Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Man Fires Bullet With Hammer
WANE-TV ^ | April 24, 2009 | Alyssa Ivanson

Posted on 04/24/2009 7:15:08 PM PDT by John W

PLEASANT LAKE, Ind. (WANE) - George Fath moved to his mobile home in rural Steuben County two months ago. The previous owners left a lot of trash in the yard, so Fath was cleaning up Thursday afternoon. That's when he found a 22 caliber bullet in the yard. He didn't want his three young boys to get hurt from the bullet, so Fath decided to dispose of it.

"My hammer was outside so I took the bullet and put it on a rock and smacked it with the hammer," Fath said.

Fath wasn't expecting the bullet to fire.

"It went off and went into my belly and knocked me on my butt," Fath said.

Fath said he thought he was shot in the stomach. His wife called 911. According to the police report the bullet didn't actually hit Fath.

"Fath was not bleeding, and it did not appear that Fath was struck with the bullet. Fath suffered a minor abrasion to the area of his stomach," police records read.

But, Fath told NewsChannel 15 the bullet did go in his stomach and doctors removed it at the hospital.

"I smacked the bullet and fell down and blood came pouring out," Fath said. "I was hitting it to smash it. I didn't expect it to go bang."

Fath said he'll never hit a bullet with a hammer again.

"I wasn't thinking about it. It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life. I suggest nobody do it," Fath said.

Police agree. Steuben County Sheriff Rick Lewis said no one should ever hit a bullet with anything.

"The round can go anywhere. It could hit the person striking it with a hammer, a neighbor, a child in the yard. There's just no controlling where the bullet will go," Lewis said.

A bullet doesn't have to be in a gun to fire.

"Anytime you get pressure [to the end of the bullet] to cause it to explode, it will fire," Lewis said.

If someone finds a bullet, don't throw it in the trash either.

"Call local law enforcement and we can take car of it," Lewis said.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Indiana
KEYWORDS: holdmuhbeer; idiot; rimfire
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 161-172 next last
To: Graymatter
And if you felt really wealthy .... you put a whole roll down and tried to hit it as squarely as possible.

Next came the pipe stuck in the ground, a lit firecracker and a marble.

81 posted on 04/24/2009 7:47:33 PM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: John W
Had a friend (Rusty), back around 6th grade he was, and I guess we all were hell raisers to some degree. His Mom & Dad both worked in the afternoon, while everybody else had Mom to supervise at home when we had free time. He had all the toys. The instructions for the chemistry set was perused for anything they said not to mix together, and of course mixing those was our top priority.

Lots of smoke, flames, bad smells, and interesting reactions drove us out of his basement laughing our butts off.

He tried it with a shotgun shell held in a bench vise. The ice pick and a hammer experiment resulted in him nearly losing his hand.

You've got to think about the idea that the barrel of the gun is a very important part of the basic machine. 22 shells are way lighter than the slug of lead in the end and the shell casing, or the shrapnel from it is going to be the flying part without the barrel with the exit end pointing away from you.

Rusty gets cudos for one other crazy stunt he paid dearly for; ice skating down a frozen hill. The spiral fracture kept him in traction for months.

Last I heard he's all growed up and doing fine, but we had a lot of fun back then.

82 posted on 04/24/2009 7:47:59 PM PDT by WhoisAlanGreenspan?
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: John W
Fath wasn't expecting the bullet to fire.

Moron. No doubt votes Democrat because he doesn't expect them to be socialist control freaks.

Fath said he'll never hit a bullet with a hammer again.

But will undoubtedly continue to vote Democrat.

Incidentally, do they teach in journalism school that more than one sentence per paragraph is not allowed?

83 posted on 04/24/2009 7:50:09 PM PDT by Doohickey (The more cynical you become, the better off you'll be.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: al baby
I actually did something similar when I was a bit younger than that kid...it's "seared in my mind" and I don't do no 'lectrical stuff anymore..........I crawled under the TV table with one of Mom's bobby pins and plugged it in to the socket.

A buzzing strong tickle/tingle is what I recall...

84 posted on 04/24/2009 7:51:47 PM PDT by ErnBatavia (Impeach now!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: John W

Gosh! A Darwin Putz of the Year Award! he even flunked qualifying for the actual Darwin ward:-) Fortunately, but he sure was CLOSE:-(


85 posted on 04/24/2009 7:52:42 PM PDT by True Republican Patriot (GOD BLESS AMERICA and Our Last Great President George W. Bush)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: LukeL

It’s pretty difficult to set the powder off without a primer. The primer in rimfire cartridges is in the rim, not a separate cap.


