Scary Learning Experiences - And What Changes They Caused?

That's a good reason to always sort by head stamp on rifle rounds. The difference in volume can be dramatic between the mil and commercial brass.

I batch load everything and have (so far) never had a squib or overcharge. However one time I filled a left hand loading block with brass then charged the cases one by one and transferred them to the RH loading block. Checked them for fill, added the bullet and seated them. Throw them into a bucket and take them to the range to shoot. One shot OK next one -dud- then 2 OK then -dud--dud. Opened the cylinder and found the primer backwards on three of them. Checked the bucket and out of 120 reloads I had 46 that had backwards primers. I hand prime off the press so now I inspect every one when I prime it. Also in the first loading block the brass is inserted primer up for a visual primer inspection as well as to verify that it is also empty. Happy days again.

Started refilling the powder measure on the 550 only to realize it was
different powder than what was in the measure.
I only noticed when I turned from my seat to place the powder can behind
me and saw the can of what I was using at the time.
Two different times!
The second type of powder had been brought out for loading the next caliber in it's turn (as a step saver).
Changes? NO more breaking the cardinal rule of one kind off powder in the loading area at a time.

JT

Only one I had wasn't me-I am pretty OCD about my loading, and only use single-stage presses. (An RCBS Jr. 3 and a MEC 600 Jr.) But when I was about 12, and was 'borrowing' some of my Dad's Red Dot for some pyrotechnic displays in the sand box with some plastic armymen and tanks, I spilled some. I cleaned up the spilled powder and put it in my Dad's ashtray on the reloading bench. Yes, he smoked while reloading. Well, he didn't after he set a cig in that ashtray full of Red Dot, and I couldn't sit down for a while, either.

Well, there were the steel cased 9mm reloads I did with a Whack-a-mole that Ka-Boomed in my Kel-Tec 2000, but it did it with Steel cased Chinese 9mm, too, so I put that on the cases, not my reloading.

Yup, Dad drank beer while loading and unloading the trap shells, he thought the shell box stand at the 16 yard line was for setting your beer on.......

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! I brought my revolver home after a range session...absolutely SURE it was unloaded! Took it out for cleaning, opened the cylinder, and there was a live round! It had apparently "hidden" behind? Once was enough, thank you very much! NOW, I double check...ALWAYS!
Another time, not dangerous...I was showing a troop of Boy Scouts about reloading, and was charging pistol cases with powder, when I noticed powder in the bottom of the reloading block holes. I had forgotten to prime the cases! HAIL, the Wisdom-filled EXPERT!

I certainly hope I've adopted some good practices that have prevented mishaps, but I'm going to just focus on the "scary" things that have happened and what changed as a result.

First, a squib load because air-drying wet-tumbled cases for 24 hours was not enough. The squib itself wasn't too scary since I had plenty of warning it was coming. I had seen powder sticking to the cases in the loading block. When I went to fire that batch, I had several misfires before the squib. But seeing a barrel obstruction in-person that I knew I caused myself really brought home the fact that what I'm doing is for keeps. I don't think continuing to load the wet cases this one time was a mistake. I was curious and needed to know how a small amount of moisture would affect primers and powder. Does it even matter? What if I just dropped some loaded cartridges in the water? Probably, they would stay water-tight, but these damp cartridges would reveal what might happen if moisture seeped past the primer or the bullet. What changed: Procedurally, I changed to dry-tumble the wet-tumbled cases after they've been air-dried. Where I live, the humidity is very low and a little moisture in the corncob quickly evaporates. I don't get any clumping and the cases are certainly dry. What else changed is my awareness of the effect of moisture on powder and primers and the danger potential from squib loads from any cause including low or no powder charges.

Second, a revolver cylinder split and blew the topstrap. The exact cause is unknown because it could have been ammo-caused but the revolver had a history of serious malfunctions and alterations by the factory. What changed: I load using case-filling powders. The result is that cases cannot be double-charged and practically they cannot even be overcharged. I also swore-off aluminum guns. It's not that I doubt aluminum's strength. Besides, if it was weaker, it could have broken and relieved pressure whereas steel might have exploded at a higher pressure with greater force. What bothers me about aluminum/titanium guns is the durability. They are more easily damaged, the crane bent, cylinder lost alignment or timing, and besides that the finish is easily damaged.

