My ~EYE~ Accident

[Ragnarok]

I wasn't trying to discourage the wearing of safety glasses - just making the point that it still doesn't give you any license to look down the barrel.

Fair point.

You know, thinking about it, if there is a problem, the solution is seldom going to be found down the barrel.
I can only think of two times in my shooting/spudding experience when I've had a problem when it's something to do with the barrel.

The first time was when I fired something from an old PVC cannon, and it dug into the barrel walls and jammed. Eventually, the barrel had to be discarded - it was actually shortly after that I switched to copper barrels, in which, nothing has yet jammed.

The second was when I was cleaning my air rifle barrel, and I was using homemade cleaning pellets rolled out of kitchen towel - I rolled one a bit large, and it jammed in the choke. Quite easily fixed with a bore pushrod from my cleaning kit.

Both times the noise made was a very distinctive thud, and it was obvious what had happened, mostly because there was no real report to speak of.

@Turbosuper: Good point, but in my opinion, you should really take more care with a spudgun, simply because, as a homemade device, it's less reliable and predictable.

[Fnord]

You should be glad it happened with the cannon it did. Most of the semi-advanced ones on this site would have killed you.
Other than that, now you can wear those Riddick-style glasses and pretend you've had your night vision surgically enhanced. By the way, have you noticed a difference with night vision with your eye permanently dilated?
It's good that you're (relatively) ok though.

It was lodged in his finger and wound up having to get surgery to have it removed. About 2 days and $7000 (after insurance) later, it was out.

For $7000, I'd have lopped it off. I realize doctors have stressful jobs, but that's just unacceptable. 20 minutes with a pocket knife, tweezers and some copper wire would be my first choice.

[littlebro05]

Haha. I would never look down the barrel of anything it always gives me the creeps. Nah I'm not a extreme damage cannon type builders. I'm more of an airsoft builders cause I live in Aus.

But still that video that ant showed, that dude was extremely stupid. I'll still wear my safety glasses when ever. Ragnarok you seem a tad touchy about these things lol. It's good use though i'd wear glasses it'll protect your eyes from most things. I use the ones they use for science with a strap on them. Their quite durable it can handle a 350fps cap gun firing at it so it should be able to handle a cloud. Before I wear the glasses I always test the bb gun before firing for safety reasons of course.

[Ragnarok]

Ragnarok you seem a tad touchy about these things lol.

Only because I recognise it's so important. You can't wait to lose an eye before you decide to start wearing them. People don't really seem to listen until something like this comes up, so when I have a good chance to push such an important point as safety, I'm not going to waste it.

Just looking at the scars on my left hand is enough to tell me what damage can happen through accidents I thought weren't going to happen - and where my left hand repairs itself, my eyes won't.

... Mind you, that is a bit of a lopsided point, as a full half of the scars on my body are on my left hand and lower arm.

[starman]

... Mind you, that is a bit of a lopsided point, as a full half of the scars on my body are on my left hand and lower arm.

Hummm, that's interesting. Are you left handed by any chance? I'm right handed and can attribute probably 2/3 to 3/4 or so of my total scars to my right hand/arm/leg/foot. I've always thought it was just because of that side being dominate and tending to be used first and foremost.

Edit: Oops I think I remember you shooting and operating HEAL right handed.

[Ragnarok]

Oops I think I remember you shooting and operating HEAL right handed.

You're right, I am right handed, very strongly so in fact - so I'm a little surprised that my left hand seems to get more scars.

I think it's mostly because when I'm doing something, if I'm trying to operate a tool/device with my right hand, it's my left hand that's holding whatever I'm trying to work on, and is therefore more likely to cop the results.
I also once broke my left wrist in a bad fall, but in that case it was just chance that it was the left rather than the right - it just reached the ground slightly earlier and took the brunt instead.