86 posted on 04/24/2009 7:53:32 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: ErnBatavia

followed by a swift slap to the back of ones head


87 posted on 04/24/2009 7:54:28 PM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies]

To: Graymatter

You could take the whole roll of caps, lay them sideways on a brick or an anvil and hit it with a hand held sledge hammer. The sound is deafening. We used to bite the bullet end of the cartridge and could disengage the bullet from the casing and pile up the gunpowder and do the same and get a really nice bang out of it. My Father and Grandfather would hide their cartridges from me because I was forever pilfering the powder from them and making explosives. One thing I never did was hit a cartridge with a hammer. We had these little poppers that were round and exploded by throwing them against the wall...we’d throw them onto the highway and let the cars blow them up...but they ruined your day if you chewed them. Also, never put strikers into a sewage opening if you don’t have an avenue of escape...I could go on...


88 posted on 04/24/2009 7:56:27 PM PDT by vetvetdoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: Graymatter

Did you ever place the whole roll on a sledge hammer and hit it with a ball peen?


89 posted on 04/24/2009 7:59:21 PM PDT by DonnerT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: John W; martin_fierro; aculeus; dighton; null and void; Constitution Day; Slings and Arrows; ...
PLEASANT LAKE, Ind. (WANE) - George Fath moved to his mobile home in rural Steuben County two months ago.

There's the hint, folks.

"My hammer was outside so I took the bullet and put it on a rock and smacked it with the hammer," Fath said.


90 posted on 04/24/2009 7:59:24 PM PDT by Ezekiel (The Obama-nation began with the Inauguration of Desolation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: al baby

Sounds like something my husband would do.


91 posted on 04/24/2009 8:00:56 PM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: freekitty

I gave a bb to my little brother and he smacked that thing for over an hour and said it must be a dud


92 posted on 04/24/2009 8:03:10 PM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: srweaver

I would think with larger cartridges, such as a .30-06 it would be pretty much the same, just a flash-pop, and if you got hit by the slug or the brass it would likely be little more than an annoyance.

(But I’m not going to try it!)


93 posted on 04/24/2009 8:03:55 PM PDT by Zman516 (socialists & muslims -- satan's useful idiots.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]

To: John W
"Fath was not bleeding, and it did not appear that Fath was struck with the bullet. Fath suffered a minor abrasion to the area of his stomach," police records read.
But, Fath told NewsChannel 15 the bullet did go in his stomach and doctors removed it at the hospital.

I tend to think that the police report has the right of it.

94 posted on 04/24/2009 8:07:05 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (When you're spinning round, things come undone. Welcome to Earth 3rd rock from the Sun!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
He had been a combat engineer in WWWII.

WWWII? - was that a Pro-Wrestling thing?

95 posted on 04/24/2009 8:07:35 PM PDT by Last Dakotan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: DonnerT

Oops, hadn’t read all the posts. Knew I wasn’t alone.


96 posted on 04/24/2009 8:08:07 PM PDT by DonnerT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: John W

Stupid is as Stupid does.


97 posted on 04/24/2009 8:13:19 PM PDT by jongaltsr (Hope to See ya in Galt's Gulch.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Graymatter

I used to take a sledge hammer to whole rolls of them at a time - that’s a serious bang. Sometimes I’d get two or three decent bangs out of one roll, but when I hit a roll with enough force, there’d be maybe one or two “caps” that didn’t fire.

I played with hammers a lot as a youngster, so I used several weights of ball peen hammers and claw hammers as well, but I finally settled on the 8LB sledge because it was so darned effective. it was a bit to swing for a young kid, but I had a knack for destruction then that I put to “good” use.

The sound was louder than a .45 cal I can tell you that. I was a pretty obnoxious youth at 8-10 years old - I’d pull this stunt at 7:00 a.m or earlier some days. I could also burp loud enough to effect a pretty good echo in the neighborhood at an early hour as well.

I’m just about laughing out loud at myself - the stupid things I did as a kid.


98 posted on 04/24/2009 8:14:09 PM PDT by jurroppi1 (We need to reward the people that carry the water instead of the people that drink the water!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: DonnerT

I used to put some in a pop bottle, cork it, and set them off with a magnifying glass in the sun. I could blow a cork about 10 feet.


99 posted on 04/24/2009 8:14:26 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: DonnerT

See my post #98, I did what you’re describing too.


100 posted on 04/24/2009 8:19:13 PM PDT by jurroppi1 (We need to reward the people that carry the water instead of the people that drink the water!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 161-172 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson