The Luckiest Guy in the World

The luckiest guy in the world carries a Smith & Wesson Airweight .38 Special.

Some years ago, I worked as a full-time gunsmith in a fairly busy shop in Plano, Texas, where I cleaned, repaired and tinkered with a wide variety of guns. During that time, I got to see some really cool guns with really cool stories associated with them, as well as what I will call the “fugitives from the law of averages.”

One that really sticks in my mind is the aforementioned Smith & Wesson Airweight .38 Special that came in one day, the owner complaining that the sights must be off, because there weren’t any holes in his target.

My first thought is usually “operator error” in cases like this, but something caught my eye as he laid the revolver on the counter, apologizing for not unloading it first, because the cylinder wouldn’t open.

Just at the very end of the barrel, sticking slightly out of the muzzle, was the nose of a full metal jacketed bullet. As I picked up the revolver, I took a quick peek at the cylinder gap and noted that there was no light shining through it, which meant only one thing: squib loads.

Five of them.

As unbelievable as this sounds, I asked the customer, a polite elderly gentleman, if he had noticed anything odd or unusual besides the lack of holes in the target, such as lower report, hissing noises, or a difference in the recoil, but he said no. I asked him to show me the ammo he was using, and he pulled out a yellow plastic tacklebox that had about 20 rounds of corroded, filthy .38 Special ammo rattling around in the bottom. The box showed signs of having had water in it, and the ammo was obviously ruined quite some time ago, which solved the mystery as far as why the cylinder was jammed up tighter than Dave’s hatband.

I don’t know how to adequately express just how lucky this guy was that his alloy-framed snubbie didn’t simply blow to pieces in his hand after the first couple of rounds. If he had been using defensive loads or worse, +P ammo, it very likely would have come apart like a grenade and ruined his whole day.

As it turned out, though, he had calmly stacked five rounds inside the barrel without even noticing, with almost no discernible effect as far as he was concerned. All I can say is…

WOW.

I took the poor little snubbie in on a work ticket, and set about to removing the stuck projectiles from the barrel, which turned out to be a process requiring ingenuity and determination that beggared description.

Most of the time, one would use a wooden dowel to drive the stuck projectiles back into the cylinder, open up the revolver and then drive the projectile out the front. The works great if you’re dealing with just one squib, but a stack of five compressed projectiles is a horse of a dofferent color.

After examining the problem and doing a little research, I drilled through the stack of projectiles in the barrel, being careful to stay centered, threaded a lag screw into each one, and used a slide hammer to pull them out one by one. The one stuck in the cylinder gap was kinda tough, because it wouldn’t push back into the cylinder using a wooden dowel, so I had to tack some round stock onto my drill bit to add length, then use a longer lag screw to extract the bullet.

Once I could open the cylinder, I noticed that the fired casings were a little harder than normal to eject, but they came out with a couple of firm taps on the ejector rod and all was well. Incredibly, there was no damage to the revolver that I could see, no scoring or other barrel damage, no bulges or deformations, the crane was still straight and locked up good and tight. Nothing was out of place, and everything measured out within specs. I called Smith & Wesson with the intent to send it in anyway, but they averred after I told them my findings, and said that it was pretty awesome that the revolver had withstood such an event with no apparent damage.

After cleaning the revolver and finishing out the ticket, I called the customer and when he arrived, I gave him a short primer on safety and ammo selection: no +P, new or serviceable ammo only, NO DIRTY OR UNSERVICABLE AMMO, and always be safe on the range.

I also advised him to go buy a Texas Lottery ticket, because with luck like his, there’s no reason why he couldn’t win.