Instructor: "Draw and fire 5 rounds...DRAW!"
Yanked up my .38 snubby Rossi and firmly planted it on my left upper chest, shoulder aimed at target and yanked the trigger.  POW!-OW!  Face got peppered all over the left of my nose, cheek and glasses with hot lead shavings and burning powder.  Next 4 rounds fired fine and I am pleased to annouce I remained "in the fight" and put all 5 in the black of the silhouette target.  Glad I was wearing eye protection for that round!  had to pluck a shard of lead out of my nose and think there might be a splinter still in there because the spot is dark.  Bled a little bit but not much.  Not sure what happened.  It was old ammo, maybe 10+ yrs old factory Winchester 158 lead round noses.  I fired the rest of the box and no others did that that I could tell.  The gun normally does not shave and inspection does not show any timing problem.  My guess is the slug had an air pocket that burst upon firing it, maybe forcing shards and powder granules out the cylinder gap and with my position it slapped my face.

Hope your not flying anytime soon. You're likely to set off the alarms and then you know what you have to do...

Thank God you had on eye protection. A shard in the nose is much better than one in the eye. Things like this seem to happen at the most unlikely times. As for your investigation; think how many millions of rounds Winchester produced during the time period you ammo was manufactured. Could have been anything, over charge, light charge, soft lead at the end of a batch, COAL, etc...........

Glad your alright could have been alot worse

that you remained"in fight" and all five found black...excellant shooting under " to say the least" adverse conditions..finishing the wheel after taking blow back takes a good nerve..and wearing eye protection is never a bad thing....

I'm having difficulties understanding your shooting position and how you got peppered in the face by your own gun. The gun should have been well out in front of your face and any shavings or blow back from the gap between the cylinder and the barrel should have blown out to the sides, not back. The structure of the gun should have been enough to prevent any blow back directly back at the shooter.
As a firearms instructor, I've been peppered many times from a shooter next to me, but never from a gun I was firing.
Thank goodness you're ok.

The stance the instructor I was under prefers is to slam the gun in-hand against your upper breast (left breast for my right-handed hold), placing it in the pocket atop the peck muscle and under the clavicle.  The, place the left hand over the gun-hand for added holding power.  You then merely point the shoulder at the target and shoot.  The snubby barel is right at or just inside the level of your shoulder, but due to the curve of the shoulder away from the muzzle there is no danger of shooting your own arm (done right) and offers incredible weapon-retention power.  Plus, it narrows your body as a target and guards your chest by a tightly clenched and downward-angled arm as well.  This stance allows you to back up, side-step, or literally plow ahead in the same position whil continuing to shoot.  It is not meant for target shooting of course, just close-combat OMG! shooting.  We do other stances as well, but I really like this one best.  My face, when i do it is over the pistol because I am leaning to my left as I do it, and my head natuarlly moves forward/left as I do it.  My just be my own quirk, but it is comfortable when I do it.  In dummy-gun drill in the stance you cannot grab the pistol form me, even if you get both hands on it.  I am in a strong stance and able to push assailants off balance, twist away from attackers, back-up, side-step them, or if needed, push right through an attacker and my shoulder is literally the aiming-device since the muzzle naturally follows the shoulder's angle.

Sounds like a stance for powder burns, both from the cylinder gap and muzzle blast.
Now that you've been bit once, it'll be in the back of your mind every time you assume this stance, am I going to get bit again.

Yeah, but it is a great defenssive stance. I was dry-running it tonight with the same gun and think I may have just been a bit more aggressive in it that time and gotten my head further forward than normal, getting over the gap where I usually am a little further back. That is why we practice.

So are you going to have safety glasses on when life turns to crap?

Wasn't wearing 'safety glasses', just my usual eyeglasses. I don't wear those stupid shooting glasses for that very reason. When going through these courses, I wear foam earplugs, but aside from that, I wear the same clothing I wear on-duty. That particular time, it was a dress shirt and slacks. Sometimes it is with a blazer, other times a coat. If you do not shoot in multiple stances, you are inept with the gun. When practicing for real life OMG! shooting, you had better spend time weak-handed, strong handed, run-n-gun, kneeling, lying down, rolling, and such as in that particular case, with an offenssive weapon-retention stance. One thing that instructor bans is "Weaver" on his range. Numerous studies of police shootings have shown that when doo-doo hits the fan, cops (us) tend to automatically revert to training stances. Many cops have gone down while standing in a perfect Weaver stance. The best thing that happened in that run was I knew I had been splattered badly, felt pain and my left eye auto-shut on me, yet I fired the following 4 shots systematically and put the sillhoette down. Only other time I had something like that happen was I got nailed in the shest by a flattened .38 lead slug that a peper-popper pinged back at me from a guy next to me, and I was startled but thankfully, again continued the shooting as directed. I hope this means that I will stay in a fight even if hit in real life if that ever happens.

Glad to hear you are serious. And yes we do revert to our traing when stressed. As a police firearms instructor I spent a lot of time working on that stay in the fight mentality.

Was going to do some drill this weekend but it was raining.  I have strict rules about getting into gunfights when it is raining. (whaa!)  I've been out there in wind and sleet before when my fingers stung and were 1/2 numb.  That sux, especially when trying to rapidly reload a revolver nad your speed loaders are already out.

Saturday I was rubbing that spot on my nose and felt the edge of the suspected lead shard poking out.  I picked and picked but could not get it out.  After a while I got irritated enough to put down what I was working on and getting tweezers and a pin and started working on that thing.  Bled like a stuck hog, but alas I finally pulled a splinter of lead that was curled slightly like a cork-srew that was about 1mm long.  Hope that was the last of it.  That was a unique occurance.  I have a scab now that I keep seeing when I look just right so I figure I will now go cross-eyed staring at the scab.

Shiloh,

I'm not going to complain about having to shave any more ! LOL


Get well soon...............................

Oh, I'm quite well. Just bearing what resembles a pinched-off zit is all.