The dumbest mistake you made when reloading?

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Removed a hopper from a Lee Auto Disk powder measure when getting ready to change the disk setting.

Forgot to turn off the hopper by closing the valve on the bottom first ...

Yes, it was a mess, compounded by the fact I was using AA#2 at the time— those fine grains really exit a hopper quickly if it’s not turned off!

Yeah been there, 231 all in my loadmaster.....
 
Purchased H1000 at a gun show. Thought I had H110 in my hand. Got home and went to load up some S&W 460 loads..... ugh this won't work! Still have the UN-opened container. (DUH)
 
Attempted to refill my Chargemaster with the dump valve open. Was installing a sizing die in my Lyman 450 sizer when the handle fell and the top punch punched a nice neat hole in my thumb nail. Prolly a few others. After all, I own a bullet puller! And a stuck case remover!
 
I loaded up 50 neck-sized .22-250 shells after selling the gun that they fit. I tried to chamber them in a different .22-250 and couldn't figure out why they wouldn't fit. :confused:
 
When you couldn't get powder I dropped a pound of Universal on the carpet. When you retrieve what you can from carpet you may not notice a little bit of lint. I was loading .357 medium loads and checked powder weight which I usually do a couple of times a box and it was light. I took out my kinetic puller and discovered I'd loaded about 75 light. That lint caused 1-2 grains less powder per round. The lint somehow stayed there impeding the flow of powder. After I discovered it I threw the rest of the powder away.
 
Forgot to turn the powder hopper to the "on" position on the pro auto disk. Only after about 50 rounds did I notice that the the powder level in the hopper was not going down.
 
Attempted to refill my Chargemaster with the dump valve open. Was installing a sizing die in my Lyman 450 sizer when the handle fell and the top punch punched a nice neat hole in my thumb nail. Prolly a few others. After all, I own a bullet puller! And a stuck case remover!
I frequently to this with My hornady auto charges the good news is you notice this one immediately!
 
I was chamfering a primer pocket on a single 223 case that the primer would not seat in one day. I had the case in my fingers with the neck against my palm and a deburring tool in a drill. The deburring tool caught and spun the case and drilled the case mouth into my palm.

I caught my finger between the ram and a deprimming pin somehow and punched a hole in my thumb once too.
 
I frequently to this with My hornady auto charges the good news is you notice this one immediately!

Did that once, sure can make a mess if your using a ball powder.
I press dispense button when there was no pan on the tray.
Did a calibration check on the scales using grams weights. Forgot to switch it back to grains. You will notice this since 24g is a lot more than grains.
 
Skipped putting powder in one case out of a 200 round run. Its amazing how far a primer will push a round into the barrel :eek::fire:
I can't believe that you actually admitted to that in front of God and the internet and everything. In all seriousness, I've done that too and was wondering why i was so messy getting powder spilled all over the bench. My kids had a good laugh when I relayed the story.
 
I began reloading in 1965 and in all these years I made one serious mistake that ended in a blown primer. Could have been worse. I have brought this up several times on this forum and it is a mistake to drop a powder charge into a bottle necked case, then dump the powder out and put a 2nd charge into that case. What can happen is that several grains of powder can be held inside the case from the first charge by static electricity so you get an overcharge. This becomes particularly important when loading near max loads. For example, if you are loading 60 grains of powder as a max charge anyone who has reloaded knows that just 2 more grains can flatten a primer. Just imagine if 4 grains were held inside the case by static electricity and then you dump 60 grains on top of that you will have 64 grains which is 4 grains above max. It could have been 10 grains being held in the case. A friend told me about blowing the magazine box out of a 700 Remington type action and later I saw him dumping cases and dropping another charge into them. He was a long time loader doing several hundred rounds a year and I bit my lip not to say anything because I knew he was going to do what he wanted.
 
I guess I've been pretty lucky that my biggest screw up was not putting a primer in my 9mm case, did it 2-3 times before I realized powder was spilling out all over the press.
 
So yesterday I had a couple of spare hours on hand and decided to make some test loads for .45 ACP

Historically I had been shooting .45 ACP with 185 gr Hornady XTP over bullseye. I have a box of Ranier 200gr and a box of Hornady 230 gr XTP I wanted to make some test loads with to compare how heavier bullets shoot in terms of accuracy as well as recoil impulse.

