Dumbest Reloading Mistakes?

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PCCUSNRET

PCCUSNRET

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Mine happened this year, after 15+ years of reloading. I spent almost 2 month (every Sunday at the range) trying to come up with a sweet load for my Remington 700 SPS in preparation for this years deer hunting season. The load I finally settled on was giving me 5-shot 1/2" groups @ 100yds on a regular basis so I loaded up a 50 round box for my trip back home to WV for opening day of rifle season. For some reason a week before my trip I realized that I hadn't actually checked to see how rounds fed from the magazine of gun during my load development so I decided to take it back to the range once more before heading back home. I found that all of the rounds I had been testing for this gun were almost 1/8" too long for the magazine area of this gun and for me to use this load it would now be a single shot rifle. I decided to push 20 of the 50 bullets back far enough that they would fit properly in the magazine and visit one of the local ranges in WV on Sunday before opening day to see how they performed. I guess I lucked out as the rounds still grouped at 1" @ 100yds. Only thing left now was to find a buck. Needless to say I only saw 15 does, a dozen turkeys and gave up on counting the number of gray and red squirrels (the red ones were so fat this year they sounded just like a deer). Oh well, guess it's time to start preparing for next year ;)
 
If your worst reloading mistake doesn't draw blood then your pretty lucky.

My "worst" goes back to 1986. I was fussing with a Lee Progressive which on it's best day is a POS as far as the Primer Feed.

Mine had failed to advance a primer to the seating position so the case started dumping powder under the shell plate. When I was trying to free it up so I could resume loading, (here it comes) I put my work lamp to the back of the press so I could see the problem better. I put my hand back to try and move a case in the plate when the whole #$%&@NG tray of small rifle primers exploded. The heat from the lamp set them off. The tray splintered. The flash burned the back of my left hand and the splinters opened several cuts on the back of my hand. Enough so I could see a tendon.

Several Stitches required and the press is now history. Have a Dillon XL-650 now and haven't had a problem since I unboxed it and bolted it down. Many thousands of rounds.
 
Yow!!!!! My symphony is extended to you!!

I was gonna say, resizing my thumbnail to .356" in a Lyman bullet size & lube press a couple of years ago was about as worse as I ever have done in 50 years.

rc
 
1 scoop good-2 scoops better??

My worst was in the early '70's. Lee Loader-Wack a Load. 1 scoop of Bullseye called for. In doing my "Load Development" I thought that 2 scoops would be better??:confused::banghead:
My BIL has that old Spanish Import .38 Spl. hanging up on a peg in his barn.
The story is that the import POS hand gun would not hold up to normal factory loads???:uhoh:
 
50 prepped cases in the loading block, charged them all with powder. Went to start seating bullets and did 10 or so before I saw powder laeaking out of the bottoms where I had forgot to put the primers in.
 
For me it was loading about 20 rounds with bullet and powder before I realized I forgot to put the primers in. I also loaded one round for my M1 with a 180 grn bullet a primer but no powder, luckily the bullet didn't even move out of the case into the barrel when I fired it. Been lucky so far no double charges, knock on wood.
 
I guess my worst (so far anyway) was when I got confused by how much powder to charge a case with.

45 Colt
10.5 gr of AA5 is OK, 10.5 gr of Titegroup is NOT OK.
Hodgdon says 6.6 - 7.5 gr of titegroup

Ended up having to pull 3 boxes (150 rounds)

At the same time a friend was calling me (crying) she was so frustrated with her computer (yes, I'm a geek & freely admit it). :neener:

And I'm trying to get these bullets pulled so I don't forget which boxes to pull.
 
Worst would have to be a squib that of course had to be the first shot out of my revolver. Bullet stopped part in the cylinder, part in the forcing cone.

