Just spent awhile in fruitless search of the original article to no avail.
The essence of the tale, or is it tail??? is that Lester Cox, if memory serves, was working with an old slug gun at a range one day and among other things had relieved the dimension of the orifice for the clean out screw. Apparently he had neglected to replace the screw after servicing the gun as well.
Anyone that has ever been around those old cannons will tell you they do everything in a big way, as in BIG bullets driven by staggering amounts of black powder. For example, the H.V. Perry gun pictured above is of .56 caliber and uses a two piece swagged bullet of 1300 grains over about 250 grains of BP. They make thunder...
Anyway, ol' Lester touched off his next shot as the fellow at the adjacent bench was bent over his own rifle and pointing his butt at Lester. The boom was accompanied by a rather copious venting of fire out the right side which conveniently enough was aligned with the poor old fella's left cheek. Burned a hole right thru his overalls and provided a profound motivational lesson right there on the spot. He jumped, screeched, ran around in circles trying to put the smouldering embers out on his backside, and well, I'm not clear at this time exactly how it all ended other than the fact the gun was christened with a new name. It was thereafter known as "Old Butt Burner".