... back to your original point, HEAL was specifically designed to be used right handed, with the breech bolt, safeties and pressure gauge all on the right, and with the grip designed for my right hand.
There was no absolute requirement to do that, but I designed it when I was in the Army Cadets, and quite a lot of things I designed around that time share features from the L98A1 Cadet rifle (essentially a straight pull bolt action version of the SA80).

For example, if you look at this shell loading design,

It was designed with a rotating locked bolt - well, actually, that's a later adjustment on the idea that twists twice during the process to help prevent jamming issues, but that's where it originally came from.

Actually, I should probably get round to building that at some point.

[frogy]

I can see clearly not the cataract is gone.

You're very lucky that you still have vision out of that eye... The body is a very touch mechanism, and the eye is much, much stronger than people believe...

My cousin got stabbed in the eye with a broken beer bottle... stitched it up, put in some saline? and he's completely back to normal.

[dungdue0]

shooting your eye is some intense shit

[john bunsenburner]

This is one of the many ocassions where you see how small the world is. In august i was still a big fan of true fire arms, which i also built. While i was working on making a new primer for my bullets i came across somehting called arms strongs mixture. I was sure that i would be able to properly handle it and so i made a batch only 1gram of it. I wit it with a hammer it exploded and i was very content with it. Then i wondered if it would be possible to make the bullet using only arm strongs. I made a new batch this times it was 5grams, it worked well and i doubled the amount used. I wit it with the hammer, there was a huge bang and the A4 paper under my explosive disapeared. I saw a kind of wave coming from the exposion, the gardener fell of his ladder and then i noticed it: I had a loud beeping in my ear.It did not subside after two days and i decide to go see a doctor. After seven hours of hospital i was told to take cortisone for two weeks, the ringing disapeared. I never touched explosives again but i hear the ringing when ever i am alone or when i just heard a loud noise(a disco will leave me with a ringing for example). I learnt alot from that lesson, that is also the main reason i have changed from explosived to pneumatically operated guns.

[mark.f]

shooting your eye is some intense crap

Way to go, slugger! Now if you can tell us something only 99% of us know, you'll be on a goddamned winning streak!!!

I haven't commented in this thread yet, so I'll take the opportunity to say that I'm sorry about your eye, CC (although you're probably nowhere around right now), but this could have been avoided entirely with safe weapon-handling procedures. NEVER stop thinking with a weapon (loaded or not, fake or not, no matter what) in your hands.

[psycix]

shooting your eye is some intense crap

You have got experience with that?

If you would've looked better you wouldn't have kicked up such an old topic with such an unnecessary and uninformative post.

[raptorforce]

wow i feel sorry for you dont worry i probably would have done the same thing with my air cannon but mine fires steel darts at 100 psi and i i did that i would be dead so scary. i am never looking down my barrel again. maybe ill use a mirror

[raptorforce]

Ragnarok you seem a tad touchy about these things lol.

Only because I recognise it's so important. You can't wait to lose an eye before you decide to start wearing them. People don't really seem to listen until something like this comes up, so when I have a good chance to push such an important point as safety, I'm not going to waste it.

Just looking at the scars on my left hand is enough to tell me what damage can happen through accidents I thought weren't going to happen - and where my left hand repairs itself, my eyes won't.

... Mind you, that is a bit of a lopsided point, as a full half of the scars on my body are on my left hand and lower arm.

do regualr prescription glasses work

[VirusX]

Argh dude you remind me at myself ... when my inginition didn't work once again I tried to look inside the chamber through the barrel and I wanted to ignite to see if it's broken again. Till this moment I always thought thankfully, that the cannon could still fire and I left the ingition be.

But after this story I'll never take a look through the barrel. NEVER. Especially not when my mate has the ignition trigger in his hand

PM has been sent, jrrdw.

[Zeus]

Almost all of my scars are on my left side, blowtorch, barbed wire, nearly gibbed/amputated finger you get the picture. (I know what you are thinking, this person shoudn't touch spudguns)