Last, the scary thing that could happen but has not happened is made possible now that I'm reloading for more than one cartridge. I could put the wrong powder in the case. Putting H335 into a .357 case probably wouldn't be too bad. But putting 29 grains of Lil Gun into a Grendel case would be bad. Quickload suggests the pressure could be over 89K psi. I'm thinking of switching to 8208 XBR so the rifle powder will be a different color and extruded instead of ball. I haven't settled on the revolver powder yet though.

It's not that I can't keep powders separate. I loaded with eight different powders last year and didn't have a problem mixing them up. I have a practice of only having one powder out of the storage cabinent at one time. There is only ever one powder bottle on the bench and the measure is always emptied into the bottle before it is put away and another powder allowed out. But I'll probably be looking for a failsafe method. I can visually distinguish ball powders like HP-38, Longshot, H110 and Lil Gun. But Lil Gun and H335 look identical. Besides having visually distinguishable powders, I'll probably get separate powder measures. Since the charging dies are different, I'll just keep one set up for each cartridge/powder and put some colored tape on one of the hoppers so it's obvious which is which.

I dropped an ingot into a pot of molten bullet metal. It blew lead all over the place.

Fortunately, I was wearing leather gloves and industrial safety glasses.. but lenses were completely covered with lead. The skin below and above the glasses was blistered. ruined a good flannel shirt.

Lesson learned. I now wear a full face shield and leather apron when casting.

I didn't do this but a younger friend of mine did. He was loading all the rifle ammo for their families first day a buck season.
A big old buck went running past and everyone's rifles just went "CLICK"... everyone turned and looked at him.

He said the only thing he did differently was the primers were seating hard so he sprayed them with WD-40.

Oh MAN, did he get in trouble, God were they mad.

Someone made a flying trip to town for factory ammo and their wasn't much talking the rest of the day.

It was a couple years before he was allowed to load anything after that.
I felt so bad for him.

My mistake is a little different. I had about 300-400 Xtreme Plated 158gr THP bullets for .38/.357 that I could not get to shoot accurate no matter what powder or charge I used. So I decided to load them light for my girlfriend or son who were both just starting out. Loaded with around 2.7gr Bullseye if I remember correctly. At the range, I think the 2nd or 3rd was a squib. Caught it but the bullet was stuck in the barrel. Removed it with a wooden dowel and had several more of the same. Stopped using these and went hope thinking somehow these didn't get any powder. I pulled the bullets and ironically all I pulled had powder, so I loaded them back up. Next range trip, same problem. Took my 3 trips thinking I was having press problems before I realized that plated bullets need more powder than lead due to the friction and I was shooting in a 6" revolver. I also discovered that these bullets were actually slightly over diameter at .359 instead of .357 which they should have been. Should have caught that brain fart up front but nothing registered. I have since quit using plated bullets in favor of HyTek Coated lead for several reasons and I have also got back in the habit of checking bullet diameter randomly on every lot of bullets I buy.

When my brother was 8 years old he was looking at a rifle my father's friend had. When it was handed to him, he started to open the bolt, just like we had been taught since we were old enough to walk. Before it was all the way open, the owner told him he didn't need to because he was sure it was unloaded. But mid sentence, a live round flew out onto the floor. Sure made my dad proud, but suddenly lost interest in the rest of the gun collection.

I had a 9mm “fizzle” at a friendly competition. It wasn’t the normal bang, it was just a fssssst and smoke. After an immediate unload and show clear, there was a round stuck in the barrel, thankfully no recoil so no new round chambered. The culprit was a .380 case that head spaced on the extractor.
I have a LNL progressive, and an RCBS lockout die after the powder drop. There are light strips under the dies shining light all over the place and I wet tumble with stainless so the cases show powder charges really well and I attempt to insure there’s a decent amount of powder in every case.
The next reloading session, I found another .380 case had made it through the entire process and it was only dumb luck that round hung up on the ezject system and when I grabbed it the bullet pulled right out of the case.

My process change was to add a shock bottle case gauge after loading.

Nothing real serious. When I first learned how to reload I tried to find ways to make sure mistakes like wrong powder, double charges etc... don't happen. I always say out loud what powder I'm using, I visually verify and read it out while pointing to it with my finger, I say EVERYTHING out loud multiple times to verify. Wife probably thinks I'm a looney in the room with the door shut talking to myself, but it keeps me safe. I'm not saying the worst can't happen but I do everything I can to prevent it.

