The plinking was largely indicative of boredom, but there's more than
boredom involved in the salvaging-of-misfires operations indicated by the
knife-punched slits in your shell casings.
In my own family's case, we salvaged the lead-and-powder for re-use in
shotgun shells ... both for re-loading discharged shells, and for converting
or adapting one size/purpose to another.
My grandfather had a big-ol' double-barrel ten-guage, and he never bought
but one size of shotgun shells for it (No. 7 bird-shot), yet he used the
same gun for successfully hunting squirrels/deer/panther/bear. The recovered
.22-cal slugs were used, without alteration, to adapt the No. 7 birdshot
shells to something approximating 00-buckshot ... the preferred size for
deer. It was a simple matter of prying open the crimped ends of shotgun
shells, pouring out the 'store-bought" shot, and pouring in .22-cal slugs
(by the age of 8, I was using this method for converting No. 7 birdshot
shells to 00-buckshot for my .410-guage shotgun ... I also used manufactured
air-gun BB's to convert the birdshot to the proper size for hunting
squirrels). My grandfather would cast his own 10-guage slugs (he had a
two-piece mould especially for that purpose) for bear/mountain-lions. I've
seen him make squirrel/varmint (possums, weasels, minks, foxes and
preternaturally-large rats, mainly) shot by chopping-up larger slugs from
misfires (including .22-cal) into a sort of hash, with a hatchet.
My grandfather even re-loaded his expended 10-guage shells ... using powder
from misfires (he claimed the 'newfangled' powder in the .22-cal cartridges
was more powerful and of a better quality [burned cleaner] than that
commonly provided in 'store-bought' shotgun shells). He used an icepick to
punch-out the expended primers, then a special punch (one came with the box
of primer caps) to drive in new ones (the punch was basically a hollow tube
that only contacted the primer at the edges, staying away from the center
where the "bidness" or actuator was located). On a rare occassion, the
primer would go-off whenever he was seating them, tapping them into place
using the punch and a mallet, but this was no big deal (nor dangerous). He
had a hole in the top of his workbench (rather than a bored hole, it may
have just been a fortuitously sized knot-hole .... all his outbuildings were
constructed from knotty pine ... discards from a nearby peckerwood mill) in
which he inserted the shotgun shells for seating new primers ... if they
discharged, the 'blast' (we never referred to such a puny pop as a 'blast')
was safely directed downward, underneath the bench ... and the caps aren't
very powerful, at all (probably about the same force/loudness as the
cap-pistols we used in those days).
Bob Skiles
----- Original Message -----
From: "Avery, Paul" <[log in to unmask]>
Is this just random behavior indicative of boredom or is there more to
it than that?
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