I determined I would make 50 rounds of the 200gr Ranier with 3 different powder charges of Bullseye and then 50 rounds of the 230 gr Hornady XTP with 3 different powder charges of unique since there was no bullseye load in the hornady manual. I got all my brass prepped and meticulously dropped the 50 charges for the 200 gr Ranier when I realized after dropping the last charge that I never put primers in the cases! Dammit dump the 50 charges back in and start all over again! Im so damn stupid sometimes!!!!! Hey at least I caught it before I started seating bullets :)


:what:When u realized it must have been a sight to see
:rofl:
 
I like my Frankford Arsenal Vibra-Prime Primer Tube Filler very much, but twice I ran it without inserting the transfer tube. One by one I dropped 100 primers onto the floor. I couldn't hear them dropping because the noise the Vibra-Prime makes. It took me an hour or so each time, but I found them all. I stopped using the plastic adaptor, and now hold the transfer tube with my left hand now. I haven't repeated my error since.

I also dumped powder by forgetting to turn off the Auto Drum hopper when emptying it. Twice.
 
Thanks for the smiles. Good to know I'm not alone.

Dumped powder pulling an open hopper ... check.
Dumped powder for no good reason (can't even blame the cat) ... check.
Spilled primers ... check.
Punched thumb with decapper ... check.
Failed to charge one case in a batch ... check.
Pulling bullets because the powder scale was set incorrectly ... check.

I am sure there are more ...
 
Good to hear ur stories guys,I'm gonna start reloading,:thumbup:
I know what to beware of..
Punching ur thumb doesn't sound too plesent:what:
 
You know, I don't understand how one could punch their thumb while reloading...never even come close, so far as I know.

Forgot to turn the powder hopper to the "on" position on the pro auto disk. Only after about 50 rounds did I notice that the the powder level in the hopper was not going down.

This one I can't understand either. I see the powder level in every case on a Lee Turret and wouldn't have made a single cartridge before I noticed. I'm hoping, ZenDude, that you were using that Lee1000. And if you were, please tell me, is it difficult to see the powder level in the cases with one? Cause that's one of the progressive's I've been considering at some point.

My biggest mistake was, as several others have mentioned, not closing the valve on a Lee Autodisk before I went to change disks....that powder does go everywhere!
 
I know I have made about every “find some way to dump powder EVERYWHERE” mistake possible, which is particularly frustrating for me, because I have an irrational bias against powder messes...

I’ve also been guilty of running too fast with my brass feeding hand and pinched my finger, usually pistol cartridges. More often, I get caught by my seating die, however, especially for flat base bullets in pistol/revolver cartridges where I hold the bullet in place and let my hand ride up with the ram to feed into the seater.

But...

The mistakes which make me feel the most silly are typically seating/crimping mistakes, where I feel like everything is going fine, then have my heart crash when I pull the case from the die, revealing some misshapen mess of a cartridge. One I recall was resetting my seating stem to a recorded height to convert from one of my 44spcl loads to 44mag, but I forgot to reset my crimp. So I have this 300grn XTP with a very shapely hourglass figure from being crimped like crazy, in the wrong position (pulled and recovered the case). I also just last month absolutely CRUSHED the shoulder of a 6 creedmoor case when I was trying to crimp my dummy round - I was distracted, screwed a full turn instead of just a half, and it rolled the shoulder at the case body like the rim of a soda can... I played heck getting the flare right on a .380 for a while when I first started loading it back in 2003, I crushed case mouth after case mouth with sideways bullets until I got my flare and neck tension balanced out...

So it’s the crushed case mistakes which really get me. It’s just something about the fact the bad thing happened on the up stroke of the ram, but I don’t see it and realize the failure until the back end.

I’ve never charged a case on a missed primer except on a progressive press (failed to notice I’d ran out). For single and turret presses, I batch prime, and I put all of my cases ass up in the holder. If one was missing, it wouldn’t make it to the press.
 
You know, I don't understand how one could punch their thumb while reloading...never even come close, so far as I know.

I wish I remembered how it happened but I don't so I have no defense for my stupidity. It wasn't while reloading I was messing with the press for some reason and the arm fell.

This one I can't understand either. I see the powder level in every case on a Lee Turret and wouldn't have made a single cartridge before I noticed.

In my comfortable reloading position I can't see in the case so I just check every 20 or so. Twice I've run the powder hopper empty without noticing. The first time it happened I looked in pail with the other 400 loaded rounds in it and said "now how do I tell which ones are charged?" I had to sort them all out with a scale. Now I throw the finished rounds in a smaller container and every time I check the powder weight the ones from the smaller container then get dumped in the bigger container.
 
That's a shopping error. You did well to keep it from becoming a reloading mistake.:thumbup:

The results would have been more humorous than dangerous, now if you reversed that and loaded H110 in place of H1000, now that could have been an interesting day! :eek:
 
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