Now, I have made plenty of mistakes on the bench. Trimming too short, crushing cases when seating, stuff like that.

When I started reloading 25acp I hand primed all the cases I wanted to load. 100 of them.

I mashed a few because they had too small of a bell on the case. It's real hard to differentiate a bullet seating and smashing a round for the little guys. I unfortunately left the bag of unprimed brass on the bench and grabbed a few more cases to make up the difference.

You guessed it... a few unprimed cases made it into the batch.. not a catastrophic error but a error non the less. And I now make sure to put the brass back in the can if I am not priming it.

Another when I first started reloading. I broke the first cardinal sin... 2 powders on the bench at one time. Got finished with one caliber and went to dump the powder back into the powder bottle. You guessed it again. Dumped over half a hopper of hp38 powder into a near full bottle of tightgroup. $20 down the tube. I caught it but it was still a super bad mistake. Contaminated powder was used to make a light show on a old concrete slab.

I still to this day use masking tape the hopper lid shut and write the name of the powder it contains on the tape. And I make sure the only one powder rule on the bench is followed to the letter.

I also have taken to making sure everything is labeled all the time everytime. I made sure to get pre printed labels for reloading. A few years back I went through a massive amount of reloaded ammo that was given to me when a friends father in law passed away. The guy had reloaded for 50+ years. As he got older and widowed he would reload to pass the time away. He shot less and less but reloaded day in and day out.

He would literally buy a lb Of powder and load till he used it up. Then move onto another powder but not separate them. Everything got put in 50cal cans no matter the powder designation. Same cartridge and bullet weight at least. 10s of thousands of rounds like this. I had a massive thread here on it. Dead peoples ammo or something like that.

I spent 1/2 a year taking down 99% of that ammo using a few hours here and there. It was worth it because I never have to buy brass again or lead. I still have 3 cans full of 32h&r that have to be taken down. One day I'll get a 32mag revolver and start the process over again.

Some of his earliest loads for oddball stuff was all marked with very good load data marked on the cases. As a example, grabbing a handfull from each can of 38sp produced 5 completely different powders... all mixed in.

Later on he really neglected data. He was sharp as a tack until he passed and everyone of his rounds looked factory made. He just seemed like he was just going through the paces and said to hell with separating reloaded rounds.

I make sure to describe as much as I can on my data tags. Hopefully if something were to happen to me (God forbid) then at least who ever gets my toys will have at least a idea on what they are dealing with.


I still follow other folks suggestions from threads like these to try to take the Dummy (me) out of the equation.

Factory ammo incident I forgot about....

Years ago I had a Ruger sp101 grenade using factory big name ammo. Just obliterated the revolver and beat the piss out of my dominant hand.

Just that alone got me diving head first into reloading my own ammo especially higher pressure pistol ammo and my own rifle ammo.

I don't think I've shot any factory ammo save for 22lr, 7.62x39 and carry ammo for years.

A few years ago I was at a high power match and the range officer asked me to check on a couple shooting near the end. I introduced myself and noticed they didn't have a yellow chamber flag so I pulled one out and offered to insert it. When I picked up the gun a live round drop out of the open chamber! The boyfriend started to yell at me that I dropped the round to make them look bad and then started to get in my face. I was still wearing my shooting jacket tightened up for offhand and I was in no position to fight so I turned my back and started to walk away. That's when I noticed three members who were police walking my way. One of the cops took down the boyfriend and cuffed him until he calmed down. The local police showed up shortly and escorted them off the range and told them to never come back. We eventually recovered the round that I thought had fallen out and sure as **** it was one of mine. I was super embarrassed but everybody agreed we didn't need people like that shooting with us.

lordpaxman said:

I had a 9mm “fizzle” at a friendly competition. It wasn’t the normal bang, it was just a fssssst and smoke. After an immediate unload and show clear, there was a round stuck in the barrel, thankfully no recoil so no new round chambered. The culprit was a .380 case that head spaced on the extractor.
I have a LNL progressive, and an RCBS lockout die after the powder drop. There are light strips under the dies shining light all over the place and I wet tumble with stainless so the cases show powder charges really well and I attempt to insure there’s a decent amount of powder in every case.
The next reloading session, I found another .380 case had made it through the entire process and it was only dumb luck that round hung up on the ezject system and when I grabbed it the bullet pulled right out of the case.

