Dumb things while Reloading.. jeez, where do I begin? I learned straight out of the Sierra book (no one I knew reloaded ammunition). Good book, but not a substitute for a good instructor. Over a decade after I started reloading, I'm still learning things.
Anyway on to the dumb stuff:
* First time I loaded for 9mm, I had a Glock 17, and bought two 5 gallon buckets from an old guy at a gun show - one bucket was 3/4 full of brass (I *still* haven't gone through all of it a decade later), the other bucket about 1/10th full of 147gr cast lead ball. The lead bullets were a fairly soft composition, lead built up in the barrel over time, and I ended up bulging/destroying the original barrel.
* As part of the above, I was paranoid about pressure at first and went way too soft on the initial load. I also didn't know that you should load & test, load & test. So I loaded up 200 very soft subsonic 147 grain loads for the 9mm, and they wouldn't cycle the slide. Ended up hand-feeding them 1 at a time until I'd shot through the 4 boxes I made. (Wasn't long after that, I discovered the barrel had bulged - this happened immediately after switching from lead reloads to factory ammo).
* Loaded up a tray of 45 ACP, without primers and ended up with a big mess of Unique. Actually, I think this happened MORE than once when I was loading on a manual turret press. Now I use a Dillon and it only happens when I forget to put in the low-primer follower rod in the primer magazine; then the buzzer doesn't trip to tell me I need to refill it.
* Squib load. Somehow managed to load up a squib 9mm once, and had to hammer a bullet out of a Taurus.
* Not checking overall length; assumed the sizing die was set properly loading up 45ACP, and short loaded a batch of 250 rounds, after switching from FMJ to Golden Saber. Had to pull them all with the kinetic puller, which really, really sucked. I learned to re-test ALL measurements at the start of a session, even if I'm loading the same caliber as last time.
* Broken pins sizing mixed berdan primed 308's...
* Ruined expensive dies by forgetting to lube casings...
* (Just Last weekend!) dropped a full box of large pistol primers on the floor immediately after opening it. On a painted concrete floor, those little buggers can roll a LONG way. I'm still missing 6 of them.
* I used to load in the garage when we were renting a house 5 years ago; had 5 kids and no spare rooms to set up. Left my gear outside in the unheated garage all winter and the condensation ruined ALL of my reloading dies (rust). Some were salvageable but not all. Also, the crappy garage had cracks, and termites got in to my reloading bench, so I had to build a new one... Oh, those termites also got in to a cardboard box I had sitting on the floor that contained 150 primed 300 Win Mag casings.
And that's an interesting story - you know termites will actually build nests in a box full of shell casings? Yeah, I didn't either. Even more annoying, after cleaning them, is depriming. You can't just resize the buggers and push the primer out because that's exceptionally dangerous. So I soaked them in water. For *8* days. (Remember, these are NOT loaded, just empty primed cases). Test fired a few in my 300 Win mag and after soaking 8 days in water, THEY STILL FIRED. I was blown away.
So I put a bunch of old socks inside of one sock, taped it to the end of my 300 Win Mag barrel so it'd catch any debris, and went about firing off all of the primed casings in my livingroom. Well, I didn't realize how much heat those generated, so after a few minutes I set the socks taped to the end of my rifle on fire.
Yup, there I was, in my underwear, running through the house with a sock-wrapped flaming torch of a rifle. I made it to the kitchen where my wife was doing dishes and shoved the end of the flaming mess right in to her dish water.
She was NOT happy with me that night.
Hmm... what else...
* Buying a box of 1000 250 grain .452 lead cast bullets for my Glock 21 (this is before I knew about the leading problems in Glocks.) Anyway, 250 grains is a touch much for a 45ACP, but we'll get to that.... I'd discovered someone's loading information on the Internet, didn't bother to double-check for validity, and went about cooking up a batch of 50 rounds "for testing".
Note: It always makes you feel more important when you put the end before the means.. A claim of "Testing" can embolden you to make stupid decisions if you don't follow established methodologies properly..
