Ah, Saturdays.

The good: I took home a 3″ S&W 66, a gun I’ve long been seeking.

This one left the factory in 1994, the same year Tip O’Neil died, alternative rock pretty much fell apart, and a big comet smacked into Jupiter. The records are inconsistent, but it doesn’t appear many of this iteration were made, making it an even rarer example of an already elusive pistol.

The 3″ K-Frames are one of the most versatile and effective carry guns out there. I’ve waxed poetic on the virtues of the fixed-sight versions before, but a 3″ model with target sights is like having a Maserati with the engine output rated in unicorn power.

Yeah. It’s that cool.

The weird: we had an odd situation caused by incompetent handloads. It appears that Uncle Joe Bob mixed alcohol, distraction, and a progressive press. The progeny of his folly was a round of .38 Special containing no powder but two bullets.

(What do we even call that particular species of stupid?)

Yep. It was a primed casing with two unjacketed lead bullets stacked atop each other. Thank goodness there wasn’t powder, or the shooter would have suffered serious injury.

As it was, the primer ignited with enough force to ram the rearmost bullet into the one in front. The two bullets fused into a single projectile, which then jammed itself between the cylinder face and forcing cone tighter than Marlin Brando in the window seat on a US Air flight. The cylinder was locked shut, and the firing pin was stuck in the primer. Good times.

The gunsmith cleared it by dropping a cleaning rod down the barrel and hammering the bullets back into the casing. Once the weapon was cleared, we realized what had happened. The gun was Ruger’s lightweight LCR model, which showed no apparent damage from the mishap.

We have a box at work labelled “Congratulations: You Have Earned a Spot in the ‘WTF’ Box” for the unfortunate, mangled products of hapless reloading, and this one is certainly the centerpiece of that.