I know , my post is a little out of topic , but maybe , there is someone who likes to read it since I also had a stuck load :
It's almost 40 years ago that I offered my help to the local museum of my home town , who had a really nice collection of different , scarce and interestig , but neglected guns for cleaning , conservating and most of all , filing them .
I took my vacancys for then .
There were extremely interesting heavy target rifles from the flintlock aera as well as percussion target and hunting rifles of very best origin like Sauer&Sohn and Kuchenreuthers , some Mausers and lots of scarce Vetterlis and lots of guns that were used in the socalled " Badischer Aufstand " of 1848 etc.
I cleaned , greased and filed them the best I knew then , and learned a lot of the ancient gunmakers art , but the last gun ( I don't rember if it was an Enfield type or French military of the 1850s ) was different :
At the very most moment , when I took it out of its shelf , I knew , name it sixt sence or whatever , that there was something different .
The first thing I do when I take a gun into my hands , is blowing into the muzzle. If the blow is free , I know , everyting is OK , if it is not , in 999 out of 1000 , there is an obstruction in the piston/vent channel which can be cleared with the help of a wire .
Next what I do is inserting a ramrod for learning , if it goes all the way down to the breech plug , which can be easily be determined by comparison by the way it goes down from outside the barrel .
Well , in this case it DIDN'T go all the way down and I knew , there was something .
Next I tried to clear the gun with my bullet worm , but all I got out , was some rusty carton like stuff .
Well , I was very young then and dicided to get the barrel clear in my home shop , tried to screw off the breech plug , but it was extremely rusted and didn'd move . ( I had the toolings already then ) .
Well , as I already said , I was very young then , I screwed off the nipple , inserted a triffle of BP as a starter , screwed the nipple back , placed a cap and after I've clamped the gun in my vice I pulled the trigger with help of a string from outside of my shop .
What I didn't knew then , was , that my father was working in his office just over my shop , and the report of the gun nearly led to a heart attack for him . You might imagine , what he told me ....
Fortunately , the load was ony a blank load , but what could have happend , if some fool had loaded with modern powder - I still don't want to think of .
When I brought the cleared and cleaned gun back to the museum and told the story to the director , he only said , they must keep all items , as they get it .
Well ...
What I like to tell You is NEVER ; NEVER fire a gun , You haven't loaded Yourself !!!
PS.: The last item , which I grabbed out of the darkest corner in this collection , was a pretty heavy thing , shaped like an odd wine bottle - a 8.8 genade . When I picked it up , there was a annoying noise like sand pouring from one end to the other when I tilted it - as I remember , this was the time when I quit the scene ...
but it still did the job.
