Emike123 wrote:
> 1) There was a fellow in the ‘70s killed disarming what I think was a watercap fused ball using a power drill.
> I cannot recall his name, but others probably do.
Rick Swain, Kinston NC, 1978. The shell was a 9" US Navy Watercap fuzed ball. Rick was using a (vertical) electric drill-press, in his relic shop. Frags went through the roof, but did not "blow the roof off," as erroneously reported. The shellwall of that 74-pound roundshell was 1.7" thick. Rick's error was drilling through its iron body for too long a time without backing the bit out of the hole for cooling, and not keeping water in the BOTTOM of the drillhole. According to the teenager who was present, the shell began to "fizzle," and Rick only had time to yell "Look out!" before it exploded. My EOD contacts have told me the ignition-temperature for Blackpowder is 572 degrees Fahrenheit. A drillbit can get hotter than that when you use it continuously for (approximately) 60 seconds ...especially if the bit has become dulled.
> 2) Tom Dickey in the video “Bombs in the Basement” refers to an accident where a friend of his named
> Sam (not White) and his son standing nearby were hurt during a deactivation with a drill press.
Tom's friend was Sam McLaren, who lived in the Washington DC area. The shell was a Bormann-fuzed 2.9" Read-Parrott. Mr. McLaren lost part of two fingers. The incident happened in the late-1960s or early-1970s.
3) In 2008 Sam White was killed apparently operating an angle grinder on the surface of a watercap ball in
> his driveway.
The shell, as in the Rick Swain incident, was a 9-inch Navy Watercap fuzed ball.
> 4) Lawrence Christopher was hurt in 2006 disarming a 20pdr Parrott shell with a hand drill in a shed next
> to his house. His grandson was standing nearby, possibly holding a water hose on the projectile, and hurt
> in the hand but apparently not seriously.
Lawrence was using an electric drill. His older-teenage grandson was holding a waterhose on the shell during the drilling. This incident shows water must be kept at the bottom of the drillhole, not just at its top. Metal shavings clog the drill's flutes as it operates, pushing the water out of the bottom of the hole. Also, the drill's spin causes the flutes to act like a propeller, pulling water out of the bottom of the hole.
Additional incidents, due to extremely high temperature, not drilling:
The "Lee Sanzo's Oven" incident occurred because the shell was a Schenkl Case-Shot. It had already been drilled, having two drillholes in it. Lee told me he was attempting to melt the asphalt matrix out of it. When exposed to high temperature, asphalt releases explosive hydrocarbon gases. The oven's burner ignited the gas.
In the late-1970s, Tom Dickey paid a worker to melt the lead sabot off of an excavated Hotchkiss shell, which Tom had mistaken for a Bolt (Solid-Shot projectile). That excavated shell turned out to have a very rust-encrusted Iron-Anvil-Cap West Point fuze in it, which Tom thought was merely a Hotchkiss Bolt's sharp-pointed nose. The worker sued Tom due to injury, and Tom settled out-of-court. Tom himself told me the details I'm telling you here.
If you are not 100%-certain that a projectile is a Solid-Shot, check it on a PRECISION weighing-scale, such as a Postal Shipping scale -- NOT a typically-inaccurate household bathroom weigh-scale. An actual Solid-Shot will always be appreciably heavier than a shell, or even a Case-Shot. The precise weights of nearly every type of civil war shells and Solid-Shots are given in my book, and some are given in Melton-&-Pawl's paperback guidebook.
I know of two unintended-detonation incidents in which a civil war shell was blamed in the newspaper reports ...but in both cases the shell turned out to be a World War Two era shell.
Having kept up with the subject of unintended detonation of civil war shells for nearly 40 years, I am also aware that a small number (less than half-a-dozen) of civil war shells have exploded during Remote Drilling. That is a noteworthy statistic in view of the fact that tens-of-thousands of civil war shells have been drilled.
Despite exhaustive research, including Internet-searching of multiple decades of Newspaper Archives, I have not found a single report of an EXCAVATED civil war era artillery shell exploding from merely being dropped, Nor, even from as "provocative" an action as being hammered-on. (Relic-diggers are notorious for bashing the rust-crust off of their shells with a hammer.) Apparently, not a single explosion has resulted from either of those two kinds of provocations even when the EXCAVATED civil war shell has a Percussion (impact-detonation) fuze. At least, not during the past 100 years.
Clearly, civil war artillery shells are a FAR less dangerous class of Ordnance than 20th-Century artillery projectiles.
That being said, I do understand why the Police and other government officials have the attitude they do, telling the public to call the police if a shell is discovered. The average American cannot distinguish between a highly dangerous 20th-Century shell and a comparatively harmless civil war era shell. Frankly speaking, nearly all Policemen and Soldiers cannot do that. It is our duty to educate them about the actual Facts. Some of them, if approached properly, will listen. For example, the local Police and the Fredericksburg and Richmond National Park Service personnel now contact me when they encounter a shell. Please encourage your local police department (and battlefield park personnel) to do that also.
I will have some interesting news to announce to this forum on that subject next month.
Regards,
Pete
