This is the Winchester Ringblaster industrial 8 gauge shotgun. I work in plant that has a lime kiln in it, which is basically a giant metal furnace that turn calcium carbonate into lime. This stuff cakes on everwhere and can get very hard, so we occasionally need help to bust buildup as well as break up large chunks of lime called clinkers.
Nameplate. This gun is old, probably from the 70's.
As much of a front view as you are gonna get from me. Pretty hot in front of it, so that deflection plate helps greatly as a heat shield in addition to stopping debris.
A view from the back. As you can see, the gun is mounted on a metal stand that has a wheel that can be used to adjust elevation. The stand is quite heavy but portable, allowing us to position it at the entrance of the kiln.
Breech open, ready to load. Very stout receiver, as one might expect from an industrial shotgun.
This is our normal load, also made by winchester. It is a 3 oz. Zinc slug leaving the barrel at 1726 fps, giving a total muzzle energy of 8671 ft-lbs. It is rather loud.
A picture with the shell loaded and the breech block up. To actuate the breech block, push the lever forward to close and pull back to open. This also cocks the gun via a cocking cam.
Recoil spring. As you could see from that shell, it really does need to be that beefy.
Pull the chain to fire. It's old and covered in lime, so it's not exactly a match trigger.
Underside of the receiver where the trigger chain connects.
Where we shoot. The opening that you see is about 2000 degrees and extremely dusty. Trust me, that stuff is not fun to breathe in. If you look above the opening, you can see where some of our operators were not quite as good a shot as the others. That is fairly thick steel too.
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