Dodged a bullet———almost

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Looks to me like a jacketed slug from a .223 (Remington) or 5.56mm (NATO) round.

Very standard hunting round if you're after bigger game like deer. If your timber came from woodland where there's hunting, finding slugs is unusual but not exactly rare.

We have an oak window sill which also had a slug in it but it was only found some years after installation when we were re-oiling all the windows
You can't legally shoot deer other than muntjac and CWD with .223 calibre in the UK.....
 
My father was in the Home Guard during the war, and years later I found a box in the workshop bench full of 9mm and .303 rounds, along with 12-bore ball cartridges covered in cobwebs. There was also a small .32 revolver that I sneaked up to my bedroom, tried trigger to see if still worked ...and bang, a bullet went straight through the ceiling and narrowly missed the cold water tank before lodging in a beam. Guess it's still there in the old house.
 
When I was about 10, I managed to nick a couple of rounds of 5.56 ammunition from a friend's dad - I knew he wouldn't say anything 'cos he'd get in major trouble for bringing ammunition home! (My dad was an MP CQMS and we lived next to an army barracks so I was well up on army regs!). I had the great idea to turn them into keyrings. I knew enough to pry the bullet out and empty the powder, but I didn't know about the primer...

So I started drilling a hole in the end.... those primers make quite a bang for such a small thing!!!

Everyone loved the keyring, though.
 
Unbelievable and the perfect title for your thread,, if that bullet is live and still contains a viable charge you have indeed “dodged a bullet “ ..
The bullet is expended, (fired) it's just the head of the fired round the detonating cartridge remains in the weapon, it is totally inert, but even this is the case being as it is a metal object it could still have damaged your blade or worse case been flung off by the rotation of your blade on impact , so yes you did dodge a bullet, best engrave your name on it - old saying your safe until the bullet with your name on it gets you - you'd already posses the bullet !
 
The irony of getting injured by a bullet that may of been fired many years ago by a gun and all those years later thrown back at you by a woodworking machine.☹️☹️☹️
 
Those fully jacketed military bullets are a common find in trees pretty much all over Finland. They usually keep their shape when hitting a tree. Modern day hunting bullets mushroom when hiting a tree. Hovever quite a bit of hunting has been done over the years with surplus or smuggled military riffles and squirreled away military munition. A civil war and two wars against Russia and one against Germany have also made some impact.
The Swiss made Vetterli M78 repeating bolt action riffle was a very popular though illegal hunting riffle around here well into the 1950-ies when the munition supply run out. The huge bullets mushroomed (this was before such bullets were forbidden for military use) and made good sized holes through any animal at a fair distance.
 
Er, no - Chinese water deer ;)

F1D968D1-67A8-49B3-A00A-4067CB48B4BF.jpeg
 
Far less exciting, but I heat a fairly large house with logs, 75ish cm long and up to 20, even 25 cm diameter. Mostly chestnut but some oak and cherry.
I cut and burn probably 10-15 tons a year in a 60kw boiler.
I am always amazed at the number and size of stones and pebbles I find in the ash.
 
So I started drilling a hole in the end.... those primers make quite a bang for such a small thing!!!
Lying around somewhere in our house in the 1950s was an old Golden Syrup tin half full of ignition caps for a percussion action shotgun which lived somewhere else in the family. Put one on the vice and hit it; ears were ringing for a good half hour after.
 
Could have been nasty.

I imagine the scenario where the table saw flings the bullet straight at you, a couple of hours later you are just a chalk mark on the floor with a confused CSI checking for gunshot residue and trying to work out where the shooter was standing 😕

I have come across lead shot in timber before but nothing as exciting as a bullet.
 
Last edited:
Back in the 70's I was working in Iran (pre revolution) but after six years I'd had enough so the company transferred me to South-East Asia living in Singapore and working on a rotation basis in Sumatra. I had only been married for three years so back then we hadn't built up a 40' container of personal effects but simply a wooden crate. For reasons best known to the shipping company the crate made a journey to the UK overland before being put on a ship bound for Singapore. When it finally arrived, it all seemed in good order but on removing our stuff much of it was damaged. Clothing was shredded and various other damaged articles. It just didn't make sense. Finally I reached my stack of LP's built up over many years only to find a shattered record inside the cover. As I removed them from the stack one by one the damage continued but to a gradual lessor extent. After removing about a dozen, I found the problem - A spent .303/7.62 round. Having found that we discovered a few more. All the rounds were steel jacketed lead which I believe was the standard 7.62 NATO round at the time and used world-wide by various weapons.

I wan't too shocked. I had previously met some of the British lorry drivers that plied the route from the UK to and from Teheran. Apparently getting shot up in Asian Turkey was routine especially at night. Generally the vehicles traveled in a small convoy and laid up at night in a populated area or service station. They all held weapons in their cab for self-defense but I never met a driver who had had to engage the "enemy", who were of course trying to disable the lorry to get access to its cargo.

Fortunately the contents were fully insured and the underwriter was not going to argue with spent rounds as evidence.

Quite the "Wild West" scenario. Oh, how the world has changed in 50 years!
 
Relatively common to find the occasional slug in a board over here. I've never had one damage a knife/blade though
 

Latest posts

Back
Top