My process change was to add a shock bottle case gauge after loading.

Click to expand...

https://www.shellsorter.com/products/shell-sorter-380-plate

Solves that pesky .380 problem BEFORE it gets to the press. Also if your Lock Out die is properly adjusted those .380 cases will lock up the die.

My first serious mistake was setting the main poise on a Redding #1 beam scale in the wrong position. I use the scale to measure the powder dropped by various powder measures. This resulted in a major over charge. Lucky for me I was reloading 9mm and the wrong weight of CFE-Pistol nearly filled the case to the top. So I ditched the 2 poise Redding and picked up a RCBS 505. The 505 is a 3 poise scale and so much easier to set up, like most 3 poise scales I have seen. Still not satisfied, this event scared me good, I added a cheap WAOAW digital scale to my reloading process to validate (it's not exact, but very close) the setting of the 505 scale. Now, before I go into production I feel comfortable that I have the powder measure set to drop the charge that is what I believe it to be. Here is a link to the scale:

https://www.amazon.com/WAOAW-Millig...ocphy=1014251&hvtargid=pla-350159150309&psc=1

Heh, funny you should ask. Having recently switched from a single-stage to a turret press, I have made a couple of mistakes that, luckily, have only ended up in squibs. My latest learning experience was a squib that caused my .45 auto to lock up. Had to take the rubber mallet to it to clear the jam, and now I visually check every round for its charge before seating the bullet, and just today learned that the OAL my pistol requires was less than what is typically listed in manuals for the bullet weight. From now on, every round gets the complete plunk test: the round drops into the barrel with a satisfying plunk, rotates freely in the throat, and drops into my hand when I invert the barrel. I no longer make any assumptions about a round's ability to seat properly, fire, or eject. When you consider how many things a semiauto firearm has to do correctly in an instant, feeding it poorly made ammo is asking for disaster.

And, SantaCruzDave, I now follow your powder weighing method as well and have almost the identical scale you linked to. To my mind, if you use a powder measure (don't care what brand or how much you paid), you owe to yourself to check your drops on a regular basis. Out of 100 rounds, I will check at least 10 for variance. It only takes a moment, and yes, better safe than sorry.

Great stories in this thread; I love reading about this topic

Solves that pesky .380 problem BEFORE it gets to the press.

Click to expand...

Even if it gets to the press you should be able to tell that there is no pressure on the handle when your resizing the brass. When you feel no pressure it is either a .380 or the 9mm case is split.
I pay a lot of attention to how hard my brass resizes. The difference of the force of the handle will tell you a lot. If a 9mm sizes too hard the brass has hardened up from being reloaded to many times and needs to be pitched. They won't seal in the chamber any more.

tightgroup tiger said:

Even if it gets to the press you should be able to tell that there is no pressure on the handle when your resizing the brass.

Click to expand...

I’m not trying to start an argument, but “should” is the operative word. The idea of this thread was to post situations and process changes. I’m not being defensive, but, you won’t catch every .380 case through the force (or lack thereof) of the resize. I have caught some that way. I have also caught some just due to them dropping on the base plate and noticing their height is lower than a 9mm. The RCBS lockout die is a relative measurement tool, and it will pass a .380 case with a lesser charge as well as 9mm case and an adequate charge.
The shock bottle gauge will point out this problem. It will also point out those rounds that possibly won’t chamber. Some plunk test every round in their actual gun which is the best, but I prefer this method.

Again, the point of this is to recognize we are human, there are definite places for improvement, and this is one hobby that you need to continually improve in.
Peace!

No problem here, but what is a shock bottle gauge.

tightgroup tiger said:

No problem here, but what is a shock bottle gauge.

Click to expand...

A Google search using shock bottle gauge turns up with this.

https://www.shockbottle.com/products

100 round case gauge.

Yes, sorry. I got mine from Dawson Precision:
https://dawsonprecision.com/shockbottle-case-gauges/

They also call them “hundo” case gauges:
https://benstoegerproshop.com/100-h...-checker-cartridge-case-gauge-by-shockbottle/