Now I got 5 rounds left in a cylinder I can't open.:banghead:

Clutch
 
I was putting powder in some .44 mag cases, then put the bullets in, just as post #10 did, couldn't figure out why powder was running everywhere....... no primers Dip-Stick!:cuss:
 
I got overconfident with my 45 ACP. Switched to my first time loading with cast bullets, and left the seating die set in place for my jacketed bullets. Drove 1 hour to the range without ever checking to see if they would fit in the magazine, let alone chamber. Paid my $12 to the NRA for an hour of range time on a Thursday night (after waiting 45 minutes). Got to the firing line, and realized my mistake. Thought I could be smart about it, and forgo the mags, and just chamber each one individually - no dice, they were still too long.

Then I figured I'd break out the 30-30, and test the stuff I'd made recently for it- my hammer spring is a little worn, and every so often it goes into 'light primer strike' mode.
After getting 4 shots off, and denting 8 primers with no 'bang', I get the dreaded 'tap on the shoulder' - the RSO tells me 'times up'. Then I get the fish eye from the same RSO, after I pull my brass back to my bag with the squeegee (about 3 ft. beyond the red firing line)... Sheesh... what a night....

-tc
 
So far all I can submit is while reloading some .223 for gopher season, I must have missed one of the cases on the corner of the loading block with case lube. So, naturally I grabbed that one first. Up into the sizing die, and STUCK. Don't pass go, no $200. So with a hopper full of powder, I rotate my turret so that I can get the dies/powder hopper out to look at the stuck case. And what do we do now? Well we turn the whole thing upside down so that I can check out the stuck case. Which shifts all the powder to the top of the hopper, blowing the lid off and dumping powder all over me, my stool, bench, floor, everywhere. So, now I got a huge mess to clean up, wasted powder, and a stuck case. I swept up the powder, finally got the case unstuck, and quit for the day.
 
While not exactly my fault, but my wife will say it is. Wife decided that my reloading area needed a good cleaning (in the spare bedroom at the time). I left a box of primers out. The vacume cleaner thought they looked fun to eat. A few little pops and vacum died. I could not tell how many detonated, but I am short 100 primers. Needless to say the wife was rather upset.
 
Nothing severe. I've only loaded a couple thousand since I started. On my second loading trial, I was experimenting with WSF and Universal. I got the loads mixed up.

For 115gr of 9mm, I planned to load:
5.3 gr of WSF
4.4 gr Universal

However, I loaded 5.3 of universal. Hodgdon lists 4.5 gr of Universal as the max-load.

I caught the mistake before firing, as I went and double-checked the numbers. But it was still no joy to pull 15 slugs.
 
Well I have a few but my worst thus far was mixing powders in the drop and not realizing it until I loaded about 1000 rounds....
 
Using Federal Primers in a 30-06 Garand. Federal primers are the most sensitive primers on the market. Conventional wisdom was that only high primers caused slamfires. Had two out of battery slamfires with the second blowing the back end of the receiver into my face, before I figured out that maybe primer sensitivity was also an issue.

And that Conventional Wisdom was all bunk. :cuss:
 
SlamFire1 said:
Using Federal Primers in a 30-06 Garand. Federal primers are the most sensitive primers on the market. Conventional wisdom was that only high primers caused slamfires. Had two out of battery slamfires with the second blowing the back end of the receiver into my face, before I figured out that maybe primer sensitivity was also an issue.

And that Conventional Wisdom was all bunk. :cuss:
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that's where your screen name comes in?


I hope you weren't injured seriously
 
When I was just starting I loaded some rounds up and zeroed my rifle for them. They grouped fine so I took the brass and just loaded the same load. Only I didn't trim the cases. Got to the woods and the bolt wouldn't close on any of them. Luckily I had a box of factory ammo in the truck and checked my zero and it didn't ruin the hunt. Killed a decent 6-point that day too. Glad I had the factory rounds in the truck.
 
Haven't drawn first blood yet with my reloads, (on my end) but how about buying dies,powder,bullets,brass, bullet moulds etc, and not owning a firearm in that specific caliber !:confused:
 
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