So I head out to the range with these ridiculous 250 grain SWC 45ACP cartridges. I load up a magazine, point it down range, and "THUMP"... What the hell, I think.. that didn't feel right. The slide came back HARD, hung for an ackward moment, then "THUNK" went forward and chambered the next round.
I have to give it to Glock. That's one TOUGH gun.... and I was ridiculously dumb.
After four or five of those, I decided that I'd done something horribly wrong, because the gun was cycling so very strange. The weapon wasn't hurt, but if I'd continued down that path I was on, *I* might have been.
* ON a related note, of too-soft loads, I got really load happy on my Dillon progressive the week I bought it and cranked out a huge amount of 223 - some 1,200 rounds. I *thought* I was using a previously proofed-recipe for that rifle, but it turns out that batch I based the load on was when it was 100 degrees out in the middle of the summer. THEN it worked fine, and cycled the rifle. But that winter, when I loaded up those 1,200 rounds, I found it would short stroke my AR15 and cause all sorts of hideous feed problems.
Thinking I was going to be stuck with 1,200 "hot summer days only" rounds, I tried them out in my FS2000, and on the wide open gas port setting they actually cycle fine. Dodged a bullet so to speak there, but those rounds are only reliable in that FS2000; any other 223 weapon I own, they are too soft to work in.
* Forgetting powder in the hopper... my bench is in front of a window, east facing, so catches the sun in all of it's morning glory. UV rays break down powder, so leaving powder exposed to direct sunlight for a long period of time is bad, as is water vapor in a basement. I've burned off about a pound out of precaution over the years. Not a big waste, but still, annoying.
* Buying 50 lbs. of H1000 for my 300 Win Mag when I first started loading. An old timer had a keg of it for sale, along with 10,000 of the worst 168 grain lake city rejects the world has ever seen. I was dumb and bought them. All of it. Over the years I experimented with powders and found 5 other powders that are MUCH better and more accurate than H1000. So, here I am a decade later, and still have at least 15 pounds of it left. I've burned off at least 10 pounds of it over time, as it was kept in non-airtight containers, and some of it started turning south (caustic smell).
Which brings me to the WORST incident I've ever heard of. The guy that had the 50 lb keg of H1000, he told me a story. See, he kept the (original) cardboard keg in his unheated garage. Over the years, he'd pushed it aside, piled crap on it, and basically forgot it. But over time that keg was soaking up water vapor and was exposed to condensation .. a lot of it.
He went out to his garage one day and noticed a bad smell; burning his nose, type of smell. He started sniffing around and found that it was concentrated around one specific area. Moving a bunch of junk, he "re-discovered" this 50 lb keg of H1000 that he'd shoved in a corner and forgot about. Popping the lid on it, he was overwhelmed with fumes at first. Then, he noticed the powder was *steaming*.
He drug the keg out on to his driveway, and called the 800 number on the side of it. As he got on the line with the person that answered, he hurriedly explained the situation and the person said "GET THAT POWDER CLEAR OF ANYTHING, RIGHT NOW".
Well, as he was saying that, the powder ignited. The entire 50 lb keg went up in a matter of seconds. It melted a cast-iron patio table a few feet away - reduced it to slag. It bubbled the paint on his house, and garage. His chrome car bumper was cracked and the grill of his car melted, as did the plastic headlight brackets. The concrete drive cracked, and every bit of grass within 20' went up.
It went out as fast as it started, but sure as hell got the attention of the local fire department, police, neighbors, etc...
Anyway, the lesson I learned from his experience is that COOL DRY PLACE means exactly that. A cool *DRY* place. Not a garage.
As for Hodgedon? They sent him a replacement 50 lb keg free of charge, at no cost. Wonderful company to deal with. Anyway, back in 1998, that's what I ended up buying from him, at (get this) $4 per pound. So even if it isn't the best powder for my rifle, it's got me through cheap reloading for a long, long time now.
Got more stories but my fingers are tired.
