So has there been a magazine article written about lever actions in the past 100 years that failed to include that warning? Maybe so, but not many. And yet I'll bet a fair number of us lever-nuts have violated the warning at times. I know I have (110 grain hollow-points in the old thutty thutty, for one). And for sure if I had a .219 zipper I'd be feeding it 50gr. spire points. I'll bet a bunch of you fellows think the same...
Fellow name of R.W. Ballou wrote a couple of articles about the danger, or lack thereof, and while I was trying (via google) to see if he had written more stuff on subject is when I stumbled into this fine Leverguns forum. Seems Hobie was looking for pages of one of the articles about a year ago, and my google search found the thread. Essentially Mr. Balou's conclusion was that if a cartridge did go off in the magazine it might scare the peewaddin' out of you, but wouldn't likely cause you any damage and not a lot to the gun.
I have a Rossi m92 in 454 Casull. A full load of ww296 behind a 300 gr. Hornady XTP in this little 20" bbl short gun makes a right sharp wallop both out front and behind. If you can use a pointy bullet to set off the cartridge ahead of it, this Casull should be able to do it. So I took one of those 300 gr. XTP's, loaded it into a 45 colt case, drilled a hole in the tip with a 15/64 bit and epoxied in a firing pin. Loaded a second 45 colt case using Federal large pistol primer (the softest, easiest to set-off primer in my cabinet) but no powder. First I loaded/unloaded this combination of primed-case followed by firing-pin equipped case into the magazine 25 times with no incident. Then I let this pistol-primer-packing baby ride up top of the magazine with the firing-pin equipped case just behind it, and proceeded to run 30 rounds through. (1900 fps. from 30 gr. ww296). I can report that the primer is kinda' dinged up but I couldn't get it to fire. I'll try again in a few days after I have wrapped some electricians tape around the upper end of the firing-pin equipped cartridge to even the front up with the rim base and cause it to ride more level in the magazine and so get the firing pin better centered on that primer. Will report further results then.
Meanwhile, have any of my fellow levergun rule-violators ever had a cartridge go off in the magazine on them?
![Surprised :o](./images/smilies/icon_surprised.gif)
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)