As you probably know, this is a very large round and it was literally sitting in someone's hands when it popped. I'm not going to say that such a thing would absolutely not hurt anyone (and I'm a bit surprised that this person wasn't hurt), but again, no injuries at all, and there were a few people in close proximity when it happened.

tl;dr version - don't worry about it.

EDIT: this applies to conventional bullets only. The moment that we're dealing with anything explosive - cannon shells, grenades, etc. - all bets are off. They're quite safe these days when they're in good order, but pieces of ordnance that have spent a few decades in the ground likely aren't in good order and the fuzes weren't always all that safe back then. Hitting something like that could very well set it off and kill you. This doesn't happen frequently, but it does happen. If you're not detecting on an old battlefield or a former training site, this shouldn't be a concern.
 

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Dave Rishar said:
The setting a primer off with a shovel is about as likely as being struck by a meteorite. I won't say that it can't happen because crazier things have, but the chance is very, very low.


I was actually injured by a 22 long hollow point that was set off by a shovel but the shell was in the guns cylinder. Short version of the story, I was digging ginseng....jabbed the shovel into rock hard dirt so I could get on my knees and finish digging out the large root out by hand....Ruger 22 Single Six on my belt with a shell in the chamber under the hammer(the firing pin is supposed to drop down when the hammer is down but this time it didn't)....shovel fell, the handle hit the hammer, and I heard what I thought was a firecracker....when I finally realized what happened I thought wow , it's lucky I didn't get shot....about that time I see a hole in the back of my pants leg and a stain starting to show around the hole....the bullet went in the back of my calf and stopped just under the skin on the front of my leg....the good news, it missed the bone.... the bad news, I was about 2 miles from my truck....when I got home I told my wife I was going to the hospital and wondered if she wanted to go with me....she says, what did you do, fall and hurt yourself....I said no, I shot myself....she said "YOU IDIOT"....the doctor agreed with her.
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trdking said:
Terry, I had a friend that threw cartridges in a fire with a dozen or more persons around it. So SO Dangerous. They almost tore each others eyeballs out trying to get away. So SO Dangerous. :)
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I use .22 shorts. The bigger rounds are too darn expensive! :skullflag:
 

My sisters neighbor shot himself while burning a pile of stuff, I don't think he knew the rounds were in the fire though and it didn't penetate his shoulder very deep but had it hit him in the eye it could have been bad. HH
Terry Soloman said:
I throw bullets into a campfire. Scares the bajeezas out of greenhorns! :skullflag:
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I wouldn't try and saw one in half with a band saw the heat would most likely set the powder off, like a cook off round in a hot gun barrel. HH
 

I second that small arms cartridges are pretty safe HOWEVER if you come across
Something like this RUN

C73141BE-D275-4F51-8D61-6FC95BCD0CE5.jpeg

This was found not too terribly far from where we live just last week

Here is the full story:
WWII mortar shell brings bomb squad to Gold Hill - News - MailTribune.com - Medford, OR
 

When I was 19 years old I was called into an antique shop operated by a girlfriend who picked up a live grenade and asked me if it was real. It was WW2 era that came in a box of memorabilia. It was very real. Glad she didn't pull the pin.
 

flinthunter said:
Dave Rishar said:
The setting a primer off with a shovel is about as likely as being struck by a meteorite. I won't say that it can't happen because crazier things have, but the chance is very, very low.


I was actually injured by a 22 long hollow point that was set off by a shovel but the shell was in the guns cylinder. Short version of the story, I was digging ginseng....jabbed the shovel into rock hard dirt so I could get on my knees and finish digging out the large root out by hand....Ruger 22 Single Six on my belt with a shell in the chamber under the hammer(the firing pin is supposed to drop down when the hammer is down but this time it didn't)....shovel fell, the handle hit the hammer, and I heard what I thought was a firecracker....when I finally realized what happened I thought wow , it's lucky I didn't get shot....about that time I see a hole in the back of my pants leg and a stain starting to show around the hole....the bullet went in the back of my calf and stopped just under the skin on the front of my leg....the good news, it missed the bone.... the bad news, I was about 2 miles from my truck....when I got home I told my wife I was going to the hospital and wondered if she wanted to go with me....she says, what did you do, fall and hurt yourself....I said no, I shot myself....she said "YOU IDIOT"....the doctor agreed with her.
Click to expand...

Four pronger?:dontknow::laughing7:
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If I were digging in France I'd be more concerned. But the chances of detonating one with a shovel is below slim if you were digging with care (as you should for any coin or relic). Digging it out and disturbing it . . . you're on your own.

They still are pulling out unexploded ordinance in the fields from WWI. And they used much "better" explosives than were available in our Civil War.
oliviersainthilaire_musee_du-deminage-14-930x618.jpg
 

Charlie P. (NY) said:
If I were digging in France I'd be more concerned. But the chances of detonating one with a shovel is below slim if you were digging with care (as you should for any coin or relic). Digging it out and disturbing it . . . you're on your own.

They still are pulling out unexploded ordinance in the fields from WWI. And they used much "better" explosives than were available in our Civil War.
oliviersainthilaire_musee_du-deminage-14-930x618.jpg
Click to expand...

Maybe discrim iron would help....Wait, better check for iron before digging!
 

When I was a kid we used to throw bullets in campfires at night to scare the heck of everyone. We'd scream we are under attack and watch the naive kids run off into the woods and hide until we'd call them back
 

flinthunter said:
...under the hammer(the firing pin is supposed to drop down when the hammer is down but this time it didn't)....
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For the sake of clarity, the transfer bar between the hammer and firing pin is the part that is supposed to drop down. Glad you're still around to tell the story!
 

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