Since my bent-conduit design apparently wasn't part of the tests, and therefore wasn't "disproven" I'm going to keep using it, with gloves of course. Conduit does not splinter.
We do follow safe loading procedures but often fire original guns which in some cases have damaged (pitted) bores or gapped rifling, leaving the ability to hold embers not easily accessed by normal bore servicing. Our wait time is often 5-10 min. or more between shots which should help a lot, but you just cannot be too careful with this stuff, having been given only two hands.
Have been thinking about how to improve our design, and one way would be to saw the "hands on" part off of the rest, at the first straight section after the bend, on the gunner's end of the device. Take a hardwood dowel about 4" long, which fits inside the conduit very tightly, and press the sawed-in-half ends of the conduit onto it, so 2" of dowel is inside either section of conduit as a "weak link" so the handle section probably stays in your hands during a premature, and the much-larger cannon end goes downrange.
If the slip-fit loosens up just drill a hole thru each part so the hole goes thru both sides of a section of conduit and the dowel, and put some kind of improvised shear-pin in the hole, such as a piece of iron baling wire. Or use hot-melt glue, sparingly, to tighten up the joint. It won't adhere permanently to the conduit, so it is still a slip-joint, but one that doesn't slip too easily. If the dowel breaks too easily in use, I'd substitute a beheaded section of a bolt of proper diameter.
Photos of the redesign to follow, probably in some weeks as I'm off on other projects now.
