How do I dispose of bad rounds?

labnoti said:

That will mar the threads on the press.

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That press has no threads.
Lead gives before steel.
Some humans have to make do without.

hdwhit said:

STOP reloading.

Go back and review; NO, STUDY, the "How to Reload" section of the published manual

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Well, bless your heart.

MikeInOr said:

For 300 rounds I would use a collet bullet puller die, it will be faster and worth the setup time. For 50 or so rounds I wouldn't mess with the bullet puller die and I would just use an inertial puller.

Hammer type - inertial - kinetic = all the same thing.

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But the kinetic makes you remember to quadruple check everything the next time.
A collet puller is easy.

The components in 300 rounds of ammo represents something of an investment. I would buy a puller, pull that ammo down and salvage the components. Its your choice to buy an inertia puller or a collet puller.

I also agree that you should review your loading process and identify where you are going wrong. Not meaning to sound harsh but something is wrong.

TG is one powder you do not want a double charge on. It has and will disassemble the gun to many pieces. I would pull them. If you only do a few at a time it want be to bad. Most hand gun ammo does not have enough bullet sticking out to grab with a collet puller. The Kinetic puller is your beat option.

"There's only one way to eat an elephant, that's one bite at a time". Unless you need the components right away (9mm, nah!) just use an inertia puller. Get a lead ingot to use as an anvil; much quieter and easier on the hand than banging on the bench top or floor and it won't soften the blow enough to matter. Set out a plastic container mebbe a quart size. Hammer a bullet loose and dump the contents of the puller in the container ( bullet, powder, brass, shell holder). Just do as many as you feel comfortable doing at one time; 10? 20? 50? When you're done for the day, put the lid on the container and go have supper. Next session, do as many as you wanna. When all are disassembled, pick out the bullets and brass and either save the powder since you know what it is, or dump it. Before you know the elephant will be comfortably consumed...

If that doesn't appeal to you, just trash 10-15 rounds at a time, loose in the weekly trash pickup. No one will notice and no Cat will run over them.....

Don't know from which press you moved from to the ABLP but as you discovered there is a learning curve when moving to any new press. That is my 1st point. Second is the choice of powder. While Titegroup is a good powder and many use it I don't use it because it is such a volatile powder and can peak quickly and because I too use a progressive press and the Auto Disk measure.. I concur with the rest that a powder that will fill the case half full or better will just about eliminate the chance for a double charge.

Back to your question at hand. I too suggest pulling them apart or at least a good few. That will give you a chance to look at what you did and maybe determine if it was a missed powder drop or an inaccurate drop caused by the powder measure. Anyways by pulling them apart all you are loosing is your time. The primed cases can be salvaged, the cases can be and so can the bullets. Powder that is a individual call. If it looks fine and doesn't smell funky maybe reuse it otherwise it is not that great of an amount it can be scrapped.

I have had one squib and that was after starting to wet tumble my brass. Pulled them apart and found 3 more with wet powder. I then completely changed my procedure!

hdwhit said:

STOP

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This^^^^^
Until you figure out what and how it happened, you might be prone to repeat.

I use an inertial bullet puller, but I bought a hockey puck at a local flea market and I use it as the block I hit the puller on. It's solid enough to make the inertial puller work but not hard enough to damage the puller.

Demi-human said:

That press has no threads.
Lead gives before steel.
Some humans have to make do without.

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What I meant was the steel vise-grips will mar the Lock-n-Load bushing receptacle.

mljdeckard said:

I looked at the lockout die, and I would consider adding one if I had an empty station on my press.

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You need to prepare the brass and load it in two different operations. Don't try to completely reload pistol cartridges with no more than 4 stations. This isn't the avocation for quick shortcuts.

I use an Auto Breech Lock Pro to load straight-wall handgun cartridges. I use four stations to prepare the brass. First, I pre-clean the brass (rinse and dry) and lube it. Even though I use carbide dies, spray-on lube make everything operate smoother. The brass is deprimed (1). Then the body is resized (2). Then the neck is resized (3). Then the neck is expanded (4). After this, the brass, including the primer pockets is cleaned in the wet tumbler. Once it's dry and primed, it goes back on the press for another four stations. Powder charge (1). Lock-out die (2). Bullet seat (3). Crimp (4).

