2 squibs today. Could have turned out bad.

Glad it went okay and that the bolt didn’t close. Say a prayer tonight, for sure!

Was there unburned powder at all, in the case or in the action? What do the ejected cases look like?

Curious how far the bullets got into the rifling. No chance they just caught the throat on chambering, and the projectile was pulled from the case during extraction?

Two squibs spanning different calibers in the same range session.. very strange.

ParallelCode said:

Two squibs spanning different calibers in the same range session.. very strange.

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Yeah, what are the odds? Gotta be way, WAY up there....

Glad it worked out for you.

What kind of loader are you using?

You were lucky the bullet didn't go any further. Since you did not say any thing was odd when ejected, I'm assuming no powder residue. You may want to weight the rest of them to confirm they have powder. You can do this with most all rifle loads but not handgun due to the lighter powder charge. And revise your loading procedure so it does not happen again.

I would be finding a way to positively look into the brass after the powder drop every time. That is the main reason that I reload using the batch method even though it is slower. I can look down into a batch of brass and verify that there is a correct amount of propellant in each and every one. If your issue is powder bridging some of the others might be overcharged as well. That would have been much worse had you touched off one of those instead. Yep always check things when the sound and/or recoil are not what you expect. Might just save your life.

Every time something like this happens in my reloading room there becomes another step in my process to add another safety layer. I look back on the time when I started reloading and thank my grandfather for the extra eye over my shoulder. Also as time goes by the things he thought were safe I have often found we were just lucky.
The old story of you don't know what you don't know until you learn otherwise.

You can't be too careful with this sport. Same thing happened to me with a revolver. It went pop instead of bang and I wisely decided to check and saw no light. It sort of shook me up because I almost pulled the trigger after the pop.
I once ran into a couple of guys at the range and one had a squib-fire with the bullet stuck in the barrel. I asked his friend and he said it happened all the time with the guy because he was sloppy on his progressive press. Needless to say, I stayed away from him.

I bought 1k reloaded .223 from an outfit in Arizona for a very good price. Me and my bil (brother in Law) went to the range. I was shooting my Kel-Tec SU16CA and he was shooting his Colt AR. I shot my first round and I hit dead center and the next shot went bang but nothing on the target, it is a bitch to disassemble so I thought I would wait till I got home and find out what happened, in the mean time, I finished with shooting my 22 LR. Then my bil''s Colt made a weird sound when he shot and I told him to check, he pulled the bolt and the barrel was clear. Then he shot again and the sound was weirder this time and I told him to check the barrel again and this time he had a bullet stuck in the barrel. We didn't know why this was happening, then the range officer noticed that the ammo was not right, the bullets weren't crimped. I contacted the firm we got the ammo from and he apoligized for the bullets and he told me what happened. He went on vacation and one of his men got back from his vacation and didn't know his loading machine was having trouble with the crimp die. He made it good plus shipped and extra 500 rounds on the house and sent me a return postage to ship them back to him. The day could have turned out really bad but when I hear something weird at the bang, I always check it out and now I carry a 3/16" wooden dowel in my truck, just in case.

I've been loading on progressive loaders for over 40 years. I've had a few rounds that didn't have powder in them and luckily I stopped before something bad happened.

My last loader was a Dillon 650 with all the bells and whistles. Auto index, Auto Prime, Powder Dispenser, Case Feeder, Bullet Feeder, Seater and Crimp.

Since switching to the 650 I've not had a bad round in over 40K rounds. One change I made was to watch each round as it went past the powder drop. Slowed me down a bit but I still could load in excess of 700 rounds per hour.

Looking at the powder drop saved me a few times because things do happen.

I sold my old loader to a friend and warned him of the possibilities of a squib or double charge. He blew up his gun the first week we shot together.

You cannot be too careful when loading ammo.

Squibs, one reason why our range does nor allow rapid fire or double taps. Many shooters don't realize they had a squib until they have a failure to chamber and over the past couple years I have witnessed more than a few.

I had one a number of years ago after I had just started wet tumbling my brass. what I thought was dry turned out it wasn't. Found 3 more rounds with wet powder. Like above my wife was the one it occurred with. She brought me the gun and said it wouldn't go into battery. I thank God that the next didn't chamber. I have since changed my procedure.

I cannot even imagine not visually checking the powder in every single one.

No bang, no pop, yet ejected an empty case. That didn't make you suspicious?

Progressive is scary, but I’m still looking into the case for powder before I drop a bullet in. With .223 it’s harder to look down, So I think a powder check die or some way to verify it’s charged is important.

with single stage, I batch charged every case, in the tray, then put a light into the case and deliberately look at every case.

be careful @Mark_Mark

I have made dowels for all loads being the same. I place a mark on the dowel and when I drop the dowel into the shell,and it the powder the mark shows it is good to go or if it doesn't show something is wrong. Easy peesy!!

Do you pound em toward the muzzle, or from the muzzle? How hard is clearing that squib with jacketed bullets? I've been fortunate to only hammer balls for slugging

FROGO207 said:

I would be finding a way to positively look into the brass after the powder drop every time. That is the main reason that I reload using the batch method even though it is slower. I can look down into a batch of brass and verify that there is a correct amount of propellant in each and every one. If your issue is powder bridging some of the others might be overcharged as well. That would have been much worse had you touched off one of those instead. Yep always check things when the sound and/or recoil are not what you expect. Might just save your life.

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I do the same thing on my progressive, check powder between stations #2&3.

I did have a squib when I first started using the progressive. I measured the powder in a load and never put it back in. Very valuable lesson and I was fortunate I caught it.

SingleActionAndrew said:

Do you pound em toward the muzzle, or from the muzzle? How hard is clearing that squib with jacketed bullets? I've been fortunate to only hammer balls for slugging

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Pound from the muzzle to the breach. If it's a jacketed bullet put some oil down the barrel first. That will help.

74man said:

then the range officer noticed that the ammo was not right, the bullets weren't crimped.

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Does .223 need to be crimped to function properly? Or is it like any most rifle calibers, crimp is optional?