Now if you ask other people, they'll all have a different sequence. But the idea that you've got to go from start to finish in four stations does not work out. When I load a rifle cartridge, I only use two stations to size and seat. But I still load it on the press twice because I decap it before tumbling. If you have the ABLP press, be sure you're using the case feeder and collator. They work very well in my experience and make loading ~100 cases onto the press almost as easy as just dumping it in.

You can do it in four steps: Resize and decap (1). Prime, expand, and powder charge (2). Lock-out die (3). Bullet seat and crimp (4). But that won't necessarily produce the best ammo, and resizing and expanding with powder on the press will probably result in tossing the powder in the hopper and shaking the cases full of powder.

Tom-R2 said:

There seem to be differences in weight of the cases, but you could start by weighing one you KNOW is correct. If the powder charge weighs more than the spread of the cases, then a round with no powder will weigh enough less, and a round with a double charge would weigh enough more to be immediately suspect. Keep the ones that are within the correct range, set aside any that may be questionable. That would give you less that you would need to pull.

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This^^^^^
I accidentally ran my powder drop dry while loading 10mm once. I wasn’t sure how many I’d failed to charge and they were sitting in the bin.

So I grabbed the last lot to check final cartridge weight, and then weighed the individuals from the current lot. It was easy and fast to pick out the 5 uncharged rounds, pull them and reload.

There’s no need to pull all 300 in my opinion. Just look for the obvious candidates and pull those.

It's a good idea to use cases of consistent weight, and powder charges where variances are large. I've used the same method described to weigh loaded cartridges to identify possible problems. It helps that I'm loading or reloading quality Starline brass purchased new rather than random range scrap with mixed headstamps. The case weights do vary, but not by much. Additionally, I use powder where the charges are like 8 grains, or 10 grains, or 16 grains. It would be a lot harder to identify problems by weight when the difference between a charge and double charge was 2 grains versus 4, or an empty case was only 2 grains lighter. Detecting a case that's plus or minus 8 grains is a lot easier both before and after it's loaded, visually and by weight. That's why I reiterate my advice to use bulky powders like Trailboss, Longshot, IMR4427 and there are many more. Titegroup and Red Dot and such may be cheap and the powder goes a long way, but they're the least forgiving in everything.

for 300, get a collet puller. I know I have broken those plastic hammers on as few as 5 rounds. Taper crimped FMJ may never be a problem, but old LRN Roll crimped were. The puller is a pretty good system, but will cost around $40 last I checked. If your press has clearence (probably not) a wire stripper on the bullet, pull the handle down will work, very quickly, cleanly, with little work. Works great on rifles, but I know my lee's stroke is not high enough to get a 9mm over the turret. Maybe your is.

I just toss them in the trash for the land fill.

Bad advice but something I've done.

Get a HiPoint and feed them to it.

mljdeckard said:

I will look at other powders when I use up the Titegroup. What is better than Titegroup for 9mm but meters better than Unique?

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Powders; AA#2, AA#5, HP-38/Win231, Ramshot Silhouette. All of these powders can be found on the shelf at any Cabela's and I have some of all 4. Also all 4 will either fill or overflow the case with a double charge.

Using the Lee Auto Disk measure I can put the disk in with the #.43 cavity and use any one of these powders with a 115gr plated bullet, though I prefer to use the AA#2 and HP-38 powders.

I visually check every case before placing a bullet. I also never load to max levels either as a safety factor for myself. Might take me a little longer to load a batch but I am confident each one will go boom.

Two suggestions on using an inertial bullet puller.

1. Put a 'stuff in' type foam ear plug in the bottom of the pullet. Bullets won't deform like without a pad.

2. If one is pulling over a box of ammo, break it up in several appointments. Write notes about the power and components, but it does not (usually) have to be done before dinner.

I'd just chunk them in the trash. The only question then is what tune to whistle as I stroll away from the dumpster.

Nice going, So with your best guess what do you think caused the problem? Process problem, equipment malfunction, inattentive mishap/distraction?

In my case it was a process change from a safe working process to one that wasn't as safe. Quickly changed the brass washing process.

Collect them in a box and give to the local LEO for disposal. The bomb squads use them for training. I last gave them a box of mystery .270 Win reloads from my uncle's friend's brother or something like that, and a bag of .45 Auto Rim that was sold to me as Remington factory ammo, but looks suspiciously like handloads upon closer inspection. In neither case would I fire such ammo through my Grandfather's Pre-64 .270 heirloom or my Colt 